Jane Green University of Manchester Will Jennings University of Southampton Valence and Government Priorities: How issue ownership and issue salience shape U.S. and U.K. policy agendas Political Studies Association Annual Conference, Cardiff, March 2013

 Large literature on the issue agendas of parties/candidates during campaigns (e.g. Budge and Farlie 1977; 1983; Petrocik 1996).  ‘Issue ownership’ necessarily implies commitment of a party or candidate to their owned issues in government. “… 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).  But policy-makers in government must prioritize across a wide range of concerns (Jones and Baumgartner 2005), as well as responding to the issue priorities of the public (Jennings and John 2009; Jones et al. 2009; Bevan and Jennings 2013).

(1) Governing parties attend more to issues on which they hold a reputation for competence. (2) Party competence evaluations have a greater effect on the policy agenda when an issue is salient to the public. (3) Party competence evaluations have a lesser effect on the policy agenda when an issue is salient to the public. (4) Party competence evaluations will have a greater effect for electorally unpopular incumbents (i.e. focusing on owned issues). OR

Three different operationalizations of issue ownership: (1) Mean competence in the previous electoral cycle (level): governing party’s mean competence score on each issue, e.g. 65% rating on the economy. (2) Between-party winner of party competence in the previous electoral cycle (majority): dichotomous measure of ‘ownership’, e.g. “1” if governing party is ranked higher on health care than the opposition, “0” if lower. (3) Within-party rank of competence ratings in the previous electoral cycle (ownership): the ordering of party competence ratings across all issues, e.g. for an issue agenda ten issues, the top-ranking issue is scored “10”, the next top ranking issue is scored “9”, and so on.

 Data from the US and UK on policy agendas and public opinion, between 1945 and 2010, coded according to a modified version of the Policy Agendas Project:  Executive agendas (State of the Union addresses, ‘Speech from the Throne’).  Legislative outputs (Statutes of US Congress, Acts of UK Parliament).  Issue salience (survey data on the ‘most important problem’).  Party competence in handling issues (>5,000 poll items about the party ‘best able to handle’ issue X or trusted ‘to do a better job of handling’ issue Y). Data

 To test the general pattern of effects of governing party competence, a time series cross-sectional model (with panel-corrected standard errors) is estimated for all nine issue topics (i.e. panels).  The base model tests the effect of each measure of party issue competence (H 1 ) and its interaction with salience (H 2 ) : AGENDA it = α * 0 + α * 1 COMPETENCE it-c + β * 0 MIP it + β * 1 MIP it *COMPETENCE it-c + μ it  The conditional model tests the effect of party competence and its interaction with salience (H 2 ) and popularity (H 3 ): AGENDA it = α * 0 + α * 1 COMPETENCE it-c + β * 0 MIP it + β * 1 MIP it *COMPETENCE it-c + β * 2 POP it + β * 3 POP it *COMPETENCE it-c + μ it  The issue-specific effects of party competence are then also considered with this same model specification. Where the rho is estimated as the first-order autoregressive process μ it = μ it-1 +ε t

Competence Rank MIPMIP*CompetencePopularityPop*CompetenceUS Executive Agenda ***-0.083** Legislative Outputs 4.387** **-0.081** UK Executive Agenda Legislative Outputs 2.691*** ***-0.067*** *p ≤ 0.10, ** p ≤.05, *** p ≤.01† p = 0.18 Competence Rank MIPMIP*CompetenceUS Executive Agenda 1.197**1.065**-0.082** Legislative Outputs 0.347**0.147*** UK Executive Agenda 0.232† Legislative Outputs

Competence Rank EconomyHealthLaborEducationEnvironLawSocialForeignOtherUS Executive Agenda * Legislative Outputs ** ** UK Executive Agenda * **5.115**5.263 Legislative Outputs * * *2.826*** ** MIPEconomyHealthLaborEducationEnvironLawSocialForeignOtherUS Executive Agenda 1.160***6.542*** **2.620* Legislative Outputs * * *** UK Executive Agenda 0.146** ** Legislative Outputs *** ** MIP*Competence (Rank) EconomyHealthLaborEducationEnvironLawSocialForeignOtherUS Executive Agenda **-0.659***1.269** *-0.306* Legislative Outputs **0.162* *0.072 UK Executive Agenda * Legislative Outputs 0.069*** *

PopularityEconomyHealthLaborEducationEnvironLawSocialForeignOtherUS Executive Agenda 3.680* * Legislative Outputs ** * UK Executive Agenda * Legislative Outputs * *0.380**0.243*1.483** Pop*Competence (Rank) EconomyHealthLaborEducationEnvironLawSocialForeignOtherUS Executive Agenda *0.262 Legislative Outputs ** ** UK Executive Agenda * * Legislative Outputs * **-0.076*** **

 Findings offer support to our hypotheses:  Parties in government tend to attend to their ‘best’ issues.  Some evidence that effects of issue ownership are mediated by salience.  Some evidence that effects of issue ownership are moderated by popularity.  But no mechanism – i.e. issue salience, issue ownership nor the mediating effects of issue salience or popularity – able to explain policy agendas across all issues and cases. Summary

Jane Green University of Manchester Will Jennings University of Southampton A Party Competition Theory of Governing Party Agendas: Evidence from the U.S. and U.K. Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference, Chicago, April 2012

 Party competence matters, in the aggregate and on an issue-by-issue basis.  In particular, the within-party rank ordering of party competence is associated with the greatest effect on the policy agenda, compared with other measures.  Further, party competence seems to matter more in the executive agenda in the US and the UK.  Issue salience attenuates the impact of competence on governing party agendas. Effects of competence are reduced at higher levels of issue salience, as governments prioritise other information about the state of the world instead of partisan reputational concerns.