What Part of Government Legislative Action is Driven by Campaign Pledges?

Abstract

Do campaign promises made by a political party lead to public bills after that party forms government? We answer this question by relying on rich datasets comprising 686 public bills and 959 pledges made over the course of six mandates between 2000 and 2019. Two components of a mandate are defined: an explicit mandate to keep election pledges, and an implicit mandate to govern according to the government’s ideology laid out in its campaign manifesto or to align with voters’ evolving priorities. We show that the implicit mandate dominates Canadian governments’ legislative action—most election pledges do not become public bills, and most public bills do not concern any pledge. However, when a public bill concerns a pledge, it is more likely to become law. Pledges are an important but not a dominant feature of government legislative action, with pledge-related legislation more common in the first part of the mandate.