Understanding when and why political parties will emphasize some issues over others has enormous scientific and normative implications for the study of party competition. We contribute to this debate by focusing on the timing of the electoral cycle as a crucial moderator of issue emphasis and dialogue tactics. Based on a model considering electoral costs as a function of lack of issue responsiveness and proximity to Election Day, we expect that government parties will have no incentives to engage in issue dialogue at the beginning of the term, but will feel more pressured to follow up on issues introduced by the opposition as the term makes progress. We test this proposition using a novel dataset obtained through text analysis techniques and measuring monthly party speeches over the last 4 electoral cycles in Spain (1996-2011).
