Changes and Fluctuations in Issue Ownership: The Case of Sweden, 1979–2010

Abstract

Issue ownership (IO) has been an important concept in the analysis of party behaviour, party strategy and party competition for several decades. More recently, it has also been of growing interest for research on voting behaviour. Traditionally, IO has been regarded as a stable phenomenon where parties have different issue profiles and are advantaged by different political issues or issue‐areas. Recently, however, many studies have reported change and fluctuations of IO, and the same studies also makes it clear that we know surprisingly little about what might cause, or facilitate, change in issue ownership. In fact, we do not even have systematic studies of how stable issue ownership is, or how frequent shifts in issue ownership actually are. The aim of this article is to explore the extent of change and stability in issue ownership in Sweden. For this purpose, the Swedish national election studies from 1979 to 2010 are utilised. Although recent research has indicated that changes in IO have increased over time, this is not supported in the Swedish case. Instead, issue ownership seems never to have been a particularly stable phenomenon. However, in line with our theoretical expectations, we show that ownership of economic issues is more volatile compared to ownership of other issues.

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

“…While voters' issue ownership perceptions appear relatively stable and persistent on the aggregate level (Seeberg, 2017), albeit not completely resistant to change (e.g., Bélanger, 2003;Christensen et al, 2015), individual voters' issue ownership assessments appear to be highly variable and dynamic (Kleinnijenhuis and Walter, 2014;Lanz and Sciarini, 2016). Although both dimensions of issue ownership have been shown to fluctuate on the individual level in response to campaign information in the media or from parties (e.g., Aalberg and Jenssen, 2007;Dahlberg and Martinsson, 2015;Tresch et al, 2015;Walgrave and Lefevere, 2017;Walgrave et al, 2014;Walgrave et al, 2009;Walgrave and de Swert, 2007), it is often argued that the associative dimension is more stable than competence issue ownership evaluations (e.g., Tresch et al, 2015).…”

What can a party say? How parties' communication can influence voters' issue ownership perceptions

“…First of all, a considerable amount of over time-variation in issue ownership perceptions has been documented in a number of countries (e.g., Brasher, 2009;Christensen et al, 2015;Goul Andersen and Hansen, 2013;Green and Jennings, 2012;Martinsson, 2009;Meyer and Müller, 2013;Pope and Woon, 2009). Among the causes of this variation, Green and Jennings (2012) find evidence of the impact of events, such as economic shocks, as well as the cost of ruling on what they term 'macrocompetence', a sort of general, non-issue specific 'issue' ownership perception.…”

What is Issue Ownership and How Should We Measure It?

“…For some, probably not least students of party competition, the first solution may seem tempting. Research (e.g., Christensen et al 2015;Stubager and Seeberg 2016;Walgrave et al 2009) has shown, and the tests above confirmed, that issue ownership assessed by the standard measure is a shortterm phenomenon that varies substantially across time. Both the founding fathers and Egan (2013), thus, seem to have been wrong on the temporal dimension.…”

“…First, the temporal aspect is not specified leaving respondents to draw on both short-and long-term considerations when answering the question. Although Egan (2013) ends up defining issue ownership as a long-term phenomenon, he (Egan 2013, 53-4) himself points out and recent scholarship (e.g., Christensen et al 2015;Stubager and Seeberg 2016;Walgrave et al 2009) shows that issue ownership assessed using the standard measure can be unstable at both the aggregate and individual levels. This instability is what would be expected based on public opinion theories of priming, agenda-setting (e.g., Iyengar and Kinder 1987;McCombs 2004), and top-of-the-head answering of survey items (cf.…”