He's Stealing My Issues! Clinton's Crime Rhetoric and the Dynamics of Issue Ownership

Holian, David B.

doi:10.1023/b:pobe.0000035959.35567.16

Cited by 148 publications

(120 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

116

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…92 Green 2011. 93 Holian 2004. 94 Egan 2013. ownership effects does not preclude the possibility of individual exceptions, but it reveals how effects are observed across available institutional contexts in general.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How Issue Ownership Shapes Executive and Legislative Agendas

Green¹,

Jennings²

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Election-oriented elites are expected to emphasize issues on which their party possesses 'issue ownership' during campaigns. This article extends those theories to the content of executive and legislative agendas. Arguing that executives have incentives to pursue their party's owned issues in the legislature, it theorizes three conditions under which these incentives are constrained: when governments are responsive to issues prioritized by the public, when a party has a stronger electoral mandate and under divided government. The theory is tested using time-series analyses of policy agendas of US congressional statutes and State of the Union addresses and UK acts of Parliament and the Queen's Speech . The results offer support for the theory, and are particularly strong for the US State of the Union address, providing insights into institutional differences. The implications provide reassurance concerning the conditions under which governments focus attention only on their partisan issue priorities.Keywords: issue ownership; saliency theory; agenda setting; legislative priorities An extensive literature predicts the issue agendas of parties and candidates during election campaigns. Election-oriented elites attempt to emphasize issues on which their party has 'issue ownership' 1 and avoid issues on which another party has an advantage. Parties are not wholly free to achieve this 'selective emphasis'.2 The issue agenda of an election campaign is a matter of competition between rivals, as well as the wider campaign context of media attention, policy events, and what voters already care most about and decide upon. But insofar as a party's owned issues (the issue associations voters hold about different political parties and their reputation for trust and competence) overlap with their partisan priorities -those issues on which elites, members and activists care most about 3 -a party that achieves its goal of winning office should try to pursue the party's owned issues in the legislature. A governing period is precisely the time when Petrocik 4 expects a party to demonstrate its ownership of issues via legislative attention and commitment.* School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester (email: jane.green@manchester.ac.uk); Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton (email: w.j.jennings@soton.ac.uk). The data on US policy agendas were originally collected by Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, with the support of National Science Foundation grant numbers SBR 9320922 and 0111611, distributed through the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. The data on UK policy agendas were collected by Peter John, Will Jennings and Shaun Bevan with the support of ESRC research award RES-062-23-0872. Data on issue competence were collected by Jane Green and Will Jennings with the support of ESRC research award RES-000-22-4616. We thank Shaun Bevan for advice on model specification and Frank Baumgartner for valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. T...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How Issue Ownership Shapes Executive and Legislative Agendas

Green¹,

Jennings²

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, it has recently been questioned whether any consensus exists around issue reputations even in the two-party system of the United States. Damore (2004), Holian (2004), Kaufmann (2004) and Petrocik et al (2003) have reported that the ownership of issues varies across the two main American parties over time. There is also evidence that, at any given time in the US, there is disagreement over the identity of an issue's owner.…”

Section: Issue Ownershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter studies show that parties actively compete to acquire and defend their issue ownership. Issue ownership has proven to be more fluid and contested than initially assumed; parties compete over new issues (Blomqvist and Green-Pedersen, 2004), and candidates try to steal issue ownership from their opponents, by reframing issues (Holian, 2004) or appealing to their strong personal record in those issue areas (Kaufmann, 2004). Yet, parties nonetheless tend to strategically emphasize those issues on which they are perceived (at least for the moment) to be more competent.…”

Section: The Role Of Issue Ownership In Party and Voter Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Issue salience, issue ownership, and issue-based vote choice

2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…But a developing line of research (e.g., Brasher, 2009;Dahlberg and Martinsson, 2015;Holian, 2004;Tresch et al, 2013;Walgrave and De Swert, 2007;Walgrave et al, 2009) suggests that parties are able to do more than merely adjust to the extant configuration of issue ownership perceptions. Thus, they seem capable of influencing such perceptions, thereby further enhancing their potential for success in campaigns.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

What can a party say? How parties' communication can influence voters' issue ownership perceptions

Stubager

Seeberg

2016

Electoral Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

He's Stealing My Issues! Clinton's Crime Rhetoric and the Dynamics of Issue Ownership

Cited by 148 publications

References 34 publications

Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How Issue Ownership Shapes Executive and Legislative Agendas

Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How Issue Ownership Shapes Executive and Legislative Agendas

Issue salience, issue ownership, and issue-based vote choice

What can a party say? How parties' communication can influence voters' issue ownership perceptions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About