Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How Issue Ownership Shapes Executive and Legislative Agendas

2017/03/30 by Jane Green, Will Jennings · 62 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Economics #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Gender Politics and Representation #Government (linguistics) #Incentive #Law #Law and economics #Legislature #Mandate #Market economy #Parliament #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Public administration #State (computer science) #Statute

paper · open access · doi:10.1017/s0007123416000636

published in British Journal of Political Science 49(2), 443-466 (Cambridge University Press)

openalex publication_date 2017/03/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Election-oriented elites are expected to emphasize issues on which their party possesses ‘issue ownership’ during campaigns. This article extends those theories to the content of executive and legislative agendas. Arguing that executives have incentives to pursue their party’s owned issues in the legislature, it theorizes three conditions under which these incentives are constrained: when governments are responsive to issues prioritized by the public, when a party has a stronger electoral mandate and under divided government. The theory is tested using time-series analyses of policy agendas of US congressional statutes and State of the Union addresses (1947–2012) and UK acts of Parliament and the Queen’s Speech (1950–2010). The results offer support for the theory, and are particularly strong for the US State of the Union address, providing insights into institutional differences. The implications provide reassurance concerning the conditions under which governments focus attention only on their partisan issue priorities.

Citations

• Valence as Macro-Competence: An Analysis of Mood in Party Competence Evaluations in Great Britain
• What To Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data
• Who sets the agenda and who responds to it in the Danish parliament? A new model of issue competition and agenda‐setting

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Related

• The Dynamics of Issue Ownership in Presidential Campaigns
• Campaign communication and legislative leadership
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• Issue ownership and government participation: Explaining parties’ issue attention at the subnational level
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