Democratic Mandates: What Politicians Promise and (Fail to) Deliver

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the established and expanding body of research on promissory representation, which is found in all known democracies. It looks at promise-making, keeping and breaking by political parties, examining campaign promises in a broad range of national contexts. The book addresses an extensive number of fundamental issues in relation to key concepts, theories and empirical comparisons regarding a set of processes crucial to how democracies work, with parties playing a vital mediating role in achieving congruence between public sentiment and public policies. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party politics, campaigning and elections, and more broadly democracy and comparative politics.