Where Does Issue Ownership Come From? From the Party or from the Media? Issue-party Identifications in Belgium, 1991-2005

Abstract

Although widely used in political science to tackle voting behavior and campaign strategy, the issue-ownership thesis remains untested when it comes to the origins of parties’ identification with specific issues. This article explores where issue ownership comes from and/or how it is maintained. The authors test two possible avenues of issue ownership: the party and the mass media. On one hand, parties’ own external communication may stress specific issues, claiming to be best placed to solve these issues. On the other hand, parties could be identified by the media with certain issues, leading to an implicit association between issue and party. The authors test both propositions, drawing on the case of Belgium, a small consociational democracy in Western Europe. Belgium is a good case to examine issue ownership, as its many parties are identified with many issues. Relying on extensive media data and party evidence, they find that issue ownership is related both to party communications and media coverage. This applies in particular to newer, challenging parties that are strongly identified with their core issues. In general, parties’ older communications are drivers of issue ownership; in contrast, recent media coverage contributes to issue ownership. The direction of the causal arrow remains unsure.