Setting the Agenda or Responding to Voters? Political Parties,Voters and Issue Attention

Why do political parties prioritise some policy issues over others? While the issue ownership theory suggests that parties emphasise policy issues on which they have an advantage in order to increase the salience of these issues among voters, the riding the wave theory argues instead that parties respond to voters by highlighting policy issues that are salient in the minds of citizens. This study sheds new light on the selective issue emphasis of political parties by analysing issue attention throughout the entire electoral cycle. On the basis of a quantitative text analysis of more than 40,000 press releases published by German parties from 2000 until 2010, this article provides empirical support for the riding the wave theory. It shows that political parties take their cues from voters by responding to the issue priorities of their electorate. The results have important implications for political representation and the role that parties play in democracies.     

Unity or Distinction over Political Borders? The Impact of Mainstream Parties in Local Seat Majorities on Refugee reception

This study exploits close elections in Sweden to assess the causal relationship between seat majorities for mainstream political parties and refugee reception policy. The study focuses on the two dominant mainstream political blocs, in a centre-right and a centre-left coalition, during three waves of elections from 2002 to 2010. In doing so, the study makes a few contributions to current research: Firstly, besides addressing a current knowledge gap in the focus on mainstream parties and refugee reception policy, this study investigates the impact of seat majorities which potentially have a more influential position compared to individual parties. Secondly, the study relies on an empirical strategy which allows comparison of comparable cases. Lastly, the study focuses on mainstream parties at the local level of government within one institutional context and thus addresses the obstacle of case comparability within cross-country studies. In conclusion, this study finds that the relationship between the mainstream political blocs and refugee reception policy is of an associative nature. In order to find significant estimates of seat majorities, the win margin for each bloc needs to be substantial. These results indicate that there is a unified political attitude over the mainstream blocs towards refugee reception and that other factors, and not political seat majorities, have contributed to the uneven distribution of refugees among municipalities in Sweden.     

When,How and Why Are Junior Coalition Parties Able to Affect a Government's Foreign Policy? A Study of Swedish Coalition Governments 2006–2014

Junior partners in a coalition government are torn between an eagerness to profile themselves, and to show loyalty to the coalition. We investigate when, how and why junior coalition parties affect foreign policy and profile themselves despite demands for national unity. We study two Swedish centre‐right governments in 2006–2010 and 2010–2014. The parties' foreign policy positions in election manifestos are compared to the foreign policy positions presented in the joint Alliance manifesto and yearly government declarations. An explorative analysis of possible explanations for junior parties' influence is based on elite interviews. The results indicate that junior coalition parties might influence the foreign policy in symbolic value related issues, but less so in issues with real policy implications. Our analysis reveals the importance of the leading member of the coalition and how junior parties converge over time towards the position of the senior coalition member.