Vol. 87 No. 1 (2024)
Articles

Do parties adjust their policy proposals to the political context? A study of election promises during the 2022 Italian general election

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Supplementary materials
  • Giorgia Borgnino,
  • Nicola Palma
Giorgia Borgnino
University of Bologna
Nicola Palma
University of Bologna
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/qoe-14603

Published 2024-01-01

Keywords

  • Election Promises,
  • Policy Issues,
  • Issue Salience,
  • Parties,
  • 2022 Italian Election

How to Cite

Borgnino, G., & Palma, N. (2024). Do parties adjust their policy proposals to the political context? A study of election promises during the 2022 Italian general election. Italian Journal of Electoral Studies (IJES), 87(1). https://doi.org/10.36253/qoe-14603

Copyright (c) 2023 Giorgia Borgnino, Nicola Palma

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This paper investigates towards which policy issues Italian political parties oriented their commitments in the run-up to the 2022 parliamentary election. Do parties make more promises in salient domains? Or, do they prioritise those issues in which they enjoy ownership? To answer these questions, we created a novel dataset that contains 3,992 election pledges made by Italian political parties in the 2022 electoral campaign. By looking at the programmatic policies included in the campaign manifestos of the main political parties and coalitions during the last general election, we find that Italian parties seem to compete around the same issues. In particular, in 2022 a large share of election promises was devoted to economic and social matters. Although the Ukrainian war, the resulting energy crisis, and the implementation of EU-funded investments were the backdrop to the 2022 electoral campaign, Italian political parties do not seem to prioritize these issues.

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Supplementary materials

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