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Petra Svačinová
Masaryk University, Brno
Manifesto Pledges and Coalition Agreements in Czech County Towns after
the 2014 Local Elections
Abstract
The paper deals with coalition strategies of party leaders in Czech county towns
in austerity time (concerns the questions formulated by panel: „What strategies city
leaders devise to enhance governing capacity to solve complex issues in times
of austerity?“ „How city leaders employ a democratic mandate to construct
coalitions around policy problems?“). The local elections in the Czech Republic
in 2014 were special because of the success of three different kinds of parties. As the
winner of elections in big towns is considered the party ANO of businessman Andrej
Babiš, currently the government party at national level. Established democratic
parties and local-issue oriented candidate lists earned votes and could negotiate
about coalitions in these towns, too. The paper is focused on (possibly different)
strategies of these types of parties in post-election coalition negotiations with special
interest to austerity topics. Parties are (in party mandate theory) expected to strive
for fulfilling manifesto pledges. Adoption of pledge into coalition agreement
strengthens the odds of promise to be fulfilled. The expectations are mainly tested at
national level. In 2014, all (later) coalition parties in county towns formulated
manifestos (short and vague, at the first sight). The questions about aim of manifestos
and relation between manifesto promises and coalition agreement are relevant
at local level. The expectation of different strategies/success of different party types
in negotiating coalition agreement is relevant, too. The paper summarizes lenghth
and content of party manifestos and answers the questions about strategies
of different party types in fulfilling democratic party mandate (with emphasis
to austerity): Were strategies of different parties different in fulfilment party mandate
(adoption of promises into policy declaration?). In what way have coalition parties
used austerity topics in electoral manifestos? Did austerity topic increase the odds
of adoption of promise?
Keywords: Coalition, Local Government, Party Manifestos, Policy Analysis, Political Parties
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1. Introduction
Theoretical and empirical research of strategies used by parties during the coalition
negotiaions is established discipline in political science. Factors influencing success of parties
in time of coalition bargaining have been studied largely in office- and policy-seeking
approach of coalition theory. Since 1960s, policy-seeking approach has been complemented
by one more model, the party mandate model. The goal of empirical studies testing party
mandate model (particularly in so called „pledge-approach“) is to find factors influencing
ability of parties to fulfil their mandate given to voters (promises included into party
manifestos). My paper is rooted in the party mandate model, I also try to re-think the basic
assumptions of the model and to apply empirical tests of hypotheses resulting form the model
into a new level of governance: the local level. Generally, I ask, how do parties fulfil their
mandate during bargaining about policy in times of austerity?
The local elections held in 2014 were the second local elections after 2008 when the
economic crisis started. The elections took a big change into Czech county towns. A relatively
new party called Hnutí ANO1 (ANO), which was founded by the businessman Andrej Babiš,
was able to win in nine of thirteen county towns and to take part in nine town coalitions. This
new actor of national and local politics can be typologized as a business firm party. My
thinking about assumptions of party mandate theory was connected mainly to strategies
of local branches of ANO in striving for mandate fulfilment. As I argue, for such a party type,
it is not appropriate to waste time by striving for fulfilling promises, because goals of business
firm party are different. As I explain in the theoretical part, in contrast to current studies
in party mandate model, I argue that (in general) it is not appropriate for parties to strive
for promise fulfilment. And I argue that most incentives to neglect the promises are there
for the business firm party. I connect the unwillingness to fulfil promises with enforcing
inconcrete promises into policy declaration. That is the reason why I assume that inconcrete
promises of ANO have bigger odds to be adopted.
I connect the main focus on concreteness of promises and party type. But I test the influence
of the other possibly important variables, too. Because the elections were held in „times
of austerity“, I ask whether the austerity content of the promise was able to influence the odds
of adoption of the promise. I also test well-known hypotheses of studies of party mandate that
are obviously confirmed in these studies – assuming the positive influence of a consensual
promise and of the promise of mayor party.
The paper is divided into theoretical and empirical section. In the theoretical section, I firstly
describe basic assumptions and results of the studies proceeded in party mandate model.
Then, I discuss the basic assumptions, especially the assumption that parties want to fulfil
their promises given to voters. I argue, that the willingness to fulfil promises is not natural
generally, and that the unwillingness is much more probable for modern party types. I suggest
to study the unwillingness by dividing promises to concrete and inconcrete ones.
1 Yes Movement 2011.
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In the empirical part I connect my hypotheses with all parties and particularly with business
firm party – I expect that this party type is more likely to enforce the inconcrete promises.
I add some other hypotheses (the new one is the influence of austerity topics) and explain
my expectations linked to them. In the empirical analysis the hypotheses are tested
by estimation of models of binary logistic regression. I assess the maintaining/rejection
of hypotheses by interpretation of odds ratios in models. In the last chapter I summarize
my findings and try to interpret them, I offer some possible explanation of surprising findings.
2. Party Mandate Model – basic assumptions and expectations
One of the basic questions in the empirical research of party mandate – the question, what
factors do influence the ability of parties to fulfil the mandate by voters in eletions – has been
more broadly asked from the second half of twentieth century. The attention was firstly
focused on ability of parties to fulfil mandate in the easiest bargaining situations, that means
in two-party systems with single-party governments (for example Pomper and Lederman
1980, Royed 1996), in the turn of the millenium, the attention moved to countries, where
multi-party systems and coalitional governments are the standard (Thomson 2001, Mansergh
2004, Mansergh and Thomson 2007, Costello and Thomson 2008, McCluskey 2008,
Schermann and Ennser-Jedenastik 2012, Kostadinova 2013). Current studies extend the
interest to particular kinds of coalitions and governments (Ferguson 2012, Artés 2011, Artés
and Bustos 2008), comparative studies of more countries appeared (Moury 2013, Louwerse
2011, Thomson et al. 2012). Despite the big number of different research questions, the above
mentioned studies keep basic similarity in assumptions about motivations of political parties
for fulfilling the mandate. These (questionable) assumptions were incarnate into so called
party mandate model.
The assumptions of party mandate model are rooted in Downsian understanding of political
competition. Parties – as office-seekers – offer to voters the manifestos. Thanks to their
manifestos, the parties want to earn votes and offices. Voters – as policy-seekers – compare
manifestos and choose the party, which corresponds best with their pereferences (Downs
1957: 39-40). The vote is prospective and selective – by comparing manifestos, the voter
chooses the best governing alternative. Simmultaneously, the party mandate model contains
the retropsective voting in the supposition about the voter’s thinking in the next elections.
The voter shall assess the previously selected party by it’s ability to fulfil promises
in manifesto. If the voter is not satisfied with performance of her government party, she
should vote for some different party in the next election (Downs 1957, Stokes 2001, Artés
2011, Thomson 2001, Thomson et al. 2012). This mechanism can work because we expect
that parties have sense of obligation (in meaning of the rational office-seeking motivation:
parties strive for reelection and for benefits associated with reelection). Fear of punishment
by voters is sufficient motivation for parties to be responsive to voters (Downs 1957).
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The party-voter relationship anticipated in the model can work if three conditions are met:
(1) parties offer to voters clear and competitive manifestos, (2) voters must make their
electoral choice based on policy issues and (3) parties must fulfil the mandate (Louwerse
2011: 18). In spite of the fact that fulfilment of each of three conditions is challengeable
in reality, scholars, who study the fulfilment of party promises don’t problematize assumption
that all conditions were met in their case. Meeting of the conditions – at least from the side
of parties – are shown in some studies. Louwerse summarized results of these studies showing
that framing of activities of current parties and polititians enables to interpret their activities
in terms of party mandate model. Manifestos get longer, more detailed, parties are more
coherent and disciplined. So, the behavior of parties as in party mandate model is not
disputed. Louwerse concludes: „If parties support mandate theory, they should observe their
promises. There is no theory of representation which involves making pledges
and not observing them.“ (Louwerse 2011: 12)
Studies concerning fulfilment of party promises are focused on testing exterior independent
variables that can possibly influence the odds of promises to be fulfilled. These tests usually
confirm somehow intuitive expectations – for example: promises of government parties (one-
party, coalition) have bigger odds to be fulfilled in comparison to opposition parties (Royed
1996, Thomson 2001, Costello, Thomson 2008, Mansergh, Thomson 2007, Schermann,
Ennser-Jedenastik 2012, Thomson et al. 2012); the odds of promise fulfilment is influenced
by institutional and non-institutional variables (Schermann, Ennser-Jedenastik 2013). Non-
institutional variables are connected to properties of promises (for example the hypotheses
that odds of promise fulfilment increases with higher saliency of the promise for promising
party, consensual character for coalition partners, majority support for the promise
in parliament, policy content – status quo promises have bigger odds to be fulfilled, explicit
link to EU-accession topics in postommunist country – Thomson 2001, Costello, Thomson
2008, Mansergh, Thomson 2007, Royed 1996, Thomson et al. 2012, Schermann, Ennser-
Jedenastik 2012: 6, Kostadinova 2013: 196).
Institutional variables include expectation about the influence of mechanisms of coalition
governance, for example the necessity to bargain about promises and to give some of the
problematic ones up or the need for agreement about office allocation. The features of parties
– results of coalition bargaining – are tested as independent variables. The usually confirmed
expectations are for example: smaller odds of fulfilling promises of coalition parties
in comparison to single-party governments (Ferguson 2012, Thomson et al. 2012), bigger
odds of fulfilling promises of prime-minister party or of a party holding the porfolio
in corresponding policy area (Schermann, Ennser-Jedenastik 2012).
The research of features influencing the ability of parties to fulfil promises consists
of: features of promises (consensual character, policy content), features of group of promises
(promise refering to a portfolio) and features of parties following their bargaining weight (for
exapmle promise of prime-minister party). However, the research has not yet covered the fact,
that the holder of promise is a particular party. Some party types (especially the modern
types) can be less willing in the (theoretically excpected) strive for fulfilling promises.
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The question whether the type of promising party can influence the odds of promise
to be fulfilled, has been unnoticed in the empirical research of party mandate model.
2.1 Modern party types and the party mandate model
The Downsian vision of party, that the primary effort of parties is fulfilment of the mandate
(promises) comes from the universal vision of office-seeking party using the manifesto
as a tool for earning offices in the next elections. But, it is questionable, if in the empirical
reality of evolving parties and party systems, this party type is usually present. Striving
for fulfilling the mandate is best fitting for the mass party. Mass party is strongly connected
to its social structure, its manifesto represents the interests of broad membership group
(the group of members and of voters is overlapping broadly). The manifesto is discussed with
members and members pay attention to performance of their party in government, fulfilment
the mandate is checked by this group. But the expectation about clear punishment
is somewhat problematic – the members and voters are quite loyal to the party and there
is not big probability that voters will move the votes to some other mass party, especially
if the other parties are not very attractive for that segment of society).
The younger party types (catch-all party, kartel party, business firm party) – on the other hand
– had to start using strategies for attraction volatile electorate, but their main goal is not
associated with fulfilling promises because of fear from punishment. These party types are
independent on number of members, able to earn votes thanks to effective political
advertisment, able to connect the politics and the business. These parties are challenging
for one of the basic assumptions in party mandate model, i. e. the expectation about striving
for fulfilling the promises given to the voters. It is evident in the case of business firm party
model (Louwerse 2011, Hopkin, Paolucci 1999). The goal of business firm party is to meet
the interests of its leaders through the offices. The electoreal competition is concentrated
on the leader (not on policy). The creation of party manifesto is just a by-product of activity
of the business firm party (Krouwel 2012: 26). Irrespective of the fact that these parties create
manifestos, their primary goal is not fulfilment of promises. The business firm party model
is successful in questioning the assumption about the inherent striving of (every) party
for mandate fulfilment.
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2.2. Why and how to study the willingness of parties to fulfil promises?
The research of fulfilling party mandate does not question the willingness of parties to fulfil
promises. The empirical study is even set in this way of thinking. Just promises reflecting the
vision of party fulfilling the mandate are included into the research. Scholars analyze just the
non/fulfilment of so called „hard“ (the party clearly declares its strong willingness to fulfil the
promise) or „testable“ (the promise is declared in a way, that the real fulfilment can be clearly
determined by the researcher) promises. The defence of such a procedure is understandable.
Assessment of fulfilment of the promise can not be reliable in the case of non-testable
promises (Thomson 2001, Royed 1996). But for example Schermann and Ennser-Jedenastik
even suggest that parties strive just for fulfilling testable promises, since the reward by voters
is connected just with fulfilment of testable promises (Schermann, Ennser-Jedenastik 2012:
8). As I know the case of Czech parties, non-testable promises are used in manifestos quite
often, and they are adopted into coalition agreements as well. If the non-testable promises are
valueless for parties, why would the parties waste space in the manifesto by writing them into
the list? Why shloud parties bargain about these promises and strive for adoption of them into
coalition agreements and policy declarations? Hungarian scholars Szűcs and Pál (2012) notice
the importance of non-testable (rhetorical) promises for parties and voters. They argue:
„if some promises are there without any measurable policy content, we cannot entirely ignore
the questions concerning the reasons of making such promises.“ (Szűcs, Pál 2012: 5).
Because the non-testable promises are apparently used not only in the electoral campaining,
but in the negotiations about the next qovernmnent, we can assume that these promises are
of some importance for negotiating parties (connected to communication with voters more
than with real willingness to fulfil the promises). Szűcs and Pál determined three types
of so called rhetorical promises (pledges): (1) „placebo pledges“ – the content is not
meaningful, usually produced by „funny parties“, the goal is to create an impression about the
standard functioning of these parties – it is, the promising to voters; (2) the goal of „tricky
pledges“ is to mislead the voters, to weaken the commitment of the mandate, these promises
are vague, promising generally acceptable outcomes, but the measuring of their fulfilment
is impossible – the clear content of mandate is confused; (3) „politically informative pledges“
held (despite the weakly defined policy content) some information about the future behaviour
of parties (Szűcs and Pál 2012: 8-9). It is the pity that the authors do not provide a clearer
method for distingiushing between them in coding the manifestos.
Because the willingness to fulfil promises is at most connectable to mass party, I do not thnik
that parties (generally) want to fulfil promises. I also argue that business firm parties have the
biggest incentive not to fulfil the mandate. I consider the non-testable promises as the „tricky
pedges.“ Why? If the party does not want to fulfil promises, bargaining about the non-testable
promises can be an appropriate strategy. Non-testable promise can be used as a good tool
in communication with voters – it is seemed that the party works as we expect (striving for
fulfilment of its promises given to viters), and in the time of election, the party can argue that
the non-testable promise was fulfilled (because it was not clear how the fulfilment shall look
like, any interpretation of fulfilment is possible). Features of some (types of) bargaining
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parties can somehow influence their willingness to fulfil (testable) promises.Especially
for business firm parties, fulfilling non-testable promise can be a fruitful strategy, if they
do not want to fulfil the mandate (and if they want to focuse on their „true goals“). So, in this
paper, my expectation is that parties not willing to fulfil the mandate (the business firm parties
in this paper) strive for adoption of non-testable promises into the coalition agreement.
Because of this expectation, I have to do some innovative steps in my research. Determining
the promise fulfilment can not be done in the final phase (fulfilment into reality), but just
in the former phase of adoption promises into coalition agreement. Promises adopted into
coalition agreement are generally considered as a predictor of future policy of the coalition.
If a party is succesful in adoption of its non-testable promises that means that the party keeps
wide space for interpretation about what actions will be actually done. This interpretative
space can be advantageous in the „accounting“ of electoral time. Then, it is necessary
to analyze not just testable promises, but non-testable promises as well. The analysis will
finally tell us more about willingness of some parties to fulfil mandate than about objective
obstacles for fulfilment the mandate.
3. Hypotheses and Data
3.1. Hypotheses
The primary aim of the paper is to analyze the willingness of (different) party types to fulfil
the party mandate. I want to test whether the party type influence odds of promises of such
a party to be adopted into policy declaration (I assume that for particular party types,
the ability is smaller). The main focus is on the party type (ANO, national, local)
and inconcreteness of the promise.
The argument by Schermann and Ennser-Jedenastik is, that „only the adoption of a hard
and objectively testable pledge in the coalition agreement can be considered a real policy gain
in coalition-bargaining.“ (Schermann, Ennser-Jedenastik 2012: 8) The argument was used
to defence analysis of only concrete (as I call the „hard and testable“) promises. That means,
inconcrete promises should not take part in policy declarations of coalition parties – because
bargaining parties should not be interesed in enforcing this kind of promises into the
declaration. But, inconcrete promises are, at least in the Czech Republic, the inseparable part
of manifestos of all parties, and they are usually adopted into coalition governments (and
policy declarations, too). I argue, that it does not have to be appropriate for parties to fulfil
their concrete promises. I test this argumentat with the first hypotheses:
H1: The inconcrete promise has a bigger odds to be fulfilled into the policy declaration
of coalition.
The party type is associated with expectation of different approach to fulfillment of inconcrete
promises. I expect that the business firm party (ANO) has greater incentives (than other kinds
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of parties) to fulfil its inconcrete promises. But, ANO is at the same time the national party,
and some of national parties can be defined as falkony down to modern party types. I have
to control this – I expect that inconcrete promises of national party have greater odds
to be fulfilled than the promises of local parties (these parties, because they arose from the
community, should in the local town have bigger incentives to behave as mass party).
The odds of promises by national parties should not be bigger than the odds of the business
firm party.
H2: The inconcrete promise of business firm party (ANO) has bigger odds to be adopted into
policy declaration of coalition (than promises of local party).
H3: The inconcrete promise of other national parties has bigger odds to be adopted into
policy declaration of coalition (than promises of local party).
If the promise is salient, there is bigger odds for its fulfilment (Schermann, Ennser-Jedenastik
2012: 5). Austerity promises were present in manifestos of all parties, but, they can not
be considered as salient. It is because (as it is described later), these promises were only rarely
present in manifestos. From this point of view, I expect that austerity promises (as non-salient
promises) do neither increase nor decrease the odds of promise adoption.
H4: The austerity promise does not influence the odds of adoption into policy declaration
of coalition (than non-austerity promises).
I also test some hypotheses, that were previously tested and confirmed in studies of party
mandate. I test the influence of the consensual character of the promise (Thomson 2001,
Schermann, Ennser-Jedenastik 2012: 6) and of the strongest party (the party of a mayor –
I take this expectation from studies about the bigger impact of promises made by prime-
minister parties at the national level – for example Schermann, Ennser-Jedenastik 2013).
H5: Consensual promise has bigger odds to be adopted into policy declaration of coalition
(than non-consensual promises).
H6: Promise of mayor party has bigger odds to be adopted into policy declaration
of coalition (than promises of non-mayor party).
3.2. Data
The unit of analysis is a promise. Because I analysed testable and non-testable promises,
the dataset includes more promises than it is usual in empirical tests of fulfilling party
mandate at the national level. I analysed 1878 promises2 of 15 coalition parties in five county
2 I did all the coding. Because this is the preliminary version, I have not been able to proceed standard tests
of reliability usual in this field of study yet. Although I tryed to do the coding as good as possible, I have
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towns. I took data from entire manifestos (not just parts of them). In identification
of a promise, I followed the procedure introduced by Dolezal et al. (2012). As a promise,
I identified every noun phrase (connection of a noun and the verb) referring to an action or an
outcome (testable or non-testable) for a particulart group of recipients or an area. Every
promise was analysed just once.
The dependent variable is the adoption of the promise into the policy declaration.
As a criterion for determination if the promise was adopted or not, was a presense of the
promised action/outcome in the policy declaration of the coalition (Schermann, Ennser-
Jedenastik 2012: 9). The promise was coded as adopted (1), if it was fully or partially adopted
into the policy declaration (the promise was explicitly written down into the declaration
or there was a limited version of a promise in the declaration). Otherwise, the promise was
coded as non-adopted (0).
The promises were divided due to their „hardness“ (1, 0) and testability (1, 0). In this
procedure I followed Thomson (2001 – the definiton of hardness) – the promise was coded
as hard (1), if it contained clear support for promised policy. The promise was coded as a soft
pledge (0), if it contained verb of unlear support (for example: we will support, we will strive
for, we might etc.). The criterion for coding the testability of promise was taken from
Schermann and Ennser-Jedenastik (2012).3 The testability of promise is determined
by possibility of objective verification of the promise by a researcher/coder. The promise
is coded as non-testable (0) if the fulfilment can not be verified objectively.4 Because
the promise, which is obviously analysed, is by the authors defined as „hard and objectively
testable“, I decided to combine the two variables into one called inconcreteness (I coded the
variable in this reversed way, because my analysis is focused on adoption of inconcrete
promises). As a concrete promise (0) I coded the hard and testable promise, the other were
coded as inconrete (0).
The next tested feature was a type of promising party. I created a dummy variable – promises
were divided into three groups: ANO – the business firm party and the others (1, 0), other
national-level parties and the others (1, 0), local parties and the others (1, 0).
As austerity promises (1) I coded promises that explicitly refered to results of the economic
crisis for the town and to the necessity to solve them, reduction of costs of the town and the
magistrate, effective working of town enterprises. Because of the cost reduction, I included
the promises about earning and exhausting the exterior funds (European, Norwegian etc.) into
this category. The promises without austerity content were coded as non-austerity (0).
The promises were divided by the consensual character. The promise was coded
as consensual (1), if the similar promise was contained in manifesto of (one or mor of the)
other coalition parties and it’s adoption would mean at least partial adoption of the promise
to notice, that my way of coding could have been somehow biased, the reliability checks are needed for furhter
work with the data. 3 They differentiate hard and soft pledges, but the criterion is different from Thomson (2001), the main criterion
is the testability – so, I gave this variable different name. 4 It means for example, that the researcher would have to add own value statements, to think about what
the party actually meant with the promise, if there is more then one possible fulfillment etc.
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of the coalition partner – Mansergh, Thomson 2008). The promise was coded
as not consensual (0) if there was no other similar promise in manifestos of coalition partners.
I treated the promise as a promise of the mayor party (1), if the promise was in the manifesto
of party, which earned the post of mayor.
For dummy control variable I divided promises of parties in one town. It is because every
town probably had its specifics that influenced the results in some way.
Table 1: Summary statistics of independent variables.
0 1
Inconcrete promise 859 (46%) 1019 (54%)
Type of promising party: ANO 1642 (87%) 236 (13%)
Type of promising party: National 1632 (87 %) 246 (13%)
Type of promising party: Local 482 (26%) 1396 (74%)
Austerity promise 1643 (87%) 235 (13%)
Consensual promise 1605 (85%) 273 (15%)
Promise of mayor party 1501 (80%) 377 (20%)
3.3 Research of party mandate fulfilment at the local level
As I could find, the research of fulfilling party mandate has till now been done just
at the national level and the attention was focused mainly on established Western
democracies. However, there are not nany obstacles for descending to a lower level
of governance. When we focus on the work with manifestos, parties at the local level (at least
in big towns) mirror the behaviour of parties at national level. They create manifestos, they
bargain about their promises in coalition bargaining, and after that, they create the policy
declarations connected to coalition agreements. In this paper, content of policy declaration
is analysed for determination of values at dependent variable (adoption of promise).
The research at the local level carries (in contrast to national level) some advantages:
(1) manifestos and policy declarations are usually shorter; (2) local elections produce at one
time point a big number of bargaining situations (in the Czech Republic, there are
13 situations in one elections) with variation of independent variables.
Descend to the lower level not only enables to test hypotheses from the higher level
of governance, the bigger number of constellations of parties and the number of results for the
same parties in different towns enables to test new hypotheses about the influence of party
type.
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4. Local Elections in county towns in the Czech Republic 2014
In autumn 2014, the local elections were held in the Czech Republic. The elections brought
the change of coalitions in all 13 county towns. The big change was also the success of the
Movement ANO (ANO) in all county towns. ANO is a very young party established in 2011
by the businessman Andrej Babiš. The party got the secong place in the national elections
2013 and then took part in the national government with ČSSD and KDU-ČSL. Babiš took
the Ministry of Finance in the government. The party can be considered as the business firm
party (Hopkin, Paolucci 1999; for ANO – Olteanu, de Néve 2014).
The local leaders of ANO were able to orient themselves in the local party competition. The
party became the winner of local elections in big towns, ANO won on average 20 % of votes
in 13 county towns (winner in nine towns, sekond place in four towns). The party was
successful in following coalition negotiations, too – ANO took part in nine town coalitions.
From the other coalition parties, the other national parties were ČSSD, KSČM (mandates
in all county towns), KDU-ČSL, TOP09 and ODS. Relatively successful group of parties
consisted of local parties. The strongest local parties earned 16 % on average, in some towns,
there was more than one successful local party (three local parties in Karlovy Vary,
Pardubice, Hradec Králové).
4.1. Situation in analyzed towns
Coalition agreements were in most cases signed until the end of 2014. Creation of the policy
declaration took more time. In most towns, the creation has not been finished until half
of February (when I finished data collection). Because of that, I was able to analyze just
manifestos and policy declarations in five county towns: Hradec Králové, Liberec, České
Budějovice, Karlovy Vary and Zlín. In four of these towns, ANO got the second place
in elections and entered four coalitions (in Hradec Králové, there was a coalition without
ANO). Coalition had two members (Zlín, Liberec), three members (Karlovy Vary) or even
four members (Hradec Králové, České Budějovice). In all coalitions, the local parties took
place. Other parliamentary parties (except from ANO) entered into two coalitions.
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Table 2: Parties in coalitions, their electoral gains (votes, mandates). Local parties highlited.
County town Party Votes
(%) Share of
andates (%)5 Share on
Coalition (%)6
České Budějovice
TOP 09 6,6 8,9 14,8
ANO 20,7 26,7 44,4
KDU-ČSL 5,5 6,7 11,1
HOPB7 14,2 17,8 29,6
Karlovy Vary
KOA8 21,3 25,7 45
ANO 15,4 17,1 30
Karlovaráci9 11,9 14,3 25
Liberec
ANO 18,1 23,1 40
ZL10 25,5 30,8 60
Hradec Králové
ČSSD 11,8 13,5 22,7
HDK11 25,6 32,4 54,5
TOP 09 6,7 8,1 13,6
KH12 6,2 5,4 9,1
Zlín
ANO 17,1 19,5 30,8
STAN13 31,6 43,9 69,2
4.2. Manifestos
Manifestos of coalition parties were quite similar, obviously divided into sections containing
topics as social affairs (health, social care, housing), education (number of places
in kindergartens, repairing school buildings), topics connected to leisure time of residents
(culture, sport), infrastructure (building, transport), economics (support of employment and
business, effective functioning of town enterprises, and issues about quality of life
(environment, safety). As the table 3 shows, most manifestos included all above mentioned
topics.
The manifestos were dissimilar in the number of promises. The shortest manifesto created
ANO in České Budějovice (24 promises), the longest manifesto was written in a local party
ZL in Liberec (756 promises). The shortest manifestos on average was the manifesto of local
branches of ANO (59 promises on average) followed by other national parties (61 promises
on average), the average manifesto of local parties contained 105 promises.14
5 Number of mandates in local parliament divided by entire number of mandates in the local parliament. 6 Number of mandates in local parliament divided by the number of mandates of coalition parties. 7 The Movement Residents for Pardubice (Hnutí Občané pro Pardubice) 8 The Residents’ Alternative of Karlovy Vary (Karlovarská občanská alternativa). 9 The Residents of Karlovy Vary (Karlovaráci). 10 Change for Liberec (Změna pro Liberec). 11 The Democratic Club of Hradec Králové (Hradecký demokratický klub). 12 The Coalition for Hradec Králové (Koalice pro Hradec). 13 Mayors and Independents (Starostové a Nezávislí). 14 Without including the longest manifesto into calculation.
13
Table 3: Content of promises, number of promises, percentage of promises following austerity
topics.
Social area Education
Leisure time Infr. Ekconomics
Quality of life N
Promises about
austerity (%)
ANO (ČB) 1 1 1 1 1 - 24 3 (12,5%)
ANO (KV) 1 1 - 1 1 1 47 6 (13%)
ANO (L) - 1 - 1 1 1 57 20 (35%)
ANO (Z) - 1 1 1 1 1 108 10 (9%)
KDU (ČB) 1 1 1 - 1 1 50 3 (6%)
TOP09 (ČB) - 1 1 1 1 1 39 4 (10%)
ČSSD (HK) 1 - 1 1 1 1 70 9 (13%)
TOP 09 (HK) 1 1 1 1 1 1 87 9 (10%)
HOPB (ČB) - 1 1 1 1 1 146 8 (5,5%)
HDK (HK) 1 1 1 1 1 1 82 7 (8,5%)
KH (HK) 1 1 1 1 1 1 79 5 (6%)
KOA (KV) 1 1 1 1 1 1 169 16 (9,5%)
Karlovaráci 1 1 1 1 1 1 110 12 (11%)
ZL (L) 1 1 1 1 1 1 765 120 (16%)
STAN (Z) 1 1 1 1 1 1 45 3 (6%)
Most promises in every thematic section were connected with building or with support
of something/someone. Promises explicitly including link to necessity of saving money
or link to economic crisis (there, I involved promises about cost reduction of the town,
effective management of the town enterprises, earning and using of exterior finance sources –
in most cases EU subsidies) were present in all mmanifestos (in different percentages –
the biggest percentage, 35 %, in the manifesto of ANO in Liberec, in other manifestos, there
were smaller numbers of promises, the percentage was between 6 and 16 percent). The
number of austerity promises was generally small (120 promises out of 1878, 6 %). Explicit
emphasizing of necessity to save money (or to solve the problems of economic crisis) was
minimal in manifestos of analyzed coalition parties. It is apparent that parties gave just small
attention to this appeal. The particular content of austerity promises mostly looked like
an expected obligatory part of manifesto – parties mostly promised „balanced budget“,
„reduction of costs“, „effective management of the magistrate and town enterprises“
and „maximal exhaustion of Europe funds“).
14
5. Analysis: Ability of parties to adopt promises
Becuase of the focus on the two main topics, I do not report excact descriptives of consensual
promises and promises of mayor party and their fulfilment. Influences of these variables
on adoption of promises are just summarized and interpreted in models.
5.1. Conctrete and inconcrete promises and the adoption of them by different
party types
Most promises (54% from 1878 promises) were coded as inconcrete. Particular parties also
had more inconcrete promises than concrete ones. An average manifesto contained 60 percent
of inconcrete promises, just two manifestos (of local parties) had more concrete promises
(65% in the manifesto of HOPB, 51% in manifesto of HDK). Manifestos of ANO were qiute
inconcrete (but not the most inconrete). 63 percent of promises made by ANO were
inconcrete in comparison to national parties (73 %) and local parties (49 %). The most
inconcrete manifesto declared KDU-ČSL in České Budějovice (just 3 from 50 promises were
coded as concrete).
Table 4: Percentage of adopted promises by the party type.
Promise (party type) Total (%)
Non-adopted: N (%)
Adopted: N (%)
Promise (party type) Total
Non-adopted: N (%)
Adopted: N (%)
Inconcrete (all parties)
1019 (54,3%)
722 (70,9%)
297 (29,1%)
Concrete (all parties)
859 (45,7%)
604 (70,3%)
255 (29,7%)
Inconcrete (ANO)
149 (63,1%)
121 (81,2%)
28 (18,7%)
Concrete (ANO)
87 (36,9%) 57 (65,5%)
30 (34,5%)
Inconcrete (national)
179 (72,8%)
107 (59,8%)
72 (40,2%)
Concrete (national)
67 (27,2%) 45 (67,2%)
22 (32,8%)
Inconcrete (local)
691 (49,5%)
494 (71,5%)
197 (28,5%)
Concrete (local)
705 (50,5%)
502 (71,2%)
203 (28,8%)
There was not a difference in the ability of parties to enforce the concrete and inconcrete
promises. In both categories, parties were able to adopt 29% of promises. However, there
are differences for different party types. ANO enforced just a small number of inconcrete
promises (19% of adopted inconcrete promises). Other national parties adopted twice bigger
percentage (40% of adopted infoncrete promises), bigger percentage of adopted inconcrete
promises than ANO had also the local parties (29%). ANO was able to adopt the biggest
percentage od concrete promises as well (35 % of adopted concrete promises in comparison
to 33% at national parties and 29% at local parties). This information clearly denies
my expectation about ANO as a business firm party adopting the most inconcrete promises.
From all of its adopted promises (column precents not reported in the table), ANO enforced
adoption of 52% of its concrete promises, similarly as local parties (51%), while other
national parties were able to adopt just 23% of their concrete promises. So, in spite of the fact
15
that ANO had more inconcrete promises, it was the most successful in adoption of concrete
promises. ANO and local parties were able to adopt more more concrete than inconcrete
promises.
5.2. Austerity promises and their adoption
As mentioned above, austerity topics were a part of manifestos of all coalition parties, but the
percentage of them was very small. We can say that the austerity topics were unimportant
in this party competition. Therefore I was interested in whether the topic was important
in adoption of these promises (I expected that the austerity topics were unimportant).
Austerity topics were enforced into policy declarations, but not largely. Every party was able
to adopt some of its austerity promises (at least one). Success was at different levels (from
15 % of adopted austerity promises in case of ANO in Liberec to 80% at KH in Hradec
Králové – but mention that these 80 % mean 4 adopted promises out of 5). The adoption
of austerity promises by parties is showed in the table 5.
Table 5: Number and percentage of austerity promises and their adoption for promising
parties.
ANO (ČB)
ANO (KV)
ANO (L)
ANO (Z)
KDU (ČB)
TOP09 (ČB)
ČSSD (HK)
TOP 09 (HK)
HOPB (ČB)
HDK (HK)
KH (HK)
KOA (KV) Karl. ZL (L)
STAN (Z)
Austerity promises (%)
3 (13%)
6 (13%)
20 (35%)
10 (9%) 3 (6%)
4 (10%)
9 (13%) 9 (10%) 8 (6%) 7 (9%) 5 (6%)
16 (10%)
12 (11%)
120 (16%)
3 (6%)
Adopted (%)
2 (67%)
3 (50%)
3 (15%)
5 (50%)
1 (33%)
1 (25%)
3 (33%) 4 (44%)
2 (25%)
5 (71%)
4 (80%)
6 (38%)
5 (42%)
16 (13%)
2 (67%)
5.3. Statistical Analysis
At first, I proceeded the binary logistic regression for particular party types. Since the models
were estimated for different data, the exact values can not be compared between the party
types. But it is possible to make comparisons of directions of the relationship between
independent and the dependent variables. The influence is negative in all three models
for the austerity topics. The positive direction is for the consensual promises in all models.
But, in case of inconcreteness, the direction of influence is different for different party types.
The direction is negative for ANO (it means that for ANO, inconcrete promises had smaller
odds to be adopted than concrete promises), and positive for other national parties (for these
parties, inconcrete promises had bigger odds to be fulfilled), for local party, there is not an
apparent influence.
16
Model 1-3: Binary logistic regression for particular party types.
1. ANO 2. National 3. Local
B (s.e.) Odds ratio
B (s.e.) Odds ratio
B (s.e.) Odds ratio
Inconcrete -.77 (.36) .46 .16 (.32) 1.18 0 (.13) 1
Austerity -.18 (.49) .83 -.59 (.49) 0.56 -1.17 (.20) .84
Consensual 2.81 (.43) 16.57 1.65 (.31) 5.21 2.13 (.19) 8.39
Mayor party 0 (.39) 1 0 1 0.68 (.15) 1.97
Const. -1.27 (.31) .28 -1.05 (.29)
0.35 -1.35 (.10) .26
N 236 246 1396
Log Likelihood
-102.2 -147.9 -743.9
McFadden Pseudo-R2
.223 .096 .111
Model 4 and 5 were estimated for all promises of all party types. The fourth model was
estimated with basic variables and their interactions, the second model was estimated with
control dummy variables (particular towns). Adding the control dummy variables moderately
increased the Log likelihood of the model. The interpretation of the influence of independent
variables (and confirmation/rejection of hypotheses) comes from coefficients of the fifth
model. I interpret the odds ratios of promise fulfilment (that is the odds of promise adoption
against the odds of failure to adopt the promise).
Model 4 and 5: Binary logistic regression.
4. 5. B (s.e.) Odds
ratio B (s.e.) Odds
ratio Inconcrete 0 (.13) 1 -.02 (.13) .98 Austerity -.28 (.18) 0,76 -.13 (.18) .88 ANO 0 (.27) 1 -.48 (.29) .61 National 0.1 (.30) 1,1 -.59 (.32) .55 ANO*Inconcrete -.78 (.36) 0,46 -.71 (.36) .49 National*Inconcrete .15 (.36) 1,17 .23 (.35) 1.26 Consensual 2.1 (.15) 8,17 1.81 (.16) 6.11 Mayor party .58 (.14) 1,79 -.18 (.16) 0.83 České Budějovice - -.22 (.28) .8 Hradec Králové - .12 (.28) 1.13 Karlovy Vary - .33 (.25) 1.38 Liberec - -1.19 (.27) 0.3 Const. -1.31 (.10) 0,27 -.6 (.26) 0.55 N 1878 1878 Log Likelihood -998.5 -960.6 McFadden Pseudo-R2 0.122 0.155
17
The odds ratio of adoption promise does not increase with inconcreteness of the promise
(o. r = .98). I can reject the first hypothesis (H1: The inconcrete promise has a bigger odds
to be fulfilled into the policy declaration of coalition.). We can not say that parties (in general)
enforce the inconcrete promises more likely than the concrete ones.
The reference variable for checking the second and the third hypothesis is the promise of local
party. As we know from descriptives, local parties were able to enforce nearly the same
percentage of its concrete and inconcrete promises. I assume in H2 and H3 that the inconcrete
promise of ANO and of other national parties has bigger odds to be adopted into policy
declaration of coalition than promises of local party. In comparison to local parties, the odds
ratio of adoption inconcrete promises for ANO decreased (o. r. = .49 – the odds of inconcrete
promise of ANO to be adopted was 51% smaller than promises of local parties). The different
scenario can be seen in other national parties (o. r. = 1.26). The odds of inconcrete promise by
national party is 26% bigeer than for promises of local parties. So, the hypothesis 2 (H2: The
inconcrete promise of business firm party (ANO) has bigger odds to be adopted into policy
declaration of coalition (than promises of local party) must be rejected, but the hypothesis 3
is maintained for my data (H3: The inconcrete promise of other national parties has bigger
odds to be adopted into policy declaration of coalition (than promises of local party).
Austerity promises slightly decrease the odds of fulfilment (o. r. = .88 – that means, the odds
of fulfilment of austerity promise is 22% smaller than of other promises). So, the hypothesis
4 (H4: The austerity promise does not influence the odds of adoption into policy declaration
of coalition (than non-austerity promises) must be rejected. Finally I have to focus attention
to the „usual“ variables (consensual promise, mayor party promise). Consensual promise
variable works as it should work. The value of odds ratio (6.11) means that consensual
promise increases the odds of fulfilment six times. Hypothesis 5 can be maintained
(H5: Consensual promise has bigger odds to be adopted into policy declaration of coalition
(than non-consensual promises). On the other hand, the promise of mayor party does
not increase the odds of promise adoption (o. r. = .83, this feature of the promise slightly
decreases the odds of promise adoption). The hypothesis 6 (H6: Promise of mayor party
has bigger odds to be adopted into policy declaration of coalition (than promises of non-
mayor party) must be rejected.
6. Discussion
The paper was focused on testing some hypotheses following the party mandate model at new
level of governance – the local level. In the theoretical chapters, the party mandate model, its
basic assumptions and (empirically tested) implications were presented. In this part,
I presented the critics of the assumptions and suggested a small innovation – focus
on concrete and inconcrete promises as well and their adoption into policy declaration of the
coalition (in contrast to measuring real fulfilment). I argued that parties (generally) do not
need to strive for mandate fulfilment. In that case, parties should enforce rather adoption
of inconcrete promises that are not clearly connected to electoral accountability). I tested the
hypotheses that promises have greater odds to be adopted if they are inconcrete. I assumed
18
that bigger incentives not to fulfil the mandate are there for new party types, particularly
the firm business party. I determined ANO (its local branches) as firm business party and I
connected with it the main hypothesis of the paper (bigger odds of inconcrete promise
of ANO to be adopted in comparison to promises of local parties). I also tested this hypothesis
for other national parties. The analysis was estimated for promises of coalition parties in five
Czech county towns. Hypotheses were maintained just partially. I found that inconcreteness
of the promise does not influence the odds of adoption. For inconcrete promises of ANO, the
influence was even opposite than expected (smaller odds of adoption). The hypothesis was
maintained just for inconcrete promises of other national parties.
Additional hypotheses were variations for usually tesed independent variables in study
of party mandate model. The tests showed that austerity promises even decreased the odds
of adoption(I expected no influence of this variable). My explanation comes from previously
confirmed hypothesis about influence of salient promise – promise salient for party,
has bigger odds of adoption (Schermann and Ennser-Jedenastik 2012). Because austerity
topics were present in manifestos only rarely, I assume that this topic was not important
or salient for government parties. The weak importance of austerity topics can be explained
by abatement of economic crisis (the analyzed elections were held in 2014) or by the fact that
at the local level, parties must promise investments, dividing money and care much more than
at national level. On the other hand, I have to notice the way of coding the austerity promise –
from the procedure, I can not conclude that all non-austerity promises were more salient than
austerity promises. So, confirmation of my explanation by saliency should be investigated
with more precise thinking about saliency in local level of governance.
The hypothesis about consensual promises was the less problematic and was maintained
by my data. The last hypothesis – odds of promises created by mayor party has bigger odds
of adoption – was not maintained. This feature of promise decreased the odds of adoption
in my data.
In the discussion part, I would like to discuss possible reasons for necessity of rejection
my hypotheses about inconcreteness of the promise. The fact that the hypothesis was
maintained only for other national parties (and not for business party) should lead
to additional re-thinking of the findings. ANO fulfils the expectation that parties want to
adopt rather concrete promises. It is possible that ANO reproduces the normative behaviour,
which is expected by party mandate model. If we keep the features of business firm party, the
above mentioned fact can mean that other party types (national parties) had bigger incentives
not to fulfil the mandate. There are some elements of cartel parties within national parties
(state financing, for example), but some of them (KDU-ČSL) maintain their mass character.
So, it is not surprising that the hypothesis was maintained for these parties. But, the question,
why that was not relevant for ANO, stays open.
I offer three notes for possible additional invetigations:
(1) ANO is a new player in local politics, leaders of its local branches were inexperienced
in principles of coalition negotiation and were not able to recognize the strategy as fruitful,
or the strategy is not fuitful (from some reasons I did not find) for this party.
19
(2) Policy declaration does not mean the same as real fulfilment. Although policy declaration
is a good indicator for estimating future government policy, it does not have to be a good
indicator, if we include inconcrete promises, and if we look at some party types. ANO
is a party, which can succesfully use political marketing in campaigning. The policy
declaration of coalition can be by this a party used as the other possible tool
for communication with voters. The party oftenly offered clear promises about the outcome.
Ability to adopt these recognizable promises into a document, which can be used for next
advertisment, enables to continue in the campaigning. Adoption of promise into the policy
declaration in the same time does not need the same striving for fulfilment of the promise into
reality. It is possible that the other parties will be able to enforce more concrete promises into
reality. But, this expectation needs future tests.
(3) It is possible that inconcreteness of the promise is not a good criterion for assessing
intentions of parties. It is possible that parties do not ditinguish between concrete
and inconcrete promises, or that they enforce the inconcrete promises into the policy
declaration with different motivations than just the unwillingness to fulfil mandate. If we take
the argumentation of Szűcs and Pál 2012 back into thinking, the inconcrete promises can have
different roles in party strategies, and the roles can be different for different parties (party
types). Rethinking the role of inconcrete promises should include the designing
the measurement/coding of intentions of parties inplemented into inconcrete promises.
20
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„Výběr u priorit Hnutí Ano pro komunální volby.“ Manifesto of ANO in České Budějovice,
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„Hlavní programové cíle KDU-ČSL v komunálních volbách ve městě České Budějovice.“
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„Pro ideální Budějovice.“ Manifesto of TOP 09 in České Budějovice, 2014.
22
„Program HDK.“ Manifesto of Hradecký demokratický klub in Hradec Králové, 2014.
„Volební program.“ Manifesto of Koalice pro Hradec in Hradec Králové, 2014.
„Program.“ Manifesto of TOP 09 in Hradec Králové, 2014.
„Volební program ČSSD pro volby do Zastupitelstva Statutárního města Hradec Králové
2014.“ Manifesto of ČSSD in Hradec Králové, 2014.
„Program.“ Manifesto of Karlovaráci in Karlovy Vary, 2014.
„Naše cíle a program.“ Manifesto of Karlovarská občanská alternativa in Karlovy Vary, 2014.
„Program Hnutí ANO do podzimních komunálních voleb.“ Manifesto of ANO in Karlovy
Vary, 2014.
„Program Hnutí ANO do podzimních komunálních voleb.“ Manifesto of ANO in Liberec,
2014.
„Plán pro Liberec.“ Manifesto of Změna pro Liberec in Liberec, 2014.
„Program Hnutí ANO do podzimních komunálních voleb.“ Manifesto of ANO in Zlín, 2014.
„VOLEBNÍ PROGRAM 2014 – 2018.“ Manifesto of Starostové a Nezávislí in Zlín, 2014.
Policy declarations of town coalitions:
„Společné programové prohlášení koaličních stran a hnutí ANO, HOPB, TOP 09, KDU-ČSL
v Českých Budějovicích pro volební období 2014-2015.“ Policy declaration in České
Budějovice, 2015.
„PROGRAMOVÉ PROHLÁŠENÍ KOALIČNÍCH STRAN ZASTOUPENÝCH V RADĚ
MĚSTA HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ NA LÉTA 2014 AŢ 2015.“ Policy declaration in Hradec
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„Programové prohlášení koaličních partnerů ve městě Karlovy Vary pro volební období 2014
– 2018.“ Policy declaration in Karlovy Vary, 2015.
„Programové prohlášení koaličních stran Změna pro Liberec a ANO 2014 – 2018.“ Policy
declaration in Liberec, 2015.
„PROGRAMOVÉ PROHLÁŠENÍ RADY MĚSTA ZLÍNA.“ Policy declaration in Zlín, 2015.