From party manifesto to governmental policy performance: The pilot case of

Samo KROPIVNIK and Simona KUSTEC LIPICER

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences

Authors’ contacts: [email protected]; [email protected]

Paper prepared the for the XXV Convegno Società Italiana di Scienza Politica SISP, Università degli Studi di Palermo – Dipartimento di Studi su Politica, Diritto e Società “Gaetano Mosca”, Palermo, 8 - 10 September 2011

This is a draft. Please do not quote without permission from the authors.

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Abstract: This article draws on the assumption that certain congruence exists between the content of parties’ electoral policy platforms and of the succeeding government’s policy performance and it shall be considered an important indicator of the overall quality of democracy. Therefore, we analyse the association between the policy contents in parties’ electoral programmes and those in key governmental policy documents, i.e. coalition agreements, government sessions’ agenda and weekly press releases, utilising the MARPOR or Manifesto Research on Political Representation (ex CMP, MPG) approach. Slovenia is used as a pilot study to test the application of the original MARPOR methodology to data on governmental policy performance.

I. Research Topic

Debate focuses on the relation between pre- and post-electoral policy contents based on the understanding of a tight mutual congruence between pre- and post-electoral processes especially their policy content. This paper draws on the idea of election-cycle or election-life of policy issues driven by an understanding of the importance of election-specific policy concerns and their role in the post-election governmental work.1 In other words, once in government, election promises play the important role, they bind parties to their policies (Rose, 1984; Budge and Hofferbert, 1990, 1993; King et. al., 1993; Klingemann, Hofferbert and Budge, 1994; Budge et al., 2001; McDonald and Budge, 2005; Laver, 1998).

When speaking about the pre- and post-electoral phenomena in general, we need to be aware that usually two dominant sets of factors can be exposed (Budge 2009): 1) the impact of partisanship, e.g. the enduring predispositions to vote for a party (e.g. ideology or founded cleavage)2 and/or 2) the impact of the wider pre-electoral ‘offers’ made to voters and to the society in general;

1 For the purposes of the paper, electoral cycle is defined on the basis of electoral cycle theory, also known as a political cycle (see Alesina, Roubini, Cohen, 1997), asserting that support for government parties is dependent on the proportion of an inter-election interval that has passed since the last national election (for example see van der Eijk, 2006). 2 See Franklin et al. (1992) on the decline of this.

2 e.g. broader features of the election campaign (the events, issues and candidates) that are supposed to first have a decisive influence on the nature of the elections and later to serve as a commitment to the candidates’ post- electoral performance. If the first scenario relies mainly on the concept of mutual trust and unconditional support between voters and candidates, the second scenario can be much more ‘evidence-based’, founded on expectations that parties would pursue and fulfil their pre-election commitments afterwards.

In this paper we follow the logic of the second scenario, in that we start from the predisposition that characteristics of pre-electoral processes have or are assumed to have had some influence on the performance of parties also after elections. This indicates that we should be equally interested in both the pre- as well as post-election performance of candidates according to selected dimensions. In the paper, this dimension is in the context of the election cycle, specifically on the potential congruence between candidates’ attitudes toward pre- and post-election policy issues.

From a theoretical perspective, classical spatial, salience, issue voting, policy preferences and mandate theories and concepts explain the importance of the policy in the context of election cycles (see Downs, 1957; Stokes, 1963; Budge et al., eds. 1987; Budge and Hofferbert, 1990; Laver, 1998; Klingemann et al., 2001 etc.). Within these frameworks, an almost endless number of different studies dealing with the role of policies in one or another period of the electoral cycle have been conducted, but not that many of them combine both the before and after periods. Among studies that combine both periods, most of them look into the patterns and strength of correlation between policy contents in the two periods. These studies use different types of data for the two periods, such as party manifesto and government spending data (like Klingeman et al., 1994) or data about coalition building (like Müller, Strøm, 1999).

Three distinct theoretical approaches of the previously described ‘correlation’ attempts have been recognised in Petry’s and Collette’s review (2009). The authors classified them as: a) normative, b) mandate or c) constructivist, differentiating them according to their understanding of how policy commitments affect the post-electoral period and how post-electoral performance can be measured in relation to pre-electoral pledges. In the case of normative and constructivist approach, commitments and performance are more or less recognised through moral statements, expert opinion and frequently also intuition, following qualitative-oriented methodology, while the

3 rational-choice oriented mandate theory model builds on the connection between the party’s pre-electoral programme and government expenditure trends (Budge and Hofferbert, 1990; King et. al., 1993; Klingemann et al., 1994).3 Regarding the latter, mandate effect was added later (King et. al., 1993; Gibbons, 2004), while the institutional effects (Laver and Shapsle, 1996; McDonald et al., 1999; Thome, 1999) and process dimensions of coalition building (Strøm, 1990; Lupia and Strøm, 1995; Merlo, 1997; Müller, Strøm 1999; Martin and Stevenson, 2001) that predetermine the future governmental performance are still underestimated. In this regard, special consideration should be devoted to post-electoral policy contents as an independent dimension that has so far proven to have an important impact on the process of coalition building and is at the same time in a tight correlation with the contextual characteristics of pre-electoral policy goals and pledges (Neumann and Morgenstern, 1953; Axelrod 1970; De Swaan 1973; Laver and Schofield, 1990, 1998).

Criticism can be connected to the exposed approaches, mostly all related to the problems of either validity or reliability of the measurement. Summing up Petry’s and Collette’s (2009) extensive review of 18 journal articles and book chapters reporting the extent to which election promises have been fulfilled in North America and Europe, which were published in English and French over the past 40 years, most studies either have conceptual weaknesses (like the lack of providing explicit definitions of terms or of units of analysis) or major methodological weaknesses (e.g. no operational definitions or documentation, imperfect research design). Nevertheless, though the authors employ different approaches, with an unequal balance of strengths and weaknesses, between at least 45% and maximum 85% rate of fulfilment of political pre-electoral policy preferences in post-electoral governmental performance can be identified with the impressively high mean value of 67% and modest standard deviation of 10.3 percentage points.

Regardless of the approach, all those research pieces draw on the assumption that a high level of congruence between the content of parties’ electoral policy platforms and performance of the succeeding government’s policy platforms can be expected from substantial reasons. In addition, drawing on evidence, it is not possible to deny that there is remarkable congruence between pre- and post-electoral policy

3 Three of the most important criticisms that have been made of their methods (Gibbons, 2004) is that they should have controlled long-term expenditure trends (King et. al., 1993); that the proportion of variance explained is a poor measure of policy implementation (Thome, 1999), and that additional control variables need to be added to their mandate equation (Thome, 1999).

4 contents. However, considering the existing critics, it seems that more elementary and standardised studies are necessary to achieve a better insight and to enable comparability.

In contrast with the existing, prevailingly casual type of attempts made to understand correlation between pre- and post-electoral contents, we decided to take a step back in this research and try to do the following: a) Describe issues disclosed by parties’ pre- and post-electoral performance, meaning that we do not take the pre- and post-electoral issues’ cause-and- effect relation as granted, but we want to explore to what extent the structure of policy commitments formulated in the pre-election campaign relates (not correlates) to the structure of governmental work later; b) Employ elementary (mostly not problematic or criticised) part of the MARPOR-coding methodology with regard to the above mentioned aims.

Therefore the overall motivation of the paper is to present and demonstrate a new data-gathering and exploring approach to the analysis of the structure of pre- and post-electoral policy contents. For this purpose we present the findings of the pilot-case study we did for Slovenia. We expect the paper will demonstrate the usefulness of this method for the analysis of congruence of policy content and government policy responsiveness.

The details and pilot study results are presented later in the paper.

II. Research framework

As already indicated, in this paper we share the same assumption of the congruence of pre- and post-electoral issues as the ones described above, but most importantly, we depart in its operationalization. With the aim to provide a conceptually clearer and methodologically firmer research design, we reconsider the relation between pre- and post-electoral policy contents. We did not focus on the fulfilment of electoral pledges, even though it is the most tempting, strongest and most evident relation between pre- and post- electoral policy contents, but instead paid attention to a more broadly defined long-term consistency in policy contents in pre- and post-electoral cycles. From a theoretical point of view, the fulfilment of electoral pledges represents a significant, but specific and narrowly focused aspect of the expected long- term congruence between pre- and post-electoral policy contents. From a methodological point of view, we have avoided the concept of electoral

5 pledges, since there is no reliable or valid way to universally establish what an electoral promise is. The same is true for the notion of the fulfilment of given promises. In our point of view, focusing on the fulfilment of electoral promises as the only aspect of association between pre- and post-electoral policy content conceptually narrows down the research and produces hard-to- replicate and hard-to-compare results.

To study broadly defined long-term congruence between pre- and post- electoral policy contents, we focus on:

1. The pre-electoral site: The structure of policy preferences expressed in pre-electoral manifestos; and 2. The post-electoral site: The structure of policy outputs extracted from post-electoral governmental performance, recorded in coalition agreements, government sessions’ agenda and weekly press releases published by the government; 3. The pilot (albeit limited in scope) case study of Slovenia: We analyse manifestos and coalition agreements from Slovenian national parliamentary elections in 2004 and 2008, plus government sessions’ agenda and weekly press releases in the year 2008, when two different coalition governments were in office.

Manifestos have been chosen since they can be considered the most important written source reflecting candidates’ policy preferences (see Robertson, 1976; Budge et al., 1987; Ware, 1996). Klingemann (1994) sees their relevance in the fact that election programmes assess the importance of current political problems, specify the party’s position on them and inform the electorate about the course of action the competing political party will pursue when elected. In addition, party electoral manifestos have been systematically collected and coded for decades and the data is available. Moreover, the coding methodology in MARPOR (previously MRP and CMP; Klingemann, Hoffenbert, Budge, Barra, Volkens, et al.) is in complete agreement with our research problem. Each document is characterised according to more than a hundred codes that can be merged in seven policy domains, namely External Relations, Freedom and Democracy, Political System, Economy, Welfare and Quality of Life, Fabric of Society and Social Groups. Technically, each quasi sentence is recognised as a very precise policy position and simultaneously as part of one of seven policy domains. Policy domains are mutually exclusive and exhaustive; therefore, they can serve as the operationalization of broadly defined policy content that we are interested in. The logic is straightforward: The more sentences in the manifesto that resemble the domain, the more the

6 party’s policy content will be characterised by the domain. It is the structure of manifestos that matters and represents pre-electoral policy content.

From a methodological point of view, the validity of codes is constantly checked. The codes are standardised and universally used, while the coders are well prepared and the reliability of their coding is tested. Therefore, there is no reason whatsoever to question the quality of the data. Moreover, there is no argument against using the same procedures to determine the structure of policy outputs as well.

Among key governmental documents that could be used to determine the structure of post-electoral policy output, the following have been chosen:

1. Coalition Agreement: A fundamental document created immediately after elections, which determines governmental policy platform in a similar way as manifestos determine parties’ policy platforms; 2. Government Sessions’ Agenda; Determined for each government session in the most standardised and plain manner throughout the government’s term. 3. Government Weekly Press Releases: Issued after each parliamentary session throughout the government’s term, containing a range of “by government only” selected positions and comments regarding the sessions that are communicated to the wider public.

To briefly summarise the research topic and framework, the main aims of the paper are: a) To address the relationship between political discourse and political action as far as they can both be identified from policy contents in pre- and post- electoral cycles; b) To test a new approach in exploring pre- and post-electoral policy preferences by following and extending the generally accepted sections of the already established international comparative coding methodology.

In doing so, emphasis is placed on the analysis of association between the structure of policy preferences expressed in pre-electoral manifestos and the structure of policy outputs extracted from post-electoral coalition agreements, government sessions’ agenda and weekly press releases in Slovenia in 2008.

III. The data

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Electoral programmes, prepared by Slovenian political parties for the 2004 and 2008 national parliamentary elections are included in the analyses. All the documents were voluntarily submitted by political parties in 20104. In total, we discuss 21 programmes split between two elections (11 for 2004 and 10 for the 2008 elections). The political parties declared some of the analysed documents (seven in each sub-sample) composed or used especially for the elections (electoral programmes); others are long-term party programmes used in an unchanged format to compete for votes (party programmes)5. Due to incomplete responses, the sample of documents represents a non-random convenient sample and we cannot use it to draw conclusions about the population. On the other hand, the sample consists of all parliamentary6 parties’ programmes and a good part of non-parliamentary7 parties’ programmes, which makes it a supreme purposive sample. Additionally, all the documents are considered the best presentation of party positions by the parties themselves, thus resolving the data-validity question. A reasonable symmetry exists in the sample characteristics as well. The 2004 sample has seven parliamentary party programmes and the 2008 sample has eight. The sample includes two strong parties (high share of votes and seats won) and three or four parties that won no seats (the rest won moderately). There are four coalition members in the 2004 and three in the 2008 samples, meaning that electoral programmes for all coalition members for both periods are included.

On the post-electoral site, two of the most important post-election documents are included, namely the coalition agreements for 2004 and 2008. For the year 2008, composed of the last ten months of the SDS coalition led by Prime Minister Janez Janša and the first two months of SD coalition led by Prime Minister Borut Pahor, 82 (73 + 9) governmental sessions’ agenda (http://www.vlada.si/si/delo_vlade/seje_vlade/dnevni_redi/; June 2011) and 61 (53 + 8) press releases (http://www.vlada.si/si/delo_vlade/seje_vlade/ sporocila_za_javnost/; June 2011) have been obtained from the government web platform. After considering their length, 52 governmental sessions’

4 With the main aim of being analysed as a part of an on-going basic research project entitled “Pre-election campaign and democratic evolution of state and society”, conducted by the research team at the Centre for Political Science Research at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, financed by the Slovenian Research Agency (1/5/2009– 30/4/2012). 5 We will not distinguish between these two formats and use the same terms (programme, document) for both. Parties that officially competed by their general programmes claimed that they used them as electoral programmes at the same time. 6 Parties that won seats in parliament either at previous elections or at the elections in question (or both, as most parliamentary parties did). 7 Parties that did not hold or win any seats in the period under investigation.

8 agenda (46 + 6) and 57 (49 + 8) press releases are included, with the number of quasi sentences above 10, and on average between around 40 and 60.

IV. The Analyses

First we coded all selected documents according to MARPOR methodology. Data on parliamentary parties’ manifestos are already included in the MARPOR database, while non-parliamentary parties’ manifestos, coalition agreements, governmental sessions’ agenda and press releases for now remain at the research group’s disposal only. Governmental sessions’ agenda as well as press releases have been merged according to the two government terms and considered as a single document for each term. The effect of the merger has been controlled through calculating the mean structure of the agenda or press release units and the results confirm that the length of the document has no effect: the structure is the same if we take the composition of each document separately and calculate the mean values or if we merge the documents and then calculate the structure.

According to the research topic and frame, analyses have to provide pieces of information required to comprehend at least the following relations, i.e. the overall level of agreement in structure and the significant similarities and dissimilarities regarding the structure policy domains share:

1. Relation between the leading party manifesto structure and the following coalition agreement structure; 2. Relation between the coalition agreement structure and coalition parties’ manifestos’ structures; 3. Relation between the coalition agreement structure and governmental sessions’ agenda structures; 4. Relation between the coalition agreement structure and governmental press releases structures.

It is our strong belief, confirmed by experience that these relations between documents defined according to the shares of the seven policy domains, can be best assessed drawing on:

1. Profiles, i.e. line graphs representing shares of domains in documents for visual inspection and comparison between documents; 2. Euclidean distances between documents as more objective numerical measures of disagreement between documents (simultaneously taking

9 all seven policy domains into account), expressed in a symmetric matrix as a coefficient of dissimilarity;8 3. Galaxies, i.e. graphical formats, designed by authors for the purpose of visual comparisons between a single chosen document and a large number of other documents. Galaxies graphically present Euclidean distances between the central document (the Sun) and all other documents (planets).

Considering all research determinants together, the overall research design can be characterised as a mixture of exploratory and descriptive elements with a clear absence of any explanatory or cause-effect-driven ambitions.

In the following section, results of the analyses are reported and interpreted for two separate governments, although in 2008 the SD-led coalition was in office for less than two months and therefore there are just a few government sessions’ agenda and press releases included in the analyses.

VI. The results

VI. A. 2004 – 2008 SDS Coalition

In 2004, after 12 years of LDS dominance, SDS won the national parliamentary elections and established a coalition with NSi, SLS and DeSUS. The coalition was led by Prime Minister Janez Janša9.

8 For definition, formula and use in various multivariate methods see e.g. Johnson & Wichern, 1992. 9 Proportional electoral system has been used since 1990, when Slovenia was recognised as an independent state. So far, we have had nine different governments: 1) in the period 16/5/1990–14/5/1992 coalition DEMOS constituted of the following political parties SDZ, SDZS, SKD, SKZ, SOS and ZS (led by Lojze Peterle, SKD); 2) in the period 14/5/1992– 25/1/1993 coalition of SDS, DS, ZS, LDS, ZLSD and SSS (led by Janez Drnovšek, LDS); 3) in the period 25/1/1993–27/2/1997 originally the coalition of LDS, SKD, ZLSD and SDSS (led by Janez Drnovšek, LDS); SDSS from coalition in 1994, and ZLSD in 1996; 4) in the period 27/2/1997–7/6/2000 coalition of LDS, SLS and DESUS (led by Janez Drnovšek, LDS); 5) in the period 7/6/2000–30/11/2000 coalition of SDS and SLS+SKD (led by Andrej Bajuk, SLS+SKD); 6) and 7) in the period 30/11/2000–3/12/2004 coalition of LDS, ZLSD, SLS and DESUS (led by Janez Drnovšek, LDS (in the period 30/11/2000–19/12/2002) who was elected as president of the republic in 2002; and by Anton Rop, LDS in the period 19/12/2002–3/12/2004); 8) in the period 9/11/2004–21/11/2008 coalition of SDS, NSI, SLS and DESUS (led by Janez Janša, SDS); 9) in the period beginning 21/11/2008 with a coalition of SD (re-named from ZLSD), , DESUS, LDS (led by Borut Pahor, SD).

10 GRAPH 1: Profiles of SDS Manifesto and Coalition Agreement in 2004

The green line represents the 2004 winning party manifesto and the black line post-electoral coalition agreement. Policy domains are depicted on the horizontal axis and their share in the document (measured in %) on the vertical axis. The higher the line, the more important the domain is. The closer the lines are, the higher the level of agreement between documents. The further apart the lines run at a certain domain, the more different the documents are regarding the domain. As can be seen from Picture 1, the level of overall agreement between the winning party (SDS) manifesto and the following coalition agreement is high. The structure of both documents is practically the same regarding five policy domains (external relations, freedom and democracy, welfare and quality of life, fabric of society and social groups) but they depart slightly at the political system and more significantly (but still far from extremely) at economy. Therefore, the 2004 coalition agreement may be characterised as almost resembling the winning party’s manifesto structure, but devoting slightly less attention to the political system and more attention to economy.

GRAPH 2: Profiles of coalition members’ manifestos and coalition agreement in 2004

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The graph is organised in the same way as the previous one and three new profiles are added to present coalition members’ manifestos structure. As can be seen, NSi, SLS and DeSUS manifestos are quite similar (although not the same at any policy domain) and in general different from the SDS manifesto. Neglecting individual differences, the most obvious systematic differences in policy domains are in paying far less attention to the political system and more attention to economy. Coalition agreement departs from the SDS manifesto in exactly the same direction, but remains close to the SDS manifesto on the political system and to coalition members’ manifestos on economy.

GRAPH 3: Galaxy, Euclidean Distances between the Coalition Agreement in 2004 (the Sun) and all Other Documents (Planets).

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The first galaxy depicts the 2004 coalition agreement as the Sun in the centre of the Universe (yellow circle) and all other analysed documents as planets around it. The planets are arranged from those closest to the Sun to the one most distant. The more distant the planet is, the lower the level of overall agreement between the 2004 coalition agreement and the document. As stated earlier, the distances are Euclidean distances calculated on the basis of differences in structure regarding all seven policy domains together. Planets (documents) are depicted in blue if they are created in connection with 2004 elections and grey if they originate from subsequent elections (2008). The red-brown circle represents the structure of the merged manifestos for both elections.

It is obvious that regarding coalition members in the Universe of all 2004 coalition parties and documents (blue), SDS, NSi and SLS are very close to the coalition agreement and DeSUS a bit further, but still among the close planets. Those most distant from the centre are non-parliamentary parties, regardless of the year of their manifestos. It is also true that there are other 2004 parties and documents close to the coalition agreement apart from coalition members. The most obvious is LDS (previously the leader of three

13 government coalitions), which is a bit closer to the centre than SDS. There is also SNS, which is closer than DeSUS, but neither is very close to the coalition agreement. Regarding grey planets (2008 elections), there is an outstanding similarity between the 2004 coalition agreement and the 2008 SDS manifesto and also (the same in size) between the 2004 and 2008 coalition agreements (composed by completely different governments) and with the 2008 SD manifesto (2008 winning party). According to mandate theories and parties’ roles, that is somehow expected since parties react to the government’s performance by emphasising issues about the past government’s work.

GRAPH 4: Profiles of SDS Manifesto, Coalition Agreement in 2004 and Government Sessions’ Agenda in 2008 (last 10 months of the term)

The graph is organised in the same way as the first one and a new profile (light orange) is added to present the structure of the government sessions’ agenda in 2008 (the last 10 months of the term). Agenda structure is quite different from SDS manifesto and closer to, but still different from the 2004 coalition agreement. In the agenda there is even less political-system related content than in the coalition agreement (which is already less than in the SDS manifesto) and even more economy-related content than in the coalition agreement (in the agreement there is more on economy than in the SDS manifesto). In addition, more attention is devoted to external- relations policy domain than in the other two documents.

GRAPH 5: Profiles of 2004 Coalition Members’ Manifestos, Coalition Agreement in 2004 and Government Sessions’ Agenda in 2008 (last 10 months of the term)

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Adding the coalition members’ manifestos reveals that the agenda’s structure is much closer to NSi, SLS and DeSUS regarding the political- system policy domain, but still specific regarding external relations and economy (globally changed economic conditions are an obvious explanation for the last one).

GRAPH 6: Galaxy, Euclidean Distances between Government Sessions’ Agenda (the Sun) and all Other Documents (Planets)

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The second galaxy is organised in the same way as the first one and again it is obvious that the most distant planets depict non-parliamentary parties. Regarding coalition and opposition parties, the picture is not as clear as the previous one, since both groups are almost equally close to the 2008 agenda. Among those closest from 2004 are NSi, LDS, SD, DeSUS and SLS (in that order). Conspicuously, SDS is almost as different from the agenda as non-parliamentary parties. Regarding 2008 manifestos, the one absolutely closest is created by LDS and NSi, SD and ZARES are also very similar to the 2008 agenda.

GRAPH 7: Profiles of the SDS Manifesto, Coalition Agreement in 2004 and Government Press Releases in 2008 (last 10 months of the term)

The structure of press releases deviate from the SDS manifesto and the coalition agreement in the same direction as the sessions’ agenda, but to a far less extent. Especially in the domain of political system – where other manifestos and agenda deviate most – the differences are small. As a whole, the structure of press releases very much resembles the coalition agreement. Therefore, comparisons of the 2004 coalition agreement with other documents can serve as a sound proxy (Graphs 1 to 3) and all analytical conclusions regarding the coalition agreement roughly stand for press releases as well.

GRAPH 8: Profiles of SDS manifesto, Coalition Agreement in 2004, Government Sessions’ Agenda and Government Press Releases in 2008 (last 10 months of the term)

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Comparing key governmental documents in 2008 (indicators of post-election policy content based on governmental performance) with the 2004 SDS manifesto reveals that, in general, the coalition agreement and press releases are considerably closer to SDS’s winning manifesto than the government sessions’ agenda. The SDS manifesto placed more emphasis on the political-system policy domain, the coalition agreement slightly less, while press releases reduce the domain even more and in the agenda the domain is hardly present. It is the other way around with economy: the manifesto placed the least emphasis, coalition agreement considerably more, press releases and agenda the most. External relations are a special case: the manifesto and coalition agreement treat the domain in the same way, in the press releases it is slightly suppressed and in agenda more significant.

Regarding differences in agenda and press releases, it is evident that external-relations policy domain is less publically commented upon and more discussed in sessions, while the political-system domain is more publically commented upon and far less discussed in sessions. The last deviation is in consistence with ambitions behind the SDS manifesto that were not realised in government-policy performance.

VI. A. 2008 – SD Coalition

In 2008, SDS’s main opponent SD won the national parliamentary elections and established a coalition with ZARES, DeSUS and LDS (technically, LDS didn’t sign the coalition agreement but a separate treaty). The coalition was led by Prime Minister Borut Pahor.

17 GRAPH 9: Profiles of SD Manifesto and Coalition Agreement in 2008

As can be seen, the level of overall agreement between the winning party (SD) manifesto and the coalition agreement is very high. The structure of both documents is practically the same regarding all policy domains except for the political system, which is given more emphasis in the coalition agreement. Therefore, the 2008 coalition agreement may be characterised as almost perfectly resembling the winning party’s manifesto structure, but devoting slightly more attention to political system.

GRAPH 10: Profiles of Coalition Members’ Manifestos and Coalition Agreement in 2008

The graph is organised in the same way as the previous one and three new profiles are added to present the structure of coalition members’ manifestos. As can be seen, DeSUS, ZARES and LDS manifestos, in general, are not

18 very close to the SD manifesto regarding virtually all policy domains. The most obvious systematic (i.e. true for all three) differences in policy domains are in paying far less attention to the political system and more attention to freedom and democracy and welfare and quality of life. Less systematic, but still persuasive differences (i.e. true for two of the three), are in paying more attention to economy and external relations. Regarding the fabric of society and social groups, variation is low and not systematic. The coalition agreement, in practically all domains, unmistakably remains closer to the SD manifesto.

GRAPH 11: Galaxy, Euclidean Distances between the Coalition Agreement in 2008 (the Sun) and all Other Documents (Planets).

The galaxy confirms impressions from the previous graph: 2008 coalition agreement is close to SD manifesto, but not to coalition members’ manifestos if compared to all other parties. DeSUS is the closest (though not very close), LDS follows and ZARES is almost as distant as non- parliamentary parties, which prove to always be as different as possible. Regarding opposition (previous government coalition members), NSi is a little closer than DeSUS and SLS somehow closer than ZARES. But most

19 conspicuously, the SDS (previously the coalition leader) manifesto is positioned closest to 2008 coalition agreement. Regarding grey planets (2004 elections), there is an outstanding similarity between the 2008 coalition agreement and the 2004 one accompanied by all previous government coalition members’ manifestos.

GRAPH 12: Profiles of SD Manifesto, Coalition Agreement in 2008 and Government Sessions’ Agenda in 2008 (first two months of the term)

In the graph, the agenda profile (light orange) is added to SD manifesto and coalition agreement profiles. The agenda profile represents just the first six government sessions (subsequent sessions dated 2009 and later) and, therefore, can only be considered tentatively. It is obvious that during these sessions, the government did not discuss four of the seven policy domains. More emphasis was placed on external relations and on the political system, while economy has been included in exactly the same portion as predictably by the coalition agreement and SD manifesto.

GRAPH 13: Profiles of SD Manifesto, Coalition Agreement in 2008 and Government Press Releases in 2008 (first two months of the term)

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Almost the same is true for 2008 government press releases (the orange profile – eight releases). Comparisons can only be considered tentatively as the same policy domains were not commented upon and most emphasis placed upon economy, followed by external relations and also the political system.

VII. Conclusions and further research plans

Reflecting the aims stated in the beginning of this paper and based on the pilot-case study analyses, we can expose two dominant sets of conclusion – substantive and methodological. Be it from the former or the latter perspective, the decision to follow the logic of ‘simple structure’ understanding of pre- and post-electoral policy contents and the congruence between them proves to be a fresh and fruitful approach for analysing the policy issue- related life cycle between two election periods.

From the substantive perspective, the applied approach enabled us to directly confront the structure of the pre-electoral campaign with the post-election performance and get information about the similarities and differences of the content – either inside a single party, among competing parties, coalition/opposition parties, parliamentary/non-parliamentary ones, those competing in elections with and without official electoral programmes as well as between pre- and post-electoral discourse in more general terms etc. and in all the exposed cases though time. In the pilot-case study, these can be seen through research results demonstrating that in the policy-domains structure, both coalition agreements are close to the leading parties’ manifestos (there is more similarity in 2008 than in 2004). Regarding coalition

21 parties’ manifestos, they are not very close either to the leading party’s manifesto or to the coalition agreement. Nevertheless, in 2004 the coalition agreement seems to be balanced slightly in the direction of coalition parties’ manifestos and differences appear to be more significant in 2008. Regarding government sessions’ agenda and press releases, the results are well founded just for the SDS-led coalition government (full 10 months, 95 documents)10. Press releases were found to be in almost perfect agreement with the coalition agreement, but governmental sessions’ agenda departed from it significantly by placing more emphasis on external relations and economy and far less on political system. All in all, in the pilot study, a considerable congruence between the content of parties’ electoral policy platforms and the performance of the succeeding government’s policy platforms can be detected in Slovenia and considered as being in favour of democracy in the analysed period.11

Also from the methodological point of view, the research approach has turned out to be a productive one. Selection of documents, the method of coding and analysing data as well as presenting results led to a graphic account of the relation between political discourse and action. Research results from the pilot study exposed that ‘simple structure’ information about the nature of pre- and post-elections policy contents is needed and should be taken as a precondition for more complex correlational studies. The latter should be based on the foundations of such structure-type pieces of information with which it is possible to describe first, explain and then further on also predict. The study has demonstrated that a more qualitative approach, supported by quantification at certain levels only, is optimal to following such ambitions, as well as confirmed the necessity to analyse the whole period of a policy issue- related election cycle, not only some selected parts of it.

The research results delivered in this paper have re-opened the most elementary type of questions of what, why and how would we like to investigate along with more commonly used approaches. From our perspective, the main aim is to understand the political discourse and action through the structure of pre-election policy contents and their future translation into post-election policy performance in one election cycle, which

10 Tentative results for SD coalition government (less than two months, 14 documents) are not included in the conclusions, but both profiles turned out to be reasonably close to the coalition agreement and the SD manifesto. 11 It has to be stressed at this point that graphs and galaxies in the pilot study can be re- analysed on different levels – from more general to far more detailed – and supplemented by new graphs and galaxies in the standardised way to extend the period and scope of analysis. The latter is exactly what we plan to do in the next step.

22 (namely the translation of pre-election policy contents to post-election policy performance) should not be regarded as self-evident. We see this approach as a qualification for the potential viability of any kind of more complex regression analyses of the same topics that would employ additional macro data, such as the structure and types of coalitions, types of coalition-building processes, structure of the budget, structure of the legislative agenda and the degrees of the modes of policy implementation in individual policy fields for which such type of data exists (especially economy and social-welfare policies).

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APPENDIX Legend of party abbreviations: AS – Active Slovenia DESUS – Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia DS – Democratic Party of Slovenia GŽS – Women’s Voice of Slovenia LDS – Liberal Democracy of Slovenia LPR – List for Justice and Development NSi – – Christian Peoples Party SDS – Slovenian Democratic Party SDSS – Social Democratic Party of Slovenia SDZ – Slovenian Democratic Union SDZS – Slovenian Democratic Union SEG – Ecological Movement Party of Slovenia SKD – Slovenian Christian Democrats SLS – Slovenian People’s Party SLS+SKD – Slovenian People’s Party + Slovenian Christian Democrats SNS – SSN – Party of the Slovenian Nation SOS – Slovenian Craftsman’s Party SSS – Socialist Union of Slovenia SKZ – Slovenian Farmers Union ZLSD (now SD) – United List of Social Democrats (now Social Democrats) ZS – Green Party of Slovenia ZARES – Zares– New Politics

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