Keeping promises: Necessary conditions for the fulfilment of electoral pledges

This article explores the factors and mechanisms at play in the fulfilment of campaign promises – a key element in the functioning of representative government. After presenting an overview of the current literature on the subject, we shall outline the conditional model of promise-keeping that informs this issue: an electoral pledge is more likely fulfilled if the executive branch has both the incentive and the capacity to do so. We shall then explain why each case in this issue was selected to assess the pertinence and limits of this conditional model, presenting each contribution and then highlighting any cross-cutting findings. Combining political sociology and public policy analysis shall allow us to better understand how pledge fulfilment is conditioned by the executive branch’s capacities and motivations. The ability of the executive branch to keep its promises has a number of institutional, operational and political dimensions, while its motivations appear to be largely determined by the characteristics of the publics targeted by the electoral pledges in question.