Electoral competition through issue selection
Aragonès, Enriqueta
Castanheira, Micael
Giani, Marco
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica
Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica

Date: 2012
Description: 37 p.
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.
Rights: Tots els drets reservats.
Language: Anglès
Series: Departament d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica. Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica / Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC). Working papers
Series: Working papers ; 903.12
Document: Working paper
Subject: Party strategy ; Salience ; Issue selection and ownership ; Priming



34 p, 889.7 KB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > Working papers > Fundamentals Unit of the Economic Analysis. Working papers

 Record created 2012-12-11, last modified 2022-09-04



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