Connecting Government Announcements and Public Policy

Abstract

A key component of democratic governance is that elected governments implement their promises. This chapter advances previous work on electoral pledges by systematically linking governments’ announcements in speeches to their actual legislative behavior. Results show that introducing a political topic during a government speech substantively increases the amount of legislation in this particular policy domain. The study utilizes two series of comparative policy agendas—government speeches and legislation—from eight countries—Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States—for the period between 1983 and 2004. In addition to the direct link from speeches to legislation, the chapter also examines a number of prevalent alternative mechanisms of law production such as institutional effects, economic context, or party ideology.