Globalization and Promissory Democracy

This paper analyzes the effect of economic globalization on promissory democracy. We argue that globalization reduces governing parties' ability to keep their campaign promises. International economic integration increases uncertainty about the feasibility of promises, imposes legal constraints in the form of international commitments that may impede promise keeping in unexpected ways, and empowers market actors that lobby governments when promises threaten their interests. We test the empirical implications of our theory with a mixed-methods approach that combines a large-n quantitative comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with a typical case study to trace the underlying causal mechanisms of the theory. The findings indicate that international economic integration exerts a large negative effect on the likelihood of pledge fulfillment in a broad range of contexts and that the hypothesized mechanisms are clearly observable in the detailed case study. These findings have important implications for democratic representation in a globalized world.