Government’s programs and campaign pledges

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

The article analyzes the government’s programs of the candidates elected for the Presidency of the Republic in Brazil, from 1994 to 2006. We verified whether they had informative elements to guide the choice of voters and investigated possible striking thematic differences between the programs presented by the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB) and Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT).

Materials and Methods:

The study sources were the government’s plans of the PSDB and PT candidates and the methodology used was content analysis, with peer coding and replicability test (Alpha de Krippendorff). We identified the campaign promises expressed in government’s programs. Using the MAXQDA software, the sentences were codified as verifiable promises and rhetorical promises, and the programs were organized according to the frequency of these two categories. Given the ideological and organizational differences between PSDB and PTs, we analyzed the thematic agenda of the documents to highlight differences in emphasis. For this, we use the protocols of the Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR) to identify priority public policy areas.

Results:

The results found for the first objective were positive: the four programs (from 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006) were considered informative. In PSDB programs, more than 80% of sentences cataloged as promises fall under the category of verifiable promises in the two analyzed elections. In the PT’s programs, we identified different trends. In 2002, 53% of the promises are verifiable, while in 2006 they were almost 85%. With regard to thematic areas, government’s programs partially follow the trend found in established democracies, giving more emphasis on issues related to the economy and social welfare, without showing great diversity in relation to priority themes already established in the literature.

Discussion:

This is an original study because it focuses on a field that is still little explored, the analysis of government’s programs as a source for measuring the commitments assumed by future governors during election campaigns in Brazil. As an exploratory and documentary study, we hope that it will serve as a basis for the development of future research on campaign promises.

KEYWORDS
government’s programs; campaign pledges; MARPOR; PT; PSDB