1. Party Reputations and Government Priorities: How issue ownership and issue salience shape policy agendas in the US and the UK Jane Green, University of Manchester Will Jennings, University of Southampton 20th International Conference of Europeanists Amsterdam, June 25-27, 2013

2. Issue ownership “… 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).

3. Issue ownership and policy agendas  Issue emphasis strategies of parties/candidates during election campaigns (e.g. Budge and Farlie 1983; Petrocik 1996), and its effects on voting (e.g. Belanger and Meguid 2008).  A seminal definition of ‘issue ownership’ 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).  Theoretical expectation: parties will seek to govern on issues on which they have a reputation for ‘owning’/being competent.

4. Issue salience and policy agendas  Parties in government influenced by information-processing imperatives: attention is scarce. Policy-makers must prioritize across a wide range of concerns (Jones and Baumgartner 2005).  ‘Dynamic agenda representation’: policy agendas respond to changes in public priorities (Jennings and John 2009; Bevan and Jennings 2013). Public priorities tend to reflect ‘problem status’ of particular issues (Wlezien 2005; Jennings and Wlezien 2012).  Theoretical expectation: policy agendas will tend to respond to changes in issue salience, overriding issue ownership strategies.

5. Party popularity and issue ownership  Parties’ ratings on issues tend to rise and fall across the board (‘macro-competence’) (Green and Jennings 2012). Less popular parties have fewer issues on which they hold a reputation for competence (Green 2011).  Consequently, issue ownership incentives may be greater for unpopular incumbents (popular incumbents may be more able to pursue a wider range of issues, beyond their traditional issue strengths).  Theoretical expectation: issue ownership will matter less to popular incumbents, who can govern on a broader policy agenda, and will matter more to unpopular incumbents.

6. Hypotheses Issue Ownership Hypothesis: H1: Governing parties attend more to issues which they own, i.e. hold a reputation for competence/delivery. Issue Ownership/Salience Hypothesis: H2: Issue ownership has a lesser impact on the policy agenda when an issue is salient to the public. Issue Ownership/Popularity Hypothesis: H3: Issue ownership has a greater effect on the policy agenda when incumbents are unpopular.

7. Measuring issue ownership MeanOwner Source: aggregate-level survey data from 1997-2001 election cycle in the U.K. Rank (Labour) 8 8 3 1 9 4 7 10 2 12 11 6 5

8.  Aggregate level data on public opinion and policy agendas in the U.S. (1939-2012) and the U.K. (1945-2012) coded according to a modified set of Policy Agendas Project issue categories:  Policy agenda: proportion of attention to issue topics in the U.S. (State of the Union and ‘most important laws’) and U.K. (Queen’s Speech and Acts of Parliament).  Issue ownership: 9,288 survey items on the party ‘best able to handle’ or most trusted ‘to do a better job of handling’ an issue. (Ownership rank scale reversed.)  Issue salience: data on the ‘most important problem’. Data

9.  Twelve issue categories: 1. The Economy 2. Rights & Minorities 3. Health 4. Labour, Employment & Immigration 5. Education 6. Environment 7. Law & Order 8. Welfare & Housing 9. Defence 10. Foreign Affairs 11. Government Operations 12. Other Data

10.  Time series cross-sectional model:  Dependent variables first tested for stationarity (ADF tests). Data modeled in level form.  Twelve issue topics (i.e. panels).  Autoregressive first order process, with the rho estimated to vary by panel, to allow for varying rates of persistence of the policy agenda.  Panel-corrected standard errors: to control for panel heteroscedasticity and contemporaneous correlations of errors. Method

11. AGENDA it = α * 0 + α * 1 OWNERSHIP it-c + β * 0 SALIENCE it + β * 1 SALIENCE it *OWNERSHIP it-c + β * 2 POP it + β * 3 POP it *OWNERSHIP it-c + μ it μ it = ρ μ it-1 + ε it Method H3 Rho Intercept H1 H2

12. Results Policy Agenda it United KingdomUnited States Issue Ownership it 1.391** (0.365) 3.028** (1.074) Issue Salience it 0.267** (0.071) 0.362** (0.101) Issue Ownership it * Issue Salience it -0.015+ (0.008) -0.023+ (0.012) Government Popularity it 0.201** (0.060) 0.470* (0.195) Issue Ownership t * Government Popularity it -0.030** (0.008) -0.053* (0.022) Constant -1.553 (2.582) -17.397+ (9.636) Observations442562 Number of panels12 R-Squared0.3630.345 H1 H2 H3

13. Marginal effects: U.K.

15. Marginal effects: U.S.

17.  Findings offer support to the hypotheses:  Parties in government tend to attend to their ‘best’ issues.  Effects of issue ownership are mediated by issue salience.  Effects of issue ownership are moderated by popularity.  Implication: interaction of issue ownership and issue salience for the policy agenda of parties in government differs from strategies of parties in election campaigns. Summary

18.  Party incentives are not the same in government as at election time: finding on interaction of issue salience and issue ownership for policy agendas is different than for elections - has implications for wider literature.  Choice of measures matters: rank order of issue ownership within a party’s possible issues is preferable to ‘party best able to handle’ a given issue (indicates core issues for a party). Implications