Election Promises in Representative Democratic Theory

Abstract

Theoretical debates about representative democracy often revolve around vague and rather imprecise notions like ‘the mandate’, ‘accountability’ and ‘responsiveness’ (Pitkin 1967; Przeworski, Stokes & Manin 1999; Mansbridge 2003; Urbinati 2006). This chapter will try to argue that election promises can be used to give specific meaning to important aspects of these concepts. We will see that election promises specify at least five important aspects of how good democratic representation is described in theory.