Abstract
The connection between political issues and commitments made by political parties in the electoral campaign and the subsequent framework of government actions is essential for theories that explain representative democracy. But, after all, do the parties fulfill their campaign pledges? Or yet, what explains why some governments comply with a relatively larger number of pledges than others? Through an overview of the international literature on the role of electoral pledges in representation, this article offers a (i) systematic assessment of how different empirical approaches alter the results related to the fulfillment of pledges in the mandate and, above all, (ii) a more considered assessment given the gains and limitations implicit in the models recurrently used to assess pledge fulfillment.
Keywords:
electoral pledges; pledge fulfillment; mandate; representative democracy; empirical approaches