Avoidance and engagement: Do societal problems fuel political parties’ issue attention?

TY - JOUR

T1 - Avoidance and engagement

T2 - Do societal problems fuel political parties’ issue attention?

AU - Seeberg, Henrik Bech

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.

PY - 2023/3

Y1 - 2023/3

N2 - An important part of political parties’ competition for votes is the extent to which parties avoid or engage the issues that rival parties talk about. Despite a large literature on this topic, it remains largely unknown when parties engage. Drawing on research on political attention allocation and party behaviour, this study argues that societal problems are a central source of issue engagement: The engagement is due to a pressure to not ignore electorally important problems. The analysis shows that issue engagement emerges because parties address the same issues in a negative development. Moreover, and particularly important for issue engagement, parties attend more to a negative development if other parties already attend to the development, particularly at elections. The argument is tested across 16 issue areas through the collection and coding of 5523 press releases from seven parties in Denmark at a quarterly level from 2004 to 2017.

AB - An important part of political parties’ competition for votes is the extent to which parties avoid or engage the issues that rival parties talk about. Despite a large literature on this topic, it remains largely unknown when parties engage. Drawing on research on political attention allocation and party behaviour, this study argues that societal problems are a central source of issue engagement: The engagement is due to a pressure to not ignore electorally important problems. The analysis shows that issue engagement emerges because parties address the same issues in a negative development. Moreover, and particularly important for issue engagement, parties attend more to a negative development if other parties already attend to the development, particularly at elections. The argument is tested across 16 issue areas through the collection and coding of 5523 press releases from seven parties in Denmark at a quarterly level from 2004 to 2017.

KW - issue emphasis

KW - Issue engagement and avoidance

KW - party competition

KW - political parties

KW - problems

U2 - 10.1177/13540688211066415

DO - 10.1177/13540688211066415

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85122136477

SN - 1354-0688

VL - 29

SP - 270

EP - 280

JO - Party Politics

JF - Party Politics

IS - 2

ER -