Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b6zl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T11:27:44.348Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Micro-Foundations of Party Competition and Issue Ownership: The Reciprocal Effects of Citizens’ Issue Salience and Party Attachments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2016

Anja Neundorf  and
James Adams
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While previous research on the reciprocal effects of citizens’ issue attitudes and their party support emphasize citizens’ issue positions, political competition revolves equally around issue salience – that is, debates over which issue areas political parties should prioritize. Using multi-wave panel survey data from Germany and Great Britain, this study analyzes the reciprocal effects of citizens’ issue salience and their party support, and concludes that citizens’ issue priorities both influence and are influenced by their party attachments and, moreover, that these effects are linked to parties’ long-term associative issue ownership. This effect is strongest among supporters of a small issue-orientated niche party, the German Greens.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 385 - 406
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham (email: [email protected]); Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis (email: [email protected]). The authors greatly appreciate the advice and comments of BJPS Editor Robert Johns and the anonymous reviewers. They also wish to acknowledge advice or feedback from Debra Leiter, Sergi Pardos-Prado, Romain Lachat and Markus Wagner. They further acknowledge helpful feedback from seminar and conference participants at the University of Oxford, Pompeu Fabra University, and the 2014 meetings of the European Political Science Association (in Edinburgh, UK) and the American Political Science Association (Washington, DC, USA). Online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123415000642, and data replication sets are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS. The data used in this article cannot be deposited online, but are freely available to registered users. The data of the German Socio-Economic Panel can be requested via http://www.diw.de/en/diw_02.c.222836.en/access.html. We use version 24 (DOI: 10.5684/soep.v24). The data of the British Household Panel Study can be requested via http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/series/?sn=20000.

References

Adams, James, Ezrow, Lawrence, and Leiter, Debra. 2012. Partisan Sorting and Niche Parties in Europe. Western European Politics 35 (6):1272–1294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, James, Ezrow, Lawrence, and Somer-Topcu, Zeynep. 2011. Is Anybody Listening? Evidence That Voters Do Not Respond to European Parties’ Policy Statements During Elections. American Journal of Political Science 55 (2):370–382.Google Scholar
Adams, James, Clark, Michael, Ezrow, Lawrence, and Glasgow, Garrett. 2006. Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties’ Policy Shifts, 1976–1998. American Journal of Political Science 50 (3):513–529.Google Scholar
Adams, James, and Somer-Topcu, Zeynep. 2009. Moderate Now, Win Votes Later: The Electoral Consequences of Parties’ Policy Shifts in Twenty-Five Postwar Democracies. Journal of Politics 71 (2):678–692.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, Frank, Breunig, Christian, Green-Pedersen, Christoffer, Jones, Bryan, Mortensen, Peter, Neytemans, Michael, and Walgrave, Stefaan. 2009. Punctuated Equilibrium in Comparative Perspective. American Journal of Political Science 53 (3):602–619.Google Scholar
Belanger, Eric, and Meguid, Bonnie M.. 2008. Issue Saliency, Issue Ownership, and Issue-based Vote Choice. Electoral Studies 27 (3):477–491.Google Scholar
Benoit, Kenneth, and Laver, Michael. 2006. Party Policy in Modern Democracies. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Budge, Ian, and Farlie, Dennis. 1983. Explaining and Predicting Elections: Issue Effects and Party Strategies in Twenty-Three Democracies. London: Georg Allen and Urwin.Google Scholar
Budge, Ian, Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, Volkens, Andrea, Bara, Judith, and Tanenbaum, Eric, eds. 2001. Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments 1945–1998. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Strokes, Donald. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Carsey, Thomas, and Layman, Geoffrey. 2006. Changing Sides or Changing Minds? Party Identification and Policy Preferences in the American Electorate. American Journal of Political Science 50 (2):464–477.Google Scholar
Clarke, Harold D., and McCutcheon, Allan L.. 2009. The Dynamics of Party Identification Reconsidered. Public Opinion Quarterly 2 (1):1–25.Google Scholar
Clarke, Harold D., Sanders, David, Stewart, Marianne C., and Whiteley, Paul M.. 2009. Performance Politics and the British Voter. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dancey, Logan, and Goren, Paul. 2010. Party Identification, Issue Attitudes, and the Dynamics of Political Debate. American Journal of Political Science 54 (3):686–699.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Bros.Google Scholar
Evans, Geoffrey, and Andersen, Robert. 2004. Do Issues Decide? Partisan Conditioning and Perceptions of Party Issue Positions Across the Electoral Cycle. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 14 (1):18–39.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Goren, Paul. 2005. Party Identification and Core Political Values. American Journal of Political Science 49 (3):881–896.Google Scholar
Green, Donald P., Palmquist, Bradley, and Schickler, Eric. 2002. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Jane, and Hobolt, Sara B.. 2008. Owning the Issue Agenda: Party Strategies and Vote Choices in British Elections. Electoral Studies 27 (3):460–476.Google Scholar
Haisken-DeNew, John, and Frick, Joachim. 2005. Desktop Companion to the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP). Technical Report. Berlin: Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung.Google Scholar
Hetherington, Marc J. 2001. Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization. American Political Science Review 95 (3):619–631.Google Scholar
Hobolt, Sara, Klemmensen, Robert, and Pickup, Mark. 2008. The Dynamics of Issue Diversity in Party Rhetoric. Paper presented at APSA 2008, 28 August, Boston, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Kitschelt, Herbert. 1994. The Transformation of European Social Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, Hofferbert, Richard I., and Budge, Ian. 1994. Parties, Policies and Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Kroh, Martin. 2014. Growth Trajectories in the Strength of Party Identification: The Legacy of Autocratic Regimes. Electoral Studies 33 (1):90–101.Google Scholar
Meguid, Bonnie. 2008. Competition Between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Milazzo, Caitlin, Adams, James, and Green, Jane. 2012. Are Voter Decision Rules Endogenous to Parties’ Policy Strategies? A Model with Applications to Elite Depolarization in Post-Thatcher Britain. Journal of Politics 74 (2):262–276.Google Scholar
Neundorf, Anja. 2009. Growing Up On Different Sides of the Wall: A Quasi-Experimental Test – Applying the Left-Right Dimension to the German Mass Public. German Politics 18 (2):201–225.Google Scholar
Neundorf, Anja, Stegmueller, Daniel, and Scotto, Thomas J.. 2011. The Individual Level Dynamics of Bounded Partisanship. Public Opinion Quarterly 75 (3):458–482.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I., and Jones, Calvin C.. 1979. Reciprocal Effects of Policy Preferences, Party Loyalties and the Vote. American Political Science Review 73 (4):1071–1089.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I., and Shapiro, Robert Y.. 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in American Policy Preferences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pappi, Franz Urban, Shikano, Susumu, and Bytzek, Evelyn. 2004. Der Einfluss politischer Ereignisse auf die Popularität von Parteien und Politikern und auf das Parteiensystem. Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologieund Sozialpsychologie 56 (1):51–70.Google Scholar
Pardos-Prado, Sergi, Lancee, Bram, and Sagarzazu, Inaki. 2014. Immigration and Electoral Change in Mainstream Political Space. Political Behavior 36 (4):847–875.Google Scholar
Pardos-Prado, Sergi, and Dinas, Elias. 2010. Systemic Polarization and Spatial Voting. European Journal of Political Research 49:759–786.Google Scholar
Petrocik, John R. 1996. Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections. American Journal of Political Science 58 (4):825–850.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poguntke, Thomas. 1993. Alternative Politics: The German Green Party. Environment, Politics and Society. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Spoon, Jae-Jae. 2011. Political Survival of Small Parties in Europe. Ann. Arbor, University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Stubager, Rune, and Slothuus, Rune. 2013. What Are the Sources of Political Parties’ Issue Ownership? Testing Four Explanations at the Individual Level. Political Behavior 35 (3):567–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 1989. Democracy and Disorder. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tresch, Anke, Lefevere, Jonas, and Walgrave, Stefaan. 2013. Steal Me If You Can!: The Impact of Campaign Messages on Associative Issue Ownership. Party Politics 21 (2):198–208.Google Scholar
van der Brug, Wouter. 2004. Issue Ownership and Party Choice. Electoral Studies 23 (2):209–233.Google Scholar
Vermunt, Jeroen K., and Magidson, Jay. 2008. LG-Syntax User’s Guide: Manual for Latent GOLD 4.5 Syntax Module. Belmont: Statistical Innovations Inc.Google Scholar
Wagner, Gert, Frick, Joachim, and Schupp, Juergen. 2007. The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) – Scope, Evolution and Enhancements. Schmollers Jahrbuch 127 (1):139–169.Google Scholar
Wagner, Markus. 2012. Defining and Measuring Niche Parties. Party Politics 18 (6):845–864.Google Scholar
Walgrave, Stefaan, Lefevere, Jonas, and Tresch, Anke. 2012. The Associative Dimension of Issue Ownership. Public Opinion Quarterly 76 (4):771–782.Google Scholar
Walgrave, Stefaan, Lefevere, Jonas, and Tresch, Anke. 2014. The Limits of Issue Ownership Dynamics: The Constraining Effect of Party Preference. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties 21 (1):1–19.Google Scholar
Walgrave, Stefaan, and De Swert, Knut. 2007. Where Does Issue Ownership Come From? From the Party or From the Media? Issue-Party Identifications in Belgium (1991–2005). Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics 12 (1):37–67.Google Scholar
Wlezien, Christopher. 2005. On the Salience of Political Issues: The Problem with ‘Most Important Problem’. Electoral Studies 24 (4):555–579.Google Scholar
Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Neundorf and Adams Dataset

Dataset

https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OWF8RW
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Neundorf and Adams supplementary material

Appendix

Download Neundorf and Adams supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 839.2 KB