On digital front-runners and late-comers: Analyzing issue competition over digitization in German subnational elections

Abstract

Despite the sweeping societal and economic transformation brought about by digitization, it has remained a relatively marginal topic in elections, with parties having few incentives to signal commitment to digitization. Why then would parties start to do so? We address this question by examining party manifestos from German subnational elections in the period between 2010 and 2018. Our analysis contributes to the research on issue competition by looking at why parties engage with the topic of the digitization even though it has neither become politicized nor salient, at present. We find, first, that parties emphasize digitization more in regions belonging to the mid-tier in terms of their degree of digital modernization. Second, parties with more resources and greater ideological compatibility signal more commitment to digitization. Finally, electoral success of the Pirate Party as a credible challenger has been followed by greater emphasis on digitization, especially among the ideologically closest competitors.

Defining artificial intelligence as a policy problem: A discourse network analysis from Germany

“…The second challenge for the ability of government to steer the agenda is related to party politics. Existing research shows that political parties have not yet attributed the same strategic importance to AI that other issues have received (König & Wenzelburger, 2019; Siewert & König, 2019, 2021). Yet, political parties are vote‐, office‐, and policy‐seeking actors (Strom, 1990): they try to increase their chances of re‐election by sending their party voters clear signals on policy issues that they own and that build the core of their electoral strategies (Bélanger & Meguid, 2008).…”