Associative Issue Ownership Research Articles

Associative issue ownership in a highly fragmented multiparty context: The Netherlands (2021)

Associative issue ownership (AIO) has proven its value in describing issue competition and explaining voting behavior. Yet, it is unclear whether and to what extent AIO also differentiates parties and influences vote choice in highly fragmented, multiparty systems. In such a context, parties must differentiate from many electoral competitors, which makes AIO worth pursuing. At the same time, obtaining unequivocal ownership may be a very difficult endeavor in the face of so many rivals. This paper aims to assess these questions empirically by employing the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study 2021 on a system with 17 elected parties (ENPP = 8). At the aggregate level, we find unequivocal issue ownership for 4 of the 14 issues under study. AIO of most other issues is contested, either by parties with very similar policy positions (within-block competition) or by parties with opposing positions (between-block competition). A final set of issues remain unclaimed. At the individual level, perceptions of issue ownership explain the composition of voters’ party consideration sets (pre-elections) and their actual vote choice (post-elections). These impacts are stronger when voters associate the party with an issue they find important. We conclude that AIO perceptions are an important factor to consider when studying party dynamics and voting behavior in a context of highly fragmented multipartyism.

Political issues (Self-Presentation of Political Actors)

Political issues (Self-Presentation of Political Actors)

How voters form associative issue ownership perceptions. An analysis of specific issues

To achieve high measurement accuracy with less computational time in phase shifting interferometry, a random phase retrieval approach based on difference map normalization and fast iterative algorithm (DN&FIA) is proposed, it doesn't need pre-filtering, and has the advantage of the iterative algorithms-high accuracy, moreover, it also has the advantage of non-iterative algorithms-timesaving, it only needs three randomly phase shifted interferograms, and the initial phase shifts of the iteration can be random, last but not least, it is effective for the circular, straight or complex fringes. The simulations and experiments verify the correctness and feasibility of DN&FIA.

The (In)stability of Voters’ Perceptions of Competence and Associative Issue Ownership: The Role of Media Campaign Coverage

Recent work has suggested that issue ownership has a competence and an associative dimension and that both dimensions are less stable than originally assumed. This study is the first attempt to directly compare the stability and change of voters’ perceptions on both dimensions. Using data from the 2015 Swiss Election Study, linking data from a combined panel/rolling cross-section survey with an extensive media analysis, this study finds that voters are more likely to maintain their issue ownership perceptions if the party they identify as the issue owner before the campaign receives a higher share of media campaign coverage. This stabilizing effect is conditional on the importance of the issue for the voter, and it is stronger for voters’ competence evaluations than for their party-issue associations, which proved to be more stable. Thus, the results confirm the literature’s previously untested assumption that voters’ associative ownership perceptions are more stable than their competence ownership evaluations.

Long-term associative issue ownership change: a panel study in Belgium

ABSTRACTIssue ownership has gained a prominent position as one of the key theories to understand how voter’s issue perceptions affect their electoral behavior. Yet, whereas the original theory assumed that party reputations were relatively stable, various studies have shown that issue ownership perceptions fluctuate over time. Despite the growing evidence that ownership perceptions are dynamic, we know surprisingly little about the determinants of change, especially at the individual level. This paper develops an individual-level framework to understand how issue ownership perceptions change over time, arguing that mediated party communication is a key driver of change. It also incorporates individual features of voters, most notably their political predispositions – as determinants of changing issue ownership perceptions. We test our model on unique longitudinal panel data from Belgium, spanning a five-year period. The results suggest that party communications, government participation, party size and voter’s party preferences determine changes in ownership perceptions.

Measuring Issue Ownership: A Comparative Question Wording Experiment

Issue ownership, or the idea that some parties are considered by the public to be better able or more committed to dealing with specific issues, is increasingly used in studies of electoral choice. Yet, various scholars have argued that if measures of issue ownership are confounded with party choice, this raises concerns regarding their usability to predict electoral choice. This research note examines to what extent various measures of issue ownership are confounded with voters’ party preferences and voters’ agreement with the party's position on the issue. Relying on an online survey‐embedded question wording experiment fielded in two countries (Belgium and Denmark), question wording effects for two dimension of issue ownership are examined: competence issue ownership and associative issue ownership. It is found that, in both countries, the two associative issue ownership measures were less affected by party preference and positional agreement. The most used competence issue ownership measures are most confounded with party choice and positional agreement in the experiment. Results in the two countries are largely similar, the main exception being that one of the two associative measures performs worse in Denmark. The results imply that scholars should take care in using measures of especially competence issue ownership to predict the vote, but that also country differences affect the validity of issue ownership measures.

The Micro-Foundations of Party Competition and Issue Ownership: The Reciprocal Effects of Citizens’ Issue Salience and Party Attachments

While previous research on the reciprocal effects of citizens’ issue attitudes and their party support emphasize citizens’ issuepositions, political competition revolves equally around issuesalience– that is, debates over which issue areas political parties should prioritize. Using multi-wave panel survey data from Germany and Great Britain, this study analyzes the reciprocal effects of citizens’ issue salience and their party support, and concludes that citizens’ issue priorities bothinfluenceandare influenced bytheir party attachments and, moreover, that these effects are linked to parties’ long-term associative issue ownership. This effect is strongest among supporters of a small issue-orientated niche party, the German Greens.

Issue Competence and its Influence on Voting Behavior in the Swiss 2015 Elections

AbstractThe Liberal Radical party and – even more so – the Swiss People's party are the two winners of the Swiss 2015 election. In this contribution, we evaluate whether and to what extent issue ownership voting may help to account for the electoral success of these two parties. To that end, we distinguish the two dimensions – the associative and the competence dimension – of the concept and we rely on data from the on‐line, four‐wave panel survey carried out in the context of the Swiss election studies. Our results highlight the stability of issue ownership perceptions during the course of the campaign on the aggregate level, but they also show the substantial importance of issue ownership voting, on the individual level. More specifically, in line with earlier studies we find that competence issue ownership has a direct impact on the vote choice, whereas the impact of associative issue ownership is far more limited. For both parties under study, being seen as the most competent party on two important issues (migration and the economy) significantly contributes to the explanation of the vote choice.

Measuring issue ownership with survey questions. A question wording experiment

Issue ownership, which has a competence and an associative dimension, refers to the link between issues and parties in voters' minds. Although used frequently in voting research, there remain worries about the validity of its current measures. The measures may be confounded with respondents' (dis)agreement with parties' position and general party evaluations. Through a question wording experiment we compare measures of both issue ownership types and test which are most affected by the two confounding factors. We find that competence issue ownership measures are heavily affected by confounding factors while associative issue ownership wordings are less. Challenging existing research, we find that especially the classic ‘best at handling’-wording tapping competence issue ownership is most conflated with positions and party preference.

Associative Issue Ownership as a Determinant of Voters’ Campaign Attention

Campaigns raise public interest in politics and allow parties to convey their messages to voters. However, voters’ exposure and attention during campaigns are biased towards parties and candidates they like. This hinders parties’ ability to reach new voters. This paper theorises and empirically tests a simple way in which parties can break partisan selective attention: owning an issue. When parties own issues that are important for a voter, that voter is more likely to notice them. Using survey data collected prior to the 2009 Belgian regional elections it is shown that this effect exists independent of partisan preferences and while controlling for the absolute visibility of a party in the media. This indicates that issue ownership has an independent impact on voters’ attention to campaigns. This finding shows that owning salient issues yields (potential) advantages for parties, since getting noticed is a prerequisite for conveying electoral messages and increasing electoral success.

The Effect of Associative Issue Ownership on Parties’ Presence in the News Media

Some studies suggest that challenger parties push new issues onto the agenda, especially when they ‘own’ these issues. Others claim that established parties largely determine how prominent issues appear on the agenda. This article contributes to this debate by focusing on an issue on which challenger parties have most ‘ownership’: immigration. Political claims on this issue made by political parties in newspapers in seven West European countries after three events that could potentially trigger attention to immigration were studied. Large and government parties appear most prominent in the news. However, findings show a significant, positive effect of associative issue ownership on claims-making in the news, while controlling for party size and government status. So, when challengers have issue ownership they appear as claim-makers on the issue. These results paint a balanced picture of the role that challenger and established parties have in setting the agenda.

News, Discussion, and Associative Issue Ownership

Associative issue ownership refers to one of the prerequisites for representative democracy—public awareness of the issue priorities of competing political parties. This article addresses the question of how the instability of associative issue ownership at the micro level of individual voters, which could be due in part to election news and political discussion, adds up to the relative stability of associative issue ownership at the macro level. The data come from a panel survey and a content analysis of newspapers and television news bulletins in the 2010 Dutch Parliamentary Election Campaign. Cross-nested multilevel logistic regression models were applied to estimate the impact of political news and political discussion on different respondents for different parties and issues. The findings show how contagion, by traditional issue ownership associations, explains the relative stability at the macro level in spite of volatility at the micro level. Campaign news and political discussion increase the likelihood of contagion by traditional issue priorities of political parties, while also evoking change due to their convergence on the issues of the campaign, from which the parties that own these issues take advantage, among others the VVD and the PVV in the 2010 campaign.

‘Steal me if you can!’ The impact of campaign messages on associative issue ownership

Whereas extant work on issue ownership treats voters’ issue ownership perceptions as independent variables to explain electoral choice or party behaviour, this article examines whether parties can, by communicating on an issue, turn voters' perceptions of issue ownership to their advantage. In contrast to most previous studies that have focused on competence ownership – measured as a party's capacity to handle an issue – this article analyses the short-term and long-term impact of campaign messages on voters' perceptions of associative ownership, which refers to the voters’ spontaneous party–issue association, regardless of whether or not voters consider the party as the most competent at dealing with the issue at hand. Based on an online experimental design in Belgium, we show that parties are unable to steal issues that are associated with another party. However, by communicating on their own issues, parties can reinforce their reputation as an associative owner – but only in the short run and only if their previous ownership reputation is not overly strong.

The Associative Dimension of Issue Ownership

Issue ownership is commonly conceptualized as multidimensional, consisting of a “competence” dimension and an “associative” dimension. Because existing operationalizations of issue ownership tap only the former dimension, we focus on associative issue ownership: the spontaneous identification between specific issues and specific parties in the minds of voters. Survey evidence from Belgium shows that the associative dimension of issue ownership can be measured, that it differs from competence issue ownership, and that it is an independent determinant of voting behavior.