Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship Speaker Series: Elin Naurin, "Do parties keep their election promises?"

CSDC Speaker's Series (October 19, 2012)

Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship
Speaker Series
Elin Naurin
(University of Gothenburg and McGill University)

Do parties keep their election promises?
Friday, 19 October
2:00 – 3:00 pm
Thomson House 404

[See: http://virtualcampustour.mcgill.ca/en/details/65/thomson-house]
McGill University

**A reception will follow the event**

Elin Naurin is visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, Department of Political Science, McGill University. She is also an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. She comes from a position as Programme Manager of the Multidisciplinary Opinion and Democracy Group that hosts the Laboratory for Opinion Research (LORe) at the University of Gothenburg. LORe performs online panel surveysof citizens, representatives and journalists. Together with Robert Thomson (Trinity University) and Terry Royed (University of Alabama) Elin has initiated the Comparative Party Pledge Group that investigates parties election pledge fulfillment in 11 countries. Elin is currently working on the edited book project Comparative Election Pledge Fulfillment. She also writes about citizens' and representatives' views of mandates and accountability. The talk will be about actual and perceived policy effects of elections using her book Election Promises, Party Behaviour and Voter Perceptions (Palgrave 2011) and new materials. She addresses the following questions: Why are citizens so convinced that parties usually break their election promises when empirical research shows that most election promises are acted upon? Under what circumstances do parties fulfill more promises? Are representatives given credit for the promises they fulfill and blame for the ones they break?