Electoral Campaigns and Parliamentary Practice: Do Parties Pursue the Issues They Campaigned On?

Abstract

Well-functioning political representation presupposes that the substantive focus of parties‘ parliamentary efforts reflects the issues on which parties campaigned. Although the link between electoral campaigning and parliamentary practice is crucial for successful representation in modern democracies, we still have little evidence that the issues on which political actors campaigned are the ones they focus on in day-to-day politics. We investigate the link between electoral campaigning and parliamentary practice by examining the overlap between parties‘ issue attention in manifestos and parliamentary questions. Our results for parties‘ issue attention in local campaigns and in local councils in Germany between 2011 and 2020 show that parties follow up on the issues they campaign on: The more parties emphasise an issue in their campaign, the more they pay attention to it in their parliamentary activities.