1

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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22

„Program HDK.“ Manifesto of Hradecký demokratický klub in Hradec Králové, 2014.

„Volební program.“ Manifesto of Koalice pro Hradec in Hradec Králové, 2014.

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„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.

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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.

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„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.