The ability of parties to deliver on their policy promises is central to the understanding of democratic representation and governance, yet in coalition governments, members may disagree about policy substance and priority. While empirical and theoretical work has excelled in explaining how parties' prevailing resources within coalition governments influence policy outcomes, neither literature addresses the fulfillment of specific pledges and only theoretical work accounts for bargaining leverage arising from the possibility of change in the governing coalition. Drawing on a novel empirical measure, we demonstrate that coalition bargaining leverage trumps parties' prevailing resources –such as seat shares, agenda power, veto power, and powers to police partners’ portfolios– in determining which parties fulfill their pledges. These results from the analysis of a multinational dataset of party pledge fulfillment bear implications for our understanding of coalition bargaining, policy outcomes, policy responsiveness and consequently advocate for the use of empirical measures of coalition bargaining leverage in empirical policy analysis.