Trust and citizens' evaluations of promise keeping by governing parties
Thomson, Robert and Brandenburg, Heinz (2019) Trust and citizens' evaluations of promise keeping by governing parties. Political Studies, 67 (1). 249–266. ISSN 0032-3217 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718764177)
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Abstract
The principle that parties should make policy commitments during election campaigns and fulfil those commitments if elected is central to the idea of promissory representation. This study examines citizens' evaluations of promise keeping and breaking. We focus on two aspects of trust as explanations of citizens' evaluations. When trust is defined in terms of mistrust, it implies that vigilant and well-informed citizens base their evaluations on what governments deliver. When trust is defined in terms of distrust, it implies that citizens use heuristic thinking when evaluating governing parties' performance, regardless of what those parties do. Our evidence is from a survey experiment in the British Election Study, which asked respondents to evaluate whether governing parties fulfilled specific election pledges made during the previous election campaign. The findings indicate that both mistrust and distrust affect citizens' evaluations.
ORCID iDs
Thomson, Robert and Brandenburg, Heinz ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2670-4706;-
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Item type: Article ID code: 63195 Dates: DateEvent1 February 2019Published19 March 2018Published Online2 February 2018AcceptedSubjects: Political Science > Political theory Department: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Government and Public Policy > Politics Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 06 Feb 2018 14:43 Last modified: 02 Nov 2024 03:01 Related URLs: URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/63195