The purpose of this thesis is to examine to what degree three Swedish political parties acted in accordance with two of the requirements of the “Responsible Party Model”, understood through the pledge approach. It is tested to what extent the parties gave voters different alternatives through pledges before the European parliament elections in 2004, and to what extent election pledges were acted upon in plenary. A modified version of the saliency approach is also used to control the results regarding parties fulfilling their promises. The political parties examined were Moderaterna, Vänsterpartiet and Kristdemokraterna.

A quantitative content analysis was used to identify pledges from the election manifestoes. Official documents on activities in plenary were used to measure pursuance of pledges. Evaluation was made by using polar ideal-types and reference points from earlier research.

The empirical analysis shows that the parties did offer voters alternative policy priorities through their election pledges, but not competing alternatives in issues. Moderaterna acted on a responsible 93 % of their election pledges. Vänsterpartiet and Kristdemokraterna acted on 73 % respectively 42 % of their election pledges and did not live up to the expectations.