Setting the Agenda or Responding to Voters? Political Parties, Voters and Issue Attention

Political parties matter for government outcomes. Despite this general finding for political science research, recent work on public policy and agenda-setting has found just the opposite; parties generally do not matter when it comes to explaining government attention. While the common explanation for this finding is that issue attention is different than the location of policy, this explanation has never truly been tested. Through the use of data on nearly 65 years of UK Acts of Parliament, this paper presents a detailed investigation of the effect parties have on issue attention in UK Acts of Parliament. It demonstrates that elections alone do not explain changes in the distribution of policies across issues. Instead, the parties’ organizations, responses to economic conditions, and size of the parliamentary delegation influence the stability of issue attention following a party transition.

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The Dynamics of the Party System Agenda

The Reshaping of West European Party Politics ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198842897.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 71-81

Author(s):

Christoffer Green-Pedersen

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Political Parties ◽

Multidimensional Scaling ◽

Party System ◽

Distinct Group ◽

Analytical Strategy ◽

Education And Health ◽

Issue Attention ◽

Over Time ◽

The Eu

This chapter first addresses the question of whether the 23 issues included in the book can be reduced to a few dimensions in order to study attention to these dimensions. Such an approach would be very much in line with studies focusing on positional competition among political parties. To discuss this further, the chapter presents the results of a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis for each country based on the correlations of the 23 issues presented. MDS is a way of analysing whether groups of issues grow or decline together over time, which indicates that they are driven by similar attention dynamics. The MDS analysis does not find that issues argued to belong to the new, second dimension constitute a distinct group of issues in terms of issue attention dynamics. The chapter furthermore presents the reasons for studying immigration, the EU, the environment, education, and health care in the following chapters, including the ‘nested’ analytical strategy that will be pursued.

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Who responds to protest? Protest politics and party responsiveness in Western Europe

Party Politics ◽

10.1177/1354068816657375 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 24 (4) ◽

pp. 358-369 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Swen Hutter ◽

Rens Vliegenthart

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Agenda Setting ◽

Western Europe ◽

Explanatory Power ◽

European Countries ◽

Setting Approach ◽

Issue Attention ◽

Issue Competition ◽

Do So

This article addresses the questions of whether and why political parties respond to media-covered street protests. To do so, it adopts an agenda-setting approach and traces issue attention in protest politics and parliament over several years in four West European countries (France, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The article innovates in two ways. First, it does not treat the parties in parliament as a unitary actor but focuses on the responses of single parties. Second, partisan characteristics are introduced that might condition the effect of protest on parliamentary activity. More precisely, it assesses the explanatory power of ideological factors (left-right orientation and radicalism) and other factors related to issue competition between parties (opposition status, issue ownership and contagion). The results show that parties do respond to street protests in the news, and they are more likely to respond if they are in opposition and if their competitors have reacted to the issue.

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Measuring political agenda setting and representation in Turkey

Party Politics ◽

10.1177/1354068815625232 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 23 (6) ◽

pp. 717-730 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Alper T Bulut

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Party Competition ◽

Political Agenda ◽

The Political ◽

Legislative Politics ◽

Data Set ◽

Political Issue ◽

Project Approach ◽

Political Activities ◽

Issue Attention

This article introduces a novel data set on the agenda of the Turkish legislature and political parties. Using the Comparative Agendas Project approach, we trace political issue attention over an 11–year-period (2003–2013). By topic coding various political activities, this approach illustrates the dynamics of the Turkish political agenda and the issue attention of the political parties, and, therefore, sheds new empirical light on the dynamics of Turkish legislative politics and party competition. In this article, we explain the construction of the data set from data collection to coding, describe its features, and provide examples of possible applications.

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Who Responds? Voters, Parties and Issue Attention

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123414000313 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 46 (3) ◽

pp. 633-654 ◽

Cited By ~ 53

Author(s):

Heike Klüver ◽

Jae-Jae Spoon

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Comparative Study ◽

Electoral Systems ◽

Political Representation ◽

National Election ◽

Niche Parties ◽

Election Manifestos ◽

Issue Attention ◽

The Comparative Study ◽

Election Studies

Do parties listen to their voters? This article addresses this important question by moving beyond position congruence to explore whether parties respond to voters’ issue priorities. It argues that political parties respond to voters in their election manifestos, but that their responsiveness varies across different party types: namely, that large parties are more responsive to voters’ policy priorities, while government parties listen less to voters’ issue demands. The study also posits that niche parties are not generally more responsive to voter demands, but that they are more responsive to the concerns of their supporters in their owned issue areas. To test these theoretical expectations, the study combines data from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on voters’ policy priorities from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and various national election studies across eighteen European democracies in sixty-three elections from 1972–2011. Our findings have important implications for understanding political representation and democratic linkage.

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Avoidance and engagement: Do societal problems fuel political parties’ issue attention?

Party Politics ◽

10.1177/13540688211066415 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 135406882110664

Author(s):

Henrik Bech Seeberg

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Attention Allocation ◽

Press Releases ◽

Central Source ◽

Issue Attention ◽

Societal Problems

An important part of political parties’ competition for votes is to what extent parties avoid or engage the issues that rival parties talk about. Despite a large literature on this topic, it remains largely unknown when parties engage. Drawing on research on political attention allocation and party behaviour, this study argues that societal problems are a central source of issue engagement: The engagement is due to a pressure to not ignore electorally important problems. The analysis shows that issue engagement emerges because parties address the same issues in a negative development. Moreover, and particularly important for the issue engagement, parties attend more to a negative development if other parties already attend to the development, particularly at elections. The argument is tested across 16 issue areas through the collection and coding of 5523 press releases from seven parties in Denmark at a quarterly level from 2004 to 2017.

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Challenges to multiparty governments

Party Politics ◽

10.1177/1354068815627399 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 23 (6) ◽

pp. 793-803 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Heike Klüver ◽

Jae-Jae Spoon

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Political Representation ◽

Party Competition ◽

Combine Data ◽

Coalition Governments ◽

Issue Attention ◽

The Comparative Study ◽

Election Studies ◽

The Relationship ◽

Shed Light

How does governing in coalitions affect coalition parties’ responsiveness to voters? In this article, we seek to understand the relationship between political parties’ participation in multiparty governments and their responsiveness to voters. We argue that the extent to which coalition parties respond to policy priorities of voters is influenced by the divisiveness of policy issues within the cabinet and the ministerial responsibility for policies. To test our hypotheses, we combine data on the issue attention of 55 coalition parties from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on government composition and data on the policy priorities of voters from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and various election studies in 45 elections across 16 European countries from 1972 to 2011. While we find that intra-cabinet divisiveness decreases coalition parties’ responsiveness, we find no effect for portfolio responsibility. Our findings shed light on the relationship between party competition and coalition governments and its implications for political representation.

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Parliamentary Questions

Comparative Policy Agendas ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198835332.003.0029 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 282-299 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Enrico Borghetto ◽

Laura Chaqués-Bonafont

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

Political Parties ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Agenda Setting ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Issue Attention ◽

Legislative Activity ◽

Intense Debate

Do political parties increasingly engage in non-legislative parliamentary activities? To what extent is the range of issues addressed through parliamentary questioning becoming more diverse? Is overtime change in issue attention during question time incremental or rather stable and occasionally interspersed with radical changes? These questions have generated an intense debate in legislative and agenda-setting studies during the last decades. The goal of this chapter is to explore these trends by focusing on a specific type of non-legislative activity: oral questions to the cabinet in the plenary. The analysis relies on the data available in eight countries of the Comparative Agendas Project: Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

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Setting the Party Agenda: Interest Groups, Voters and Issue Attention

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123418000078 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 50 (3) ◽

pp. 979-1000 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Heike Klüver

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Interest Groups ◽

Interest Group ◽

Campaign Contributions ◽

Information Campaign ◽

Voter Preferences ◽

Electoral Support ◽

Issue Attention ◽

Group Mobilization ◽

Policy Agendas

Do political parties respond to interest group mobilization? While party responsiveness to voters has received widespread attention, little is known about how interest groups affect parties’ policy agendas. I argue that political parties respond to interest groups as lobbyists offer valuable information, campaign contributions, electoral support and personal rewards, but that party responsiveness is conditioned by voter preferences. Based on a novel longitudinal analysis studying the responsiveness of German parties to interest groups across eleven issue areas and seven elections from 1987 until 2009, it is shown that parties adjust their policy agendas in response to interest group mobilization and that interest groups are more successful in shaping party policy when their priorities coincide with those of the electorate.

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When do political parties prioritize labour? Issue attention between party competition and interest group power

Party Politics ◽

10.1177/1354068819875605 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 135406881987560 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Simon Otjes ◽

Christoffer Green-Pedersen

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Interest Groups ◽

Interest Group ◽

Party Competition ◽

European Countries ◽

Data Set ◽

Political Actors ◽

Election Manifestos ◽

Issue Attention ◽

Project Data

This article analyses the conditions under which political parties spend attention to labour issues. This article compares the dominant partisan perspective, which proposes that attention to issues is shaped by party competition, to an interest group perspective, which proposes that strong interest groups, in particular when their power is institutionalized in corporatist systems, can force parties to spend attention to their issue. We use the Comparative Agenda Project data set of election manifestos to examine these patterns in seven West-European countries and corroborate our findings in the Comparative Manifesto Project data set for 25 countries. The evidence supports the interest group perspective over the partisan perspective. This shows that the study of party attention to issues should not isolate party competition from the influence of other political actors.

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