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Parties’ Election Manifestos and Public Policies

This chapter examines the linkage between parties’ election manifestos and subsequent public policies in the light of democratic theory and practice. Democratic theorists are divided on the extent to which and ways in which the contents of parties’ manifestos should accurately foreshadow future government policies. The actual strength of the manifesto–policy linkage has been examined through a range of approaches, including analyses that focus on the policy themes that parties emphasize and the specific campaign promises that parties make in their manifestos. These studies find considerable variation in the extent to which parties’ manifestos are congruent with future policies, and some of this variation can be explained by institutions that compel parties to share power with others. The evidence also indicates that there are high levels of congruence between what parties write in their election manifestos and what governments subsequently do, at least under certain conditions.