IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/pscirm/v4y2016i03p555-571_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Issue Engagement in Election Campaigns The Impact of Electoral Incentives and Organizational Constraints

Author

Listed:
  • Meyer, Thomas M.
  • Wagner, Markus

Abstract

It is easier for voters to make informed electoral choices when parties talk about the same issues. Yet, parties may decide against such “issue engagement.” We hypothesize that issue engagement between parties is more likely (a) when the similarity of their policy positions means that both parties have clear electoral incentives to talk about the same topics and (b) when parties face few organizational constraints in terms of campaign resources. Our empirical analysis of 2453 press releases by Austrian parties shows that ideological proximity and party resources affect the level of issue engagement. These findings suggest that issue engagement is less likely precisely where it is needed most, which has important implications for understanding the democratic quality of election campaigns.

Suggested Citation

  • Meyer, Thomas M. & Wagner, Markus, 2016. "Issue Engagement in Election Campaigns The Impact of Electoral Incentives and Organizational Constraints," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 555-571, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:4:y:2016:i:03:p:555-571_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2049847015000400/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giebler, Heiko & Meyer, Thomas M. & Wagner, Markus, 2021. "The changing meaning of left and right: supply- and demand-side effects on the perception of party positions," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 31(2), pages 243-262.
    2. Denter, Philipp, 2020. "Campaign contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    3. Schwarzbözl, Tobias & Fatke, Matthias & Hutter, Swen, 2020. "How party‒issue linkages vary between election manifestos and media debates," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 43(4), pages 795-818.
    4. Ivanusch, Christoph & Zehnter, Lisa & Burst, Tobias, 2023. "Communicating in an eventful campaign: A case study of party press releases during the German federal election campaign 2021," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 86.
    5. Chitralekha Basu & Matthew Knowles, 2021. "The Revelation Incentive for Issue Engagement in Campaigns," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 132, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:4:y:2016:i:03:p:555-571_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ram .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.