What is Issue Competition? Conflict, Consensus and Issue Ownership in Party Competition

Abstract

Empirical assessments of issue competition suffer from a fuzzy conception of what a "policy issue" is, but also from the scarcity of studies integrating both salience and positional perspectives. This article tries to provide a more precise definition of a "policy issue" and proposes a typology of electoral issues that takes into account the two sides of issue politicization-the decision whether to address an issue, and the decision to take a diverging or similar position on it. This typology allows distinguishing between proprietal, consensual and conflictual issues. This framework is applied to the example the politicization of EUrelated issues by British, French and German parties. Issue ownership, considered from the parties' perspective, appears to be both exceptional and ephemeral, with a decline of proprietal issues over time, which is reflected in parties' tendency to devote attention to the same issues than their competitors. Furthermore, regarding EU-related issues, we observe a primacy of consensus, especially amongst governing parties. « The question whether a given problem poses a position-or valence-issue is a matter to be settled empirically and not on a priori logical grounds. » (Stokes, 1963, p.373

The Conceptualisation and Measurement of Issue Ownership

“…Other party studies do not tap issue ownership perceptions by voters but assume that issues to which parties devote most attention (in press releases, party manifestos, party leader speeches, or campaign ads) are owned by the party and are perceived as such by the voters at large (see for example Budge and Farlie 1983a;Guinaudeau and Persico 2013;Walgrave and De Swert 2004). Taken over a longer period of time, these measures tap a party's 'history of attention' for an issue.…”

Political parties and climate policy

“…We have highlighted arguments indicating the latter, but we do not regard them as definitive. The nature of the issue may vary between context and over time and it may be useful to measure both salience and position ( Guinaudeau and Persico, 2014 ). Moreover, core and ‘non-core’ content as presented here is an informed approximation rather than a definitive distinction.…”

“…More generally, saliency theory has been questioned ( Dolezal et al, 2014 ); the value of measuring both salience and position has been highlighted (e.g. Guinaudeau and Persico, 2014 ); and the CMP has been criticized for failing to separate its indicators of salience and position ( Dolezal et al, 2014 : 61–62; Lowe et al, 2011 : 133; cf. Volkens, 2007 : 117).…”

Defence, Acquisition or Non-Competition? How Did the Form and Intensity of Czech Party Competition Change between 2006 and 2014?

“…S těmito předpoklady pracují i jejich následovní-ci [z nejnovějších prací např. Guinaudeau, Persico 2014]. Perspektiva obou autorů se zpřesnila především v otázce dimenzionality stranické soutěže a strategií stran.…”