Jane Green and Will Jennings

Universities of Manchester and Southampton

Valence Politics: How Competence Matters to Voters, Parties and Governments

How issue ownership and salience shape government agendas

University of Vienna, 22nd October 2012

Operationalising party competence and issue ownership

General ‘mood’ in party competence evaluations (Green and Jennings, 2012; BJPolS)

Performance associated issue-by-issue fluctuations in competence; responsive to exogenous indicators

Relatively stable reputations on different issues

Issue ownership: Mean competence rating

Issue ownership: Mean advantage over other parties

Issue ownership: Within-party rank of competence

itc-it*1

*0it μ COMPETENCEααAGENDA

Democratic issue handling, 1980 - 2010

10

20

30

40

50

60

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Economy (Gallup) Foreign Affairs (Gallup)

National Problems (ABC/WaPo) Tax (NBC/WSJ)

Social Security (NBC/WSJ) Democratic Party Well Organised (Pew)

MIP (Pew) MIP (Gallup)

U.S. macro-competence, by party, 1944 - 2010

67% common variation 51% common variation

25

30

35

40

45

50

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Republican Party

25

30

35

40

45

50

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Democratic Party

Public opinion responsiveness to exogenous performance: US GDP and handling of prosperity

-12

-8

-4

0

4

8

12

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1944 1946 1948 1950 1952

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1952 1954 1956 1958 1960

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1960 1962 1964 1966 1968

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1968 1970 1972 1974 1976

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1980 1984 1988 1992

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1992 1994 1996 1998 2000

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

Governing Party Best on Prosperity Growth in GDP (%)

Public opinion responsiveness to exogenous performance: UK NHS waiting list times

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1957 1960 1963

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1964 1967 1970

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1970 1974

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1974 1979

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1979 1983 1987 1991 1995

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1997 2001 2005 2009

Governing Party Worst on Health NHS Waiting List

Public opinion responsiveness to exogenous performance: UK NHS waiting list times

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

Best

Par

ty o

n He

alth

400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200NHS Waiting List

Fitted values gov_nhs_std

Relatively stable advantages (with fluctuation): Stability in issue ownership: UK, 1992 - 2008

-50

-40

-30

-20

-10

0

10

20

30

Mar

-92

Sep-9

3

May

-94

Jul-9

5

Jul-9

6

Apr-9

7

May

-98

Jul-9

9

Jul-0

0

Feb-0

1

Feb-0

2

Sep-0

3

Sep-0

4

Feb-0

5

Sep-0

6

Aug/S

ep-0

7

Aug-0

8

Year

Net

Co

nse

rvat

ive

% a

dva

nta

ge

Law and Order Taxation Asylum Europe Vote Intention Advantage

British Conservatives’ ranking on ‘Conservative’ issues (Green, 2011, BJPolS)

Relatively stable advantages (with fluctuation): Stability in issue ownership: UK, 1992 - 2008

British Conservatives’ ranking on ‘Labour’ issues (Green, 2011, BJPolS)

-50

-40

-30

-20

-10

0

10

20

30

Mar

-92

Sep-9

3

May

-94

Jul-9

5

Jul-9

6

Apr-9

7

May

-98

Jul-9

9

Jul-0

0

Feb-0

1

Feb-0

2

Sep-0

3

Sep-0

4

Feb-0

5

Sep-0

6

Aug/S

ep-0

7

Aug-0

8

Year

Net

Co

nse

rvat

ive

% a

dva

nta

ge

Health Education Economy Unemployment Vote Intention Advantage

Should parties govern on owned issues, and when?

Parties have different issue priorities; policy-seeking in office

Parties use government to enhance a reputation for commitment to issues and delivery.

“the ability to resolve a problem of concern to voters. It is a reputation for policy and program interests, produced by a history of attention, initiative and innovation toward these problems, which leads voters to believe that one of the parties (and its candidates) is more sincere and committed to doing something about them.”

Issue ownership is….

Petrocik (1996: 826)

Should parties govern on owned issues, and when?

Parties have different issue priorities; policy-seeking in office

Parties use government to enhance a reputation for commitment to issues and delivery.

Governments have incentives to focus attention on their electorally beneficial issues

Median mandate theory: manifestos predict policy outcomes

But: governments are especially responsive to problem-solving imperatives : literature on new problems and salient issues

And: issue ownership considerations should be especially influential for less popular parties in government

Hypotheses

H1: Governing parties attend to an issue more when they have a reputation for issue ownership on that issue.

H2: The effects of Issue ownership evaluations on governing policy agendas will be mediated by the salience of the policy issue.

H3: The effects of Issue ownership evaluations on governing policy agendas will be attenuated by the electoral popularity of the governing party.

Dependent variables US and UK policy agendas 1945 to 2010, using adapted

coding from the Policy Agendas Project Nine comparable issue categories in the US and UK:

economy, health, labour, education, environment, crime, social issues, foreign affairs, and ‘other’

Cases US and UK government agendas Executive agendas (State of the Union addresses in US and

Queen’s Speech in the UK) Legislative outputs (Statutes of US Congress, Acts of UK

Parliament)

Data and Cases

Main effects and mediating variables Party competence in handling issues (>5,000 poll questions

about the party ‘best able to handle’ issue X or the party trusted ‘to do a better job of handling’ issue Y

Issue salience (the ‘most important problem’) Party popularity: vote intention share

To test for lagged effects of party competence, and to deal with potential endogeneity, the measures are constructed with all available survey data from the previous election.

Robustness checks: controlling for party, using seat share for popularity, various checks on handling of missing data

Main and mediating variables

Operationalising issue ownership

Mean competence in the previous electoral cycle (level)

Between-party rank of competence in the previous electoral cycle (majority, or lead)

Within-party rank of competence in the previous electoral cycle (relative within-party advantage)

itc-it*1

*0it μ COMPETENCEααAGENDA

Analysis

Two-step analytic procedure Pooling the data and estimating effects for three separate

operationalisations of ownership Issue specific effects using the rank measure of ownership

Time series cross-sectional AR(1) models fitted using Prais-Winston estimation method to control for serial autocorrelation. Panel corrected standard errors for pooled analysis

AGENDAit = α*0 + α*

1COMPETENCEit-c + β*1MIPit

+ β*2MIPit*COMPETENCEit-c + β*

3POPULARITYit + β*

4POPULARITYit*COMPETENCEit-c

itc-it*1

*0it μ COMPETENCEααAGENDA

18

AGENDAit

Executive

(State of the Union)

Legislative Outputs

(Statutes of US Congress)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Party Competenceit (level) -0.031 (0.063)

- - - 0.021 (0.029)

- - -

Party Competenceit (majority) - -0.500 (2.207)

- - - 0.739 (0.697)

- -

Party Competenceit (ownership) - - 1.197** (0.536)

2.044 (5.331)

- - 0.347** (0.171)

4.387** (1.799)

MIPit 0.474* (0.243)

0.402*** (0.091)

1.065*** (0.234)

1.073*** (0.246)

0.047 (0.059)

0.066*** (0.026)

0.147*** (0.055)

0.081 (0.059)

MIPit * Party Competenceit -0.000 (0.004)

0.079 (0.108)

-0.082*** (0.030)

-0.083*** (0.032)

0.000 (0.001)

0.003 (0.023)

-0.009 (0.007)

-0.005 (0.007)

Popularityt - - - 0.106 (0.852)

- - 0.639** (0.277)

Party Competencet * Popularityt - - - -0.016 (0.107)

- - -0.081** (0.035)

Constant 9.350** (3.768)

7.949*** (1.868)

-0.461 (3.590)

-5.806 (42.224)

10.548***

(1.591)

11.279***

(0.912)

8.831*** (1.305)

-22.736 (14.133)

R-squared 0.166 0.153 0.219 0.224 0.410 0.425 0.461 0.282

N 265 265 265 265 281 281 281 281

Panels 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

19

AGENDAit

Executive

(Speech from the Throne)

Legislative Outputs

(Acts of U.K. Parliament)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Party Competenceit (level) 0.015 (0.039)

- - - 0.036 (0.060)

- - -

Party Competenceit (majority) - -0.035

(0.840) - - - 0.353

(1.122) - -

Party Competenceit (ownership) - - 0.232‡

(0.172) 0.718

(0.710) - - -0.027

(0.285) 2.691*** (0.966)

MIPit -0.061

(0.136) 0.035

(0.043) 0.075

(0.060) 0.077

(0.060) 0.193

(0.234) 0.039

(0.063) -0.129 (0.110)

0.122 (0.107)

MIPit * Party Competenceit 0.002

(0.002) 0.023

(0.030) -0.004 (0.009)

-0.002 (0.011)

-0.003 (0.004)

0.013 (0.069)

-0.014 (0.018)

-0.013 (0.017)

Popularityt - - - 0.067

(0.092) - - - 0.331***

(0.115) Party Competencet * Popularityt

- - - -0.013 (0.018)

- - - -0.067***

(0.023)

Constant 6.947***

(2.340) 7.857*** (1.231)

6.239*** (1.360)

3.692 (3.822)

7.674** (3.390)

9.160*** (0.056)

9.775*** (1.770)

-3.670 (5.180)

R-squared 0.049 0.057 0.038 0.045 0.199 0.180 0.195 0.207

N 394 394 394 394 376 376 376 376

Panels 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

Issue-specific models: main effects for competence

Issue OwnershipEconom

yHealth Labour Educatio

nEnviro

nCrime Social Foreign Other

US

Executive Agenda

27.879+(14.293)

13.745(8.684)

4.675(6.644)

3.565(16.172)

-0.337(5.601)

49.186(30.045)

-30.042(36.211)

-33.350(20.760)

-6.958(26.390)

Legislative Outputs

-1.653(2.141)

-5.502(3.405)

4.022*(1.919)

-6.878(4.066)

0.731(1.919)

10.708(10.405)

23.304*(8.672)

6.126(4.120)

10.941(13.336)

UK

Executive Agenda

0.942(2.227)

0.590(0.416)

-1.793(1.237)

1.142(1.722)

-2.682(2.570)

-0.897(1.916)

2.960*(1.409)

6.119**(1.656)

4.725(3.574)

Legislative Outputs

-2.962(3.618)

-0.284(0.463)

0.539(1.282)

2.677*(1.069)

6.761(5.944)

4.122*(1.806)

2.251*(0.887)

1.203(0.771)

12.177**(4.462)

† p ≤ 0.10, * p ≤ .05, ** p ≤ .01

Issue-specific models: Competence * Salience

MIP * Issue Ownership

Economy

Health Labour Education

Environ

Crime Social Foreign Other

US

Executive Agenda

-0.131*(0.051)

-0.659**(0.207)

1.269+(0.735)

-0.106(0.346)

0.302(0.466)

0.016(0.131)

-0.327(0.247)

-0.121+(0.063)

-0.306+(0.156)

Legislative Outputs

-0.007(0.008)

-0.013(0.082)

-0.294*(0.131)

0.162+(0.089)

0.106(0.262)

-0.101+(0.049)

-0.003(0.072)

-0.028*(0.013)

0.072(0.065)

UK

Executive Agenda

-0.015(0.013)

0.011(0.010)

0.009(0.022)

-0.156(0.133)

-0.162(0.185)

0.068(0.072)

-0.142+(0.071)

-0.042(0.029)

-0.050(0.082)

Legislative Outputs

0.068**(0.021)

0.009(0.012)

-0.028(0.023)

-0.119(0.087)

-0.339(0.388)

0.088(0.065)

-0.047(0.054)

-0.009(0.015)

0.010(0.097)

† p ≤ 0.10, * p ≤ .05, ** p ≤ .01

Issue-specific models: Competence * Popularity

Popularity*Ownership

Economy

Health Labour Education

Environ

Crime Social Foreign Other

US

Executive Agenda

-0.455(0.275)

-0.215(0.162)

-0.126(0.115)

-0.058(0.313)

0.003(0.120)

-0.965(0.585)

0.635(0.685)

0.704+(0.407)

0.262(0.482)

Legislative Outputs

0.039(0.041)

0.103(0.067)

-0.076*(0.035)

0.115(0.079)

-0.018(0.040)

-0.173(0.201)

-0.438*(0.165)

-0.109(0.081)

-0.244(0.243)

UK

Executive Agenda

0.002(0.052)

-0.009(0.011)

0.045+(0.025)

-0.024(0.050)

0.086(0.063)

0.007(0.044)

-0.050(0.038)

-0.103*(0.041)

-0.061(0.089)

Legislative Outputs

-0.003(0.086)

0.003(0.012)

-0.001(0.026)

-0.073*(0.031)

-0.166(0.145)

-0.115**(0.042)

-0.061*(0.025)

-0.027(0.020)

-0.301*(0.113)

† p ≤ 0.10, * p ≤ .05, ** p ≤ .01

Marginal effects: US and UK

Social issues: US Crime / law and order: UK

-5.0

-2.5

0.0

2.5

5.0

Mar

gina

l Eff

ect

30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70

Popularity

Acts of UK Parliament - Effect of Party Competence

-20.0

-15.0

-10.0

-5.0

0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

Mar

gina

l Eff

ect

30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70

Popularity

Statutes of US Congress - Effect of Party Competence

Robustness and validity checks

Controlling for party does not alter the significance or direction of the reported main effects or interactions No separate party effect on the State of the Union address Democrats attend more to environment issue and ‘other’ category for

statutes of congress Labour attend more to health and social issues for Queens speech Conservatives attend more to economy, and ‘other’ category in Acts of

Parliament; Labour attend more to foreign affairs.

Modelling seat share not vote share (and seat share*ownership), controlling for seat share in the vote share models, and vice versa

Alternative treatment of missing data in the construction of the rank variable, either at the median or the lowest rank positions

Implications for theory

Issue ownership theories are not just relevant to party and candidate campaigns.

Campaign strategies may provide voters with information about future government priorities.

Issue salience and issue ownership considerations are trade-offs for parties in government; this could be similar to campaign ownership effects.

Issue ownership provides a particularly useful explanation of government agendas for less popular governments.

Effects cannot be extrapolated from one issue domain to all others (as characterises some literature in this field).

Jane Green and Will Jennings

Universities of Manchester and Southampton

Valence Politics: How Competence Matters to Voters, Parties and Governments

How issue ownership and salience shape government agendas

University of Vienna, 22nd October 2012

27

25

35

45

55

65

75

8544

-48

48-5

252

-56

56-6

060

-64

64-6

868

-72

72-7

676

-80

80-8

484

-88

88-9

292

-96

96-0

000

-04

04-0

808

-12

Economy

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

92-9

6

96-0

0

00-0

4

04-0

8

08-1

2

Health

2535

45

5565

75

85

48-5

252

-56

56-6

060

-64

64-6

868

-72

72-7

676

-80

80-8

484

-88

88-9

292

-96

96-0

000

-04

04-0

808

-12

Labor Issues

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

92-9

6

96-0

0

00-0

4

04-0

8

08-1

2

Education

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

84-8

8

88-9

2

92-9

6

96-0

0

00-0

4

04-0

8

08-1

2

Environment

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

92-9

6

96-0

0

00-0

4

04-0

8

08-1

2

Crime

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

92-9

6

96-0

0

00-0

4

04-0

8

08-1

2

Social Issues

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

44-4

848

-52

52-5

656

-60

60-6

464

-68

68-7

272

-76

76-8

080

-84

84-8

888

-92

92-9

696

-00

00-0

404

-08

08-1

2

Defense

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

48-5

252

-56

56-6

060

-64

64-6

868

-72

72-7

676

-80

80-8

484

-88

88-9

292

-96

96-0

000

-04

04-0

808

-12

Other

Marginal effects: Labour issues (US)

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Party Competence

Statutes of US Congress - Effect of MIP