Negative issue ownership

Author(s)
Markus Wagner, Thomas Meyer
Abstract

Existing research considers issue ownership to be a positive attribute of political parties, which are seen as 'owning' those policy areas where they are particularly competent and engaged. However, for some citizens a party may also be a negative issue owner if it has a particularly bad reputation for its handling of an issue. This article describes and explains aggregate and individual-level patterns of negative issue ownership using a survey-based measure of handling perceptions from the 2013 Austrian National Election Study (n = 3,266). Naming a particular party as a negative issue owner is affected by partisanship, but also by policy preferences and government performance evaluations. The effects of issue importance vary across issues. These findings lay the groundwork for more research on negative attributions of issue ownership and their empirical consequences on vote choice.

Organisation(s)
Department of Government
Journal
West European Politics
Volume
38
Pages
797-816
No. of pages
20
ISSN
0140-2382
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2015.1039380
Publication date
2015
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
506014 Comparative politics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Political Science and International Relations
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/negative-issue-ownership(25f1a194-68ec-47df-b2c5-932d017aba66).html