Issue ownership and government participation: Explaining parties’ issue attention at the subnational level

Svenja Krauss; Katrin Praprotnik; Martin Gross

doi:10.1177/13540688241306732

Issue ownership and government participation: Explaining parties’ issue attention at the subnational level

Svenja Krauss
, Katrin Praprotnik
, Martin Gross

Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Veröffentlichungen: Beitrag in Fachzeitschrift › Artikel › Peer Reviewed

Abstract

The level of attention parties devote to specific issues is one of the key factors in parties’ electoral campaign strategies. Research so far only scarcely focused on parties’ attention towards specific issues at the subnational level—even though some issues are primarily dealt with at this level. Building on a novel data set covering 679 regional election manifestos in Austria and Germany between 1990 and 2019, we assess the influence of party-specific and contextual factors on subnational parties’ issue attention. More specifically, we hypothesize that a party’s national issue ownership has a positive influence on its issue attention in regional election manifestos. This effect should, however, be moderated by whether a regional party is in government at the regional and/or national level. Our results support our hypotheses: While issue ownership has a positive influence, government participation decreases this effect.

Originalsprache	Englisch
Seiten (von - bis)	1018-1036
Seitenumfang	19
Fachzeitschrift	Party Politics
Jahrgang	31
Ausgabenummer	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/13540688241306732
Publikationsstatus	Veröffentlicht - Nov. 2025

Fördermittel

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: All authors acknowledge funding from the International Association for the Study of German Politics (IASGP). Martin Gross acknowledges funding from the LMUexcellent Postdoc Support Fund. Katrin Praprotnik conducted this research under the auspices of the Austrian Democracy Lab, a cooperation with Forum Morgen.

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506014 Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

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10.1177/13540688241306732

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title = "Issue ownership and government participation: Explaining parties{\textquoteright} issue attention at the subnational level",

abstract = "The level of attention parties devote to specific issues is one of the key factors in parties{\textquoteright} electoral campaign strategies. Research so far only scarcely focused on parties{\textquoteright} attention towards specific issues at the subnational level{\textemdash}even though some issues are primarily dealt with at this level. Building on a novel data set covering 679 regional election manifestos in Austria and Germany between 1990 and 2019, we assess the influence of party-specific and contextual factors on subnational parties{\textquoteright} issue attention. More specifically, we hypothesize that a party{\textquoteright}s national issue ownership has a positive influence on its issue attention in regional election manifestos. This effect should, however, be moderated by whether a regional party is in government at the regional and/or national level. Our results support our hypotheses: While issue ownership has a positive influence, government participation decreases this effect.",

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AU - Krauss, Svenja

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AU - Gross, Martin

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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AB - The level of attention parties devote to specific issues is one of the key factors in parties’ electoral campaign strategies. Research so far only scarcely focused on parties’ attention towards specific issues at the subnational level—even though some issues are primarily dealt with at this level. Building on a novel data set covering 679 regional election manifestos in Austria and Germany between 1990 and 2019, we assess the influence of party-specific and contextual factors on subnational parties’ issue attention. More specifically, we hypothesize that a party’s national issue ownership has a positive influence on its issue attention in regional election manifestos. This effect should, however, be moderated by whether a regional party is in government at the regional and/or national level. Our results support our hypotheses: While issue ownership has a positive influence, government participation decreases this effect.

KW - Austria

KW - electoral manifestos

KW - Germany

KW - issue attention

KW - multi-level system

KW - regional elections

KW - subnational politics

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DO - 10.1177/13540688241306732

M3 - Article

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VL - 31

SP - 1018

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JO - Party Politics

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IS - 6

ER -

Issue ownership and government participation: Explaining parties’ issue attention at the subnational level

Abstract

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ÖFOS 2012

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