Avoidance and engagement: Do societal problems fuel political parties' issue attention?

An important part of political parties' competition for votes is to what extent parties avoid or engage the issues that rival parties talk about. Despite a large literature on this topic, it remains largely unknown when parties engage. Drawing on research on political attention allocation and party behaviour, this study argues that societal problems are a central source of issue engagement: The engagement is due to a pressure to not ignore electorally important problems. The analysis shows that issue engagement emerges because parties address the same issues in a negative development. Moreover, and particularly important for the issue engagement, parties attend more to a negative development if other parties already attend to the development, particularly at elections. The argument is tested across 16 issue areas through the collection and coding of 5523 press releases from seven parties in Denmark at a quarterly level from 2004 to 2017.

Automated summary

An important aspect of political competition is how parties engage or avoid issues discussed by their rivals. This study argues that societal problems are a key factor in determining issue engagement, as parties face pressure to address important problems that affect voters. The analysis shows that issue engagement occurs when parties address negative developments on the same issues. Furthermore, parties are more likely to engage with negative developments if other parties have already done so, especially during elections.