This chapter analyzes how economic globalization constrains parties’ ability to keep their campaign promises once in government. Drawing on large-n data across advanced democracies, we show that globalization – through legal commitments, market discipline, and economic uncertainty – reduces the likelihood that parties fulfill their pledges. We construct a new dataset linking campaign promises with fulfillment outcomes and integrate measures of international legal obligations, exposure to global markets, and volatility. We find that globalization undermines promise keeping particularly for left-wing parties, whose policy agendas often conflict with global market pressures. Importantly, these effects are not mitigated by changes in the number or type of promises parties make. The findings provide empirical support for the argument that globalization erodes core mechanisms of promissory representation by narrowing the space for responsive policymaking. This chapter lays the empirical groundwork for the case study in Chapter 5 and the voting behavior analysis in Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 investigates how globalization pressures shape parties’ ideological positioning, which underpins their campaign promises. The chapter focuses on whether parties adapt their stances symmetrically across the ideological spectrum or face electoral constraints when doing so. It argues that mainstream parties – particularly on the left – are more constrained in shifting rightward than vice versa. To explore this, the chapter combines experimental and observational evidence, drawing on a survey experiment and a large-n dataset of party positions in thirty-one liberal democracies from 1970 to 2020. Although globalization can incentivize parties to recalibrate their economic and cultural positions, the chapter shows that electoral incentives mediate how and where these shifts occur. Together, the findings highlight the complex interplay between international economic pressures and domestic political competition, revealing how ideological recalibration can be both strategic and constrained by voter expectations.

This chapter investigates the electoral consequences of broken promises in the context of globalization. Combining large-n observational data with a survey experiment and a in-depth case study of French voters, it demonstrates that voters do punish governing parties for failing to fulfill campaign pledges, and this punishment intensifies in more globalized environments. Contrary to claims that globalization might provide excuses for unfulfilled promises, the findings suggest that globalization amplifies voters’ concerns about competence and follow-through. As ideological differences between parties shrink and governing space contracts, pledge fulfillment becomes a key signal of competence, heightening electoral costs for unkept promises.

Chapter 1 introduces the core question of the book: how does globalization affect parties’ ability to keep campaign promises and how do they adapt in response? It argues that globalization imposes structural constraints on policymaking that challenge the traditional model of promissory representation, in which parties make pledges and are held accountable for their fulfillment. The chapter presents a theoretical framework linking international economic integration to promise-breaking and outlines the mechanisms through which parties strategically adapt: by modifying the clarity and content of their promises and increasingly using populist or ambiguous rhetoric. It introduces the book’s multimethod approach, combining cross-national pledge data, case studies, and experimental evidence. The chapter also situates the argument in the broader literature on democratic representation, highlighting both the persistence of voter expectations for accountability and the evolving pressures parties face in fulfilling them. This sets the stage for the book’s empirical analyses of how promise-breaking, ideological repositioning, populist framing, and strategic ambiguity reflect broader efforts by political parties to remain electorally competitive while navigating a more constrained and interdependent policy environment.

Chapter 10 examines how ambiguity in campaign promises affects electoral accountability. Building on the previous chapter’s findings that political parties often employ vague language to manage constraints, this chapter evaluates whether such ambiguity allows parties to avoid punishment when pledges are unfulfilled. Drawing on a combination of original survey experiments and cross-national observational data, the analysis shows that voters are generally less likely to punish broken promises when they were made ambiguously. Ambiguity thus serves as a strategic tool that helps parties obscure responsibility and minimize electoral costs, highlighting the trade-off between strategic communication and democratic responsiveness.

This chapter examines how conservative parties strategically adapt their political appeals in response to the constraints imposed by globalization. Confronted with the challenge of reconciling their long-standing commitments to market liberalism with rising voter demands for protection and control, these parties increasingly adopt populist rhetoric to reshape the terms of political competition. Rather than abandoning core economic positions, conservative parties shift their emphasis to anti-elite, nationalist, and antiglobalist themes, recasting political debates around identity, sovereignty, and cultural belonging. These rhetorical strategies allow them to deflect attention from unpopular policy continuities and channel voter discontent away from economic grievances and toward external threats or internal scapegoats. The chapter argues that this populist turn reflects a calculated political adaptation rather than ideological transformation. It highlights how globalization not only reshapes the policy space available to democratic governments but also incentivizes new forms of narrative construction and voter persuasion, particularly among mainstream parties seeking to preserve broad electoral coalitions.