Researchers from all over the world discuss the role of political promises in Göttingen, Germany
The Institute for Democracy Research (IfDem) hosted a two-day international workshop titled “Promises Under Pressure? The Role of Pledges in a Changing Political Landscape” from July 10 to 11, 2025 in Göttingen, Germany.
Organized by Prof. Dr. Theres Matthieß in collaboration with Prof. Robert Thomson, University of Hong Kong, the event brought together an impressive diversity of researchers. The IfDem welcomed a group of international researchers to Göttingen, including those from Finland, Greece, Great Britain, Canada, the USA, the Czech Republic, and Germany, whose research focuses on the study of election promises.
This workshop is part of the international Comparative Pledges Project (CPP) co-founded by Prof. Robert Thomson , an international network of over 60 researchers studying election pledges in a total of 16 countries across different continents. The project aims to use coordinated methods to gain comparable insights into how election pledges are formed, how they are evaluated, and to what extent they are ultimately implemented or broken. This will result in both detailed country studies and comprehensive comparative analyses that reveal cross-national patterns and differences in political action.
Current research findings and papers in progress were discussed in four thematically structured panels. The first block dealt with the implementation of election promises in coalition governments. Prof. Petra Vodová from the University of Hradec Králové examined the extent to which the implementation of promises depends on the importance of a ministry for the respective governing parties in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Dr. Juha Ylisalo from the University of Turku used the example of Finland to show that precise and binding wording in the coalition agreement is crucial for the subsequent implementation of a promise. Furthermore, Constantinos Saravakos from the University of Macedonia demonstrated in a study on Greece that those promises emphasized by lead candidates in key speeches are also kept significantly more often.
The second panel broadened the perspective to encompass broader political conditions. This block examined how external factors influence the dynamics of election promises. Dr. Alexandre Fortier-Chouinard and Benjamin Carignan from Laval University explored whether media and opposition attention accelerates the implementation of promises. Dr. Fraser McMillan from University of Edinburgh presented a paper on why parties compete through election promises when the outcome of the election is not truly in doubt. Professor Robert Thomson from the University of Hong Kong presented a joint book project examining the effects of globalization on political representation. The book “Democratic Representation in a Globalized World” is co-authored with Professor Christina Schneider at the University of California San Diego and is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. According to the book, governments are finding it increasingly difficult to keep their promises, while they are held more accountable for broken ones. Parties are therefore increasingly resorting to strategically vague and populist rhetoric. The final speaker was Prof. Tabitha Bonilla from Northwestern University in Chicago, who used the example of Donald Trump to show that the evaluation of election promises is strongly partisan, with supporters rating the fulfilment of promises significantly more positively than opponents.
The second day of the workshop began with the third panel, which addressed the strategic formulation of promises. Dr. Elisa Deiss-Helbig from Konstanz presented a larger-scale study from Germany, co-authored with Dr. Isabelle Guinaudeau from the Centre Marc Bloch and Theres Matthieß. They found that targeted promises to specific voter groups mobilize little additional support compared to a universal offer, but can deter voters outside these groups. Furthermore, Sakari Nieminen from the University of Turku shed light on how vague wording and ambiguity in Finnish election manifestos systematically complicate the verifiability of promises, thus posing methodological challenges for research.
The concluding fourth panel was entirely devoted to the voters’ perspective. In a second paper, Fraser McMillan examined the extent to which voters remember previous election promises, how they assess their compliance, and what influence these assessments have on their subsequent voting behavior. Theres Matthieß presented results on whether information about a governing coalition’s actual performance with regard to its made promises influences citizens’ attitudes towards their voting intentions. Prof. Annika Werner from the University of Southampton researched the circumstances under which voters accept the breaking of promises. The final panel was Dr. Evelyn Bytzek from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, who conducted a German-French comparative study examining the effect of promises regarding immigration policy on citizens’ voting behaviour.
For the German version of the article, please refer to https://www.ifdem.de/beitraege/forscherinnen-aus-aller-welt-diskutieren-in-goettingen-die-rolle-politischer-versprechen/ and https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/3240.html?id=7876.
