Issue ownership and the priorities of party elites in the United States, 2004–2016

Abstract

Parties in government prioritize issues that voters trust them to handle more than other parties. However, scholars disagree about whether this relationship exists because parties strategically prioritize issues that voters trust them to handle or whether voters first observe core party priorities while in government and then trust them to handle those issues. This article disentangles these two explanations, arguing that issue ownership is caused by the core priorities of elites. I evaluate this argument by leveraging the privately financed structure of US party-aligned think tanks, which provide important policy information to US political parties. I introduce new data on the policy content of 15,897 white papers published by the leading party-aligned think tanks in the United States. I find that think tanks aligned with both parties tend to distribute more policy attention to their owned issues, although the process works differently for Republicans and Democrats, and that these patterns are durable. I conclude that these results are strong evidence to support elite prioritization explanations for issue ownership, although they do not rule out other explanations.

Party of the Purse: The Effect of Legislator Partisanship on Congressional District Funding

“…However, the finding that Republicans secure more district spending than Democrats on transportation and agriculture offers useful insights on MC partisanship and distributive politics. Notably, transportation and agriculture are neutral issues in the eyes of both the public and partisan elites -studies on partisan issue ownership and party-aligned think tank attention both rate transportation and agriculture as relatively neutral policy issues (Egan 2013;Fagan 2021). Therefore, distributive politics do not appear to match patterns of issue ownership.…”

“…Egan (2013) finds evidence of associative issue ownership playing out in policymaking -when in control of government, parties prioritize their owned issues. Further, Fagan (2021) shows that associative issue ownership stems, at least in part, from elite prioritization of issues. Leveraging a comprehensive data set of white papers from party-aligned think tank, Fagan (2021) finds that party elites have distinctive, enduring issue priorities that follow patterns of issue ownership.…”

“…The literature on associative issue ownership suggests so. Associative issue ownership stems from the prioritization of certain issues by party elites(Walgrave, Lefevere and Tresch 2012;Egan 2013;Fagan 2021). Because distributive politics is inherently shaped by the prioritization of issues(Breunig and Busemeyer 2012), funding patterns plausibly emerge that follow observed patterns of issue ownership.…”

More than Mere Access: An Experiment on Moneyed Interests, Information Provision, and Legislative Action in Congress

“…And how do corporations, wealthy donors, and foundations who fund think tanks shape these agendas? Recent observational work by Smith (2000), Lerner (2018), Fagan (2019), and Furnas (2020) have explored think tanks as ideological actors in national policymaking. Together with this project, this scholarship suggests the role of think tanks as institutions embedded in party networks and as conduits of interest group influence deserves increased attention.…”

Partisan Asymmetries in Earmark Representation

“…Not only do we expect the targeting of groups in the earmarks to be different between the parties, but we also expect Democrats to request funds for different programs than Republicans; and, we expect that this difference is based on their different issue prioritizations (Egan 2013;Fagan 2019;Green and Jennings 2017). The Democratic Party tends to prioritize redistributive programs and environmental policy, while the Republican Party tends to prioritize foreign policy and law and order issues (Egan 2013).…”