Disentangling the Direction of Causality Between Competence Issue Ownership and Party Preference

Abstract

Issue perceptions, particularly issue ownership, are increasingly used to understand voters’ electoral choices (Lefevere, Tresch, & Walgrave, 2015). Issue ownership refers to the idea that voters perceive some parties as better able to “handle” certain issues. Consequently, parties can be considered as “owning” issues they have a good reputation on (Budge & Farlie, 1983; Petrocik, 1989, 1996). These reputations affect voters’ electoral behavior: voters are more likely to vote for a party owning the issues of importance to them (Belanger & Meguid, 2008; Lachat, 2014; Petrocik, 1996; Walgrave, Lefevere, & Tresch, 2012). However, voters’ issue ownership perceptions may be endogenous to their party preference (Walgrave, Tresch, & Lefevere, 2015). This criticism is most often raised against the competence dimension of issue ownership, which refers to parties’ competence in handling an issue. For example, Kuechler (1991) found that competence evaluations reflect vote choices to a high degree, which suggests that the direction of causality between competence issue ownership and party preference could be reversed (van der Brug, 2004). Green and Jennings (2012) find that competence evaluations Granger cause party preference. Yet, most of these studies rely on cross-sectional data, which limit their ability for causal inferences, while others rely on aggregate-level data, making it impossible to track changes at the individual level. Panel data offer the opportunity to assess whether competence issue ownership causes party preference, or whether the reverse causal relationship is dominant. We present analyses based on three-wave panel data collected among a sample of Dutch citizens, which polled respondents for their party preference and competence issue ownership perceptions on the economy in each wave. Our findings suggest that voters’ economic issue ownership is driven more by their vote choices, than vice versa.