IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/amposc/v53y2009i4p838-854.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Dynamics of Political Attention: Public Opinion and the Queen's Speech in the United Kingdom

Author

Listed:
  • Will Jennings
  • Peter John

Abstract

This article represents the effect of public opinion on government attention in the form of an error‐correction model where public opinion and policymaking attention coexist in a long‐run equilibrium state that is subject to short‐run corrections. The coexistence of policy‐opinion responsiveness and punctuations in political attention is attributed to differences in theoretical conceptions of negative and positive feedback, differences in the use of time series and distributional methods, and differences in empirical responsiveness of government to public attention relative to responsiveness to public preferences. This analysis considers time‐series data for the United Kingdom over the period between 1960 and 2001 on the content of the executive and legislative agenda presented at the start of each parliamentary session in the Queen's Speech coded according to the policy content framework of the U.S. Policy Agendas Project and a reconstituted public opinion dataset on Gallup's “most important problem” question. The results show short‐run responsiveness of government attention to public opinion for macroeconomics, health, and labor and employment topics and long‐run responsiveness for macroeconomics, health, labor and employment, education, law and order, housing, and defense.

Suggested Citation

  • Will Jennings & Peter John, 2009. "The Dynamics of Political Attention: Public Opinion and the Queen's Speech in the United Kingdom," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 838-854, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:53:y:2009:i:4:p:838-854
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00404.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00404.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00404.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Engle, Robert & Granger, Clive, 2015. "Co-integration and error correction: Representation, estimation, and testing," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 39(3), pages 106-135.
    2. Banerjee, Anindya & Dolado, Juan J. & Galbraith, John W. & Hendry, David, 1993. "Co-integration, Error Correction, and the Econometric Analysis of Non-Stationary Data," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288107.
    3. Wlezien, Christopher, 1996. "Dynamics of Representation: The Case of US Spending on Defence," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(1), pages 81-103, January.
    4. Luke Keele, 2007. "Social Capital and the Dynamics of Trust in Government," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(2), pages 241-254, April.
    5. Davidson, Russell & MacKinnon, James G., 1993. "Estimation and Inference in Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195060119.
    6. Jennings, Will, 2009. "The Public Thermostat, Political Responsiveness and Error-Correction: Border Control and Asylum in Britain, 1994–2007," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 847-870, October.
    7. Jones, Bryan D. & Sulkin, Tracy & Larsen, Heather A., 2003. "Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(1), pages 151-169, February.
    8. Suzanna De Boef & Luke Keele, 2008. "Taking Time Seriously," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 184-200, January.
    9. Stimson, James A. & Mackuen, Michael B. & Erikson, Robert S., 1995. "Dynamic Representation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(3), pages 543-565, September.
    10. Clarke, Harold D. & Stewart, Marianne C., 1995. "Economic Evaluations, Prime Ministerial Approval and Governing Party Support: Rival Models Reconsidered," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 145-170, April.
    11. Soroka, Stuart N. & Wlezien, Christopher, 2005. "Opinion–Policy Dynamics: Public Preferences and Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(4), pages 665-689, October.
    12. Sara Binzer Hobolt & Robert Klemmemsen, 2005. "Responsive Government? Public Opinion and Government Policy Preferences in Britain and Denmark," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53, pages 379-402, June.
    13. de Boef, Suzanna & Granato, Jim, 1999. "Testing for Cointegrating Relationships with Near-Integrated Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(1), pages 99-117, January.
    14. Sara Binzer Hobolt & Robert Klemmemsen, 2005. "Responsive Government? Public Opinion and Government Policy Preferences in Britain and Denmark," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53(2), pages 379-402, June.
    15. Granger, C. W. J. & Newbold, P., 1974. "Spurious regressions in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 111-120, July.
    16. Davidson, James E H, et al, 1978. "Econometric Modelling of the Aggregate Time-Series Relationship between Consumers' Expenditure and Income in the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 88(352), pages 661-692, December.
    17. Durr, Robert H., 1993. "What Moves Policy Sentiment?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 158-170, March.
    18. Clarke, Harold D. & Stewart, Marianne C. & Whiteley, Paul F., 1998. "New Models for New Labour: The Political Economy of Labour Party Support, January 1992–April 1997," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(3), pages 559-575, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Hannah L. Paul & Andrew Q. Philips, 2022. "What goes up must come down: Theory and model specification of threshold dynamics," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1273-1289, September.
    2. Simon D Angus, 2024. "Tracking Policy-relevant Narratives of Democratic Resilience at Scale: from experts and machines, to AI & the transformer revolution," SoDa Laboratories Working Paper Series 2024-07, Monash University, SoDa Laboratories.
    3. Fengyu Wang & Mi Zhou & Huansheng Yu, 2024. "Is More Always Better? Government Attention and Environmental Governance Efficiency: Empirical Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(16), pages 1-17, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jørgen Bølstad, 2015. "Dynamics of European integration: Public opinion in the core and periphery," European Union Politics, , vol. 16(1), pages 23-44, March.
    2. Mark D. Ramirez, 2009. "The Dynamics of Partisan Conflict on Congressional Approval," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(3), pages 681-694, July.
    3. Charles G. Renfro, 2009. "The Practice of Econometric Theory," Advanced Studies in Theoretical and Applied Econometrics, Springer, number 978-3-540-75571-5, February.
    4. Armèn Hakhverdian, 2009. "Capturing Government Policy on the Left–Right Scale: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1956–2006," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(4), pages 720-745, December.
    5. Scheiblecker, Marcus, 2013. "Between cointegration and multicointegration: Modelling time series dynamics by cumulative error correction models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 511-517.
    6. Waleerat Suphannachart & Peter Warr, 2011. "Research and productivity in Thai agriculture," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 55(1), pages 35-52, January.
    7. Hee Soo Lee & Tae Yoon Kim, 2018. "Hedge Fund Styles and their Contagion from the Equity Market," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 91-112, March.
    8. Adrian C. Darnell, 1994. "A Dictionary Of Econometrics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 118.
    9. Singh, Tarlok, 2008. "Testing the Saving-Investment correlations in India: An evidence from single-equation and system estimators," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 1064-1079, September.
    10. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2003. "Time-series Econometrics: Cointegration and Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2003-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    11. Hee Soo Lee & Tae Yoon Kim, 2022. "A new analytical approach for identifying market contagion," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-35, December.
    12. D. Ventosa-Santaulària, 2009. "Spurious Regression," Journal of Probability and Statistics, Hindawi, vol. 2009, pages 1-27, August.
    13. Mizon, Grayham E., 1995. "A simple message for autocorrelation correctors: Don't," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 267-288, September.
    14. Baquedano, Felix G. & Liefert, William M., 2014. "Market integration and price transmission in consumer markets of developing countries," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 103-114.
    15. Gerdesmeier, Dieter, 1996. "The role of wealth in money demand," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 1996,05e, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    16. Ekaterini Panopoulou, 2005. "A Resolution of the Fisher Effect Puzzle: A Comparison of Estimators," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp067, IIIS.
    17. David F. Hendry & Grayham E. Mizon, 2016. "Improving the teaching of econometrics," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 1170096-117, December.
    18. Denise Côté & Christopher Graham, 2004. "Convergence of Government Bond Yields in the Euro Zone: The Role of Policy Harmonization," Staff Working Papers 04-23, Bank of Canada.
    19. Murthy, N. R. Vasudeva & Phillips, Joseph M., 1996. "The relationship between budget deficits and capital inflows: Further econometric evidence," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 485-494.
    20. Campos, Julia & Ericsson, Neil R. & Hendry, David F., 1996. "Cointegration tests in the presence of structural breaks," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 187-220, January.

    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:wly:amposc:v:53:y:2009:i:4:p:838-854. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5907 .

    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.