European Journal of Political Research
Overpromising populists? Why challenger parties make fewer, not more, promises than established parties
2026-09-08
Many Western democracies have experienced an increase in the prevalence of parties that have never been in government. Since these so-called challenger parties are not held accountable to the same extent as established parties, there is a concern that they will simply churn out promises and fuel a process of rising political distrust. This paper explores the extent to which this image of overpromising populists is accurate. Instead of expecting more promises from challenger parties, the paper argues that we should find the opposite. Using a novel dataset of over one million content-coded quasi-sentences from election manifestos, the paper empirically demonstrates that challenger parties make substantially fewer election promises than established parties and that this is likely due to their lack of governmental experience. These results have important implications for research on the growing phenomenon of challenger parties and their distinct communication in electoral campaigns.