Election Promises, Party Behaviour and Voter Perceptions / Public Sector Organizations (PDF)

ELIN NAURIN is Research Fellow in the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research and teaching revolves around Representative Democratic Theory and Practice. She is affiliated to the Swedish National Election Study Programme and the Multidisciplinary Opinion and Democracy Research Group. She is also one of the initiators and coordinators of the research group 'Comparative Party Pledge Group'.

'This book is a real joy to read, ably tackling a major paradox in Western Democracies. Why is it when parties so often seem to fulfil their written election promises in government, that most electors think they break them? The answer as Naurin convincingly reveals, is that the political class has a different view from electors of what fulfilling election pledges means and even what the pledges are. Something obviously needs to be done about this serious misunderstanding and this book suggests what. A must buy for supporters and analysts of democracy alike.' - Ian Budge, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex, UK

'The empirical findings open the door to fresh perspectives regarding the relationship between representatives and those represented the excellent literature review, compelling arguments and wealth of evidence make this book enjoyable and useful to scholars of party politics and legislative or voting behaviour.' Sergiu Gherghina, Political studies Review

' makes interesting and insightful contributions to the party literature... [The] theoretical and

empirical thoroughness helps to convince the reader that there is indeed an engaging question at the heart of Naurin's research. ' Michael Clark, Perspectives on Politics

'Elin Naurin's book Election Promises, party behavior and voter perceptions (Palgrave Macmillan 2011) shows how research on Swedish politics can enrich our overall understanding of the challenges of representative democracy. Through a multidimensional and smart analysis Naurin develops our theoretical, methodological and empirical knowledge of the importance of election promises to the relationship between voters and political parties. An important part of the book is about how voters perceive election promises. It is shown that the general perception that politicians do not keep their promises play an important role in citizens' assessments. Citizens also take into consideration