Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP9012
Authors: Enriqueta Aragones; Micael Castanheira; Marco Giani
Abstract: Politics must tackle multiple issues at once. In a first-best world, political competition constrains parties to prioritize issues according to the voters' true concerns. In the real world, the opposite also happens: parties manipulate voter priorities by emphasizing issues selectively during the political campaign. This phenomenon, known as priming, should allow parties to pay less attention to the issues that they intend to mute.We develop a model of endogenous issue ownership in which two vote-seeking parties (i) invest to attract voters with "better" policy proposals and (ii) choose a communication campaign to focus voter attention on specific issues. We identify novel feedbacks betweencommunication and investment. In particular, we find that stronger priming effects can backfire by constraining parties to invest more resources in all issues, including the ones they would otherwise intend to mute. We also identify under which conditions partiesprefer to focus on their "historical issues" or to engage in issue stealing. Typically, the latter happens when priming effects are strong, and historical reputations differentiates parties less.
Keywords: electoral competition; issue selection and ownership; party strategy; priming; salience
JEL Codes: D72; H11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| parties' communication strategies (D79) | voter prioritization of issues (K16) |
| stronger priming effects (C92) | increased investment in all issues (H54) |
| voter attention manipulation (D72) | electoral outcomes (K16) |
| parties' emphasis on certain issues (D72) | voters assign greater importance to these issues (D72) |
| muted issues (E63) | loss of salience (G41) |