Department of Politics and Public Administration Seminar

The Department of Politics and Public Administration Seminar will be taking place in the Appellate Court, in the Glucksman Library on Wednesday the 21st of September 2022 and will be starting at 2pm. 

Featuring pieces from Andrew Shorten and Rory Costello and many more, this seminar is not one to miss.  

Below we have an extract from what is to come in this must-go seminar. 

"Party competition sometimes resembles an auction, whereby parties seek to ‘buy’ elections by promising more spending and/or tax cuts than their rivals. Promising too much is a risky strategy because it can lead to parties being punished in the subsequent election. However, this risk does not apply equally to all parties. I argue that the less government responsibility a party expects to have after the election, the more it will promise. I test this argument by focusing on the degree of fiscal expansionism in party manifestos from 20 countries over the period 1961-2017. In line with expectations, parties’ fiscal policies are found to be strongly influenced by their projected seat shares based on opinion polls from before the start of the election campaign. Specifically, the stronger a party’s electoral prospects, the more fiscally conservative it tends to be, and vice versa. This is the case even when controlling for other relevant factors such as economic conditions and party ideology. The findings have implications for how we view election manifestos and, more broadly, for debates about the relative merits of single-party versus coalition governments."