Globalization and Promissory Representation

Abstract

Despite the centrality of promise keeping to representation, we know little about how it is affected by economic globalization, which is one of the modern world's defining characteristics. We argue that globalization reduces governing parties' ability to keep their campaign promises. We test the empirical implications of our theory with a mixed-methods approach that combines a large-n quantitative comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with a typical case study to trace the underlying causal mechanisms of the theory. The findings indicate that international economic integration exerts a large negative effect on the likelihood of pledge fulfillment in a broad range of contexts and that the hypothesized mechanisms are clearly observable in the detailed case study. These findings have important implications for democratic representation in a globalized world.