Electoral Competition through Issue Selection

Aragonés, Enriqueta, Micael Castanheira and Marco Giani
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Enriqueta Aragones

No 9012, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Politics must tackle multiple issues at once. In a first-best world, political competition constrains parties to prioritize issues according to the voters' true concerns. In the real world, the opposite also happens: parties manipulate voter priorities by emphasizing issues selectively during the political campaign. This phenomenon, known as priming, should allow parties to pay less attention to the issues that they intend to mute. We develop a model of endogenous issue ownership in which two vote-seeking parties (i) invest to attract voters with "better" policy proposals and (ii) choose a communication campaign to focus voter attention on specific issues. We identify novel feedbacks between communication and investment. In particular, we find that stronger priming effects can backfire by constraining parties to invest more resources in all issues, including the ones they would otherwise intend to mute. We also identify under which conditions parties prefer to focus on their "historical issues" or to engage in issue stealing. Typically, the latter happens when priming effects are strong, and historical reputations differentiates parties less.

Keywords: Electoral competition; Issue selection and ownership; Party strategy; Priming; Salience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Electoral Competition through Issue Selection (2015)
Working Paper: Electoral Competition through Issue Selection (2012)
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