Party Reputations and Government Priorities: How issue ownership and issue salience shape policy agendas in the US and the UK

Jane Green, University of ManchesterWill Jennings, University of Southampton

20th International Conference of Europeanists Amsterdam, June 25-27, 2013

Issue ownership

“… a reputation for policy and program interests, produced by a history of attention,

initiative and innovation toward these problems, which leads voters to believe that

one of the parties (and its candidates) is more sincere and committed to doing

something about them” (Petrocik 1996, p. 826).

Hypotheses

Issue Ownership Hypothesis: H1: Governing parties attend more to issues which they own, i.e. hold a reputation for competence/delivery.

Issue Ownership/Salience Hypothesis:H2: Issue ownership has a lesser impact on the policy agenda when an issue is salient to the public.

Issue Ownership/Popularity Hypothesis:H3: Issue ownership has a greater effect on the policy agenda when incumbents are unpopular.

Measuring issue ownership

Economy

Rights & Minorities

Health

Labour, Employment & Immigration

Education

Environment

Law & Order

Welfare & Housing

Defence

Foreign Affairs

Government Operations

Other

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%Labour Conservatives

Mean Owner

Source: aggregate-level survey data from 1997-2001 election cycle in the U.K.

Rank(Labour)

8

8

3

1

9

4

7

10

2

12

11

6

5

Aggregate level data on public opinion and policy agendas in the U.S. (1939-2012) and the U.K. (1945-2012) coded according to a modified set of Policy Agendas Project issue categories:

Policy agenda: proportion of attention to issue topics in the U.S. (State of the Union and ‘most important laws’) and U.K. (Queen’s Speech and Acts of Parliament).Issue ownership: 9,288 survey items on the party ‘best able to handle’ or most trusted ‘to do a better job of handling’ an issue. (Ownership rank scale reversed.)Issue salience: data on the ‘most important problem’.

Data

Time series cross-sectional model:Dependent variables first tested for stationarity (ADF tests). Data modeled in level form.Twelve issue topics (i.e. panels).Autoregressive first order process, with the rho estimated to vary by panel, to allow for varying rates of persistence of the policy agenda.Panel-corrected standard errors: to control for panel heteroscedasticity and contemporaneous correlations of errors.

Method

AGENDAit = α*0

+ α*1OWNERSHIPit-c

+ β*0SALIENCEit

+ β*1SALIENCEit*OWNERSHIPit-c

+ β*2POPit

+ β*3POPit*OWNERSHIPit-c

+ μit μit = ρμit-1 + εit

Method

H3

Rho

Intercept

H1

H2

Results  Policy Agendait

  United Kingdom United States

Issue Ownershipit1.391**(0.365)

3.028**(1.074)

Issue Salienceit0.267**(0.071)

0.362**(0.101)

Issue Ownershipit * Issue Salienceit

-0.015+(0.008)

-0.023+(0.012)

Government Popularityit

0.201**(0.060)

0.470*(0.195)

Issue Ownershipt * Government Popularityit

-0.030**(0.008)

-0.053*(0.022)

Constant -1.553(2.582)

-17.397+(9.636)

Observations 442 562Number of panels 12 12R-Squared 0.363 0.345

H1

H2

H3

Marginal effects: U.K.

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Mar

gina

l Effe

ct

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12Issue Ownership

Effect of Issue Salience

Marginal effects: U.K.

-1.0

0.0

1.0

2.0

3.0

Mar

gina

l Effe

ct

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50Popularity

Effect of Issue Ownership

Marginal effects: U.S.

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Mar

gina

l Effe

ct

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12Issue Ownership

Effect of Issue Salience

Marginal effects: U.S.

-3.0

-1.5

0.0

1.5

3.0

Mar

gina

l Effe

ct

25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75Popularity

Effect of Issue Ownership

Findings offer support to the hypotheses: Parties in government tend to attend to their ‘best’ issues.

Effects of issue ownership are mediated by issue salience.

Effects of issue ownership are moderated by popularity.

Implication: interaction of issue ownership and issue salience for the policy agenda of parties in government differs from strategies of parties in election campaigns.

Summary