Issue Engagement in Election Campaigns The Impact of Electoral Incentives and Organizational Constraints

Abstract

It is easier for voters to make informed electoral choices when parties talk about the same issues. Yet parties may decide against such 'issue engagement'. We hypothesize that issue engagement between parties is more likely (a) when the similarity of their policy positions means that both parties have clear electoral incentives to talk about the same topics and (b) when parties face few organizational constraints in terms of campaign resources. Our empirical analysis of 2,453 press releases by Austrian parties shows that ideological proximity and party resources affect the level of issue engagement. These findings suggest that issue engagement is less likely precisely where it is needed most, which has important implications for understanding the democratic quality of election campaigns. Pre-print version of the accepted manuscript:Meyer, Thomas M., and Markus Wagner (2015). 'Issue engagement in election campaigns: the impact of electoral incentives and organizational constraints ', Political Science Research and Methods. FirstView.

Errors have been made, others will be blamed: issue engagement and blame shifting in Prime Minister speeches during the economic crisis in Europe

“…We found that prime ministers speak more extensively about economic issues when the domestic economy is in decline and when the unemployment rate rises. Our findings are in line with issue engagement theory (Sides 2006;Jerit 2008;Sigelman and Buell 2004;Green-Pedersen and Mortensen 2015;Meyer and Wagner 2016): instead of focusing on the issues they "own", governments address topics that are publicly salient -in other words, they "ride the wave" of public attention (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1994), thereby signaling that they are in touch with their voters' needs and concerns.…”

How parties’ issue emphasis strategies vary across communication channels: The 2009 regional election campaign in Belgium

“…Thus, we encourage researchers to consider different combinations of campaign communication channels to shed more light on the complexity of parties' issue strategies in election campaigns. 1 We use the term "convergence" instead of other, often interchangeable terms, such as "issue trespassing" (e.g., Sides, 2006), "issue engagement" (Meyer and Wagner, 2016), or "dialogue" (e.g., Simon, 2002).…”

“…Despite parties' broad use of different communication channels, scholars have traditionally relied on single campaign channels to assess parties' issue emphasis strategies (for exceptions, see Norris et al 1999;Green and Hobolt, 2008). In the United States, studies are generally based on political ads (e.g., Damore, 2004Damore, , 2005Kaplan et al, 2006;Sides, 2006;Sigelman and Buell, 2004;Spiliotes and Vavreck, 2002), whereas European studies typically rely on electoral manifestos (e.g., Brouard et al, 2012;Dolezal et al, 2014;Green-Pedersen and Mortensen, 2015;Spoon et al, 2014), or on press releases (Green and Hobolt, 2008;Hopmann et al, 2012;Meyer and Wagner, 2016). Whichever campaign channel is investigated, the underlying assumption is that each specific data source provides a representative view of the parties' issue priorities and that parties emphasize the same issues to a similar extent in all their campaign materials.…”

Errors have been made, others will be blamed: Issue engagement and blame shifting in prime minister speeches during the economic crisis in Europe

“…Thus, following the model of "issue engagement", and contrary to what we would expect following issue ownership theory, all parties and candidates -regardless of their partisanship and reputation for issue competence -address issues that are in the news, since these are likely to be of highest concern to the public (Jerit 2008;Sigelman and Buell 2004;Green-Pedersen and Mortensen 2015;Meyer and Wagner 2016). By engaging with the issue, governments appear well-informed and in touch with what the public wants (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1994).…”