Issue attention at the subnational level: New empirical evidence

How much attention parties devote to specific issues is one of the key factors for explaining political parties’ electoral campaign strategies. Numerous studies analysed parties’ issue emphasis in European or national election manifestos. Yet, politics in multi-level political systems is not just about national or supranational politics but also about subnational issues. Surprisingly, research so far did only scarcely focus on parties’ attention towards specific issues at the regional or local level—even though some issues are primarily dealt with at the subnational level, both legally and administratively. Therefore, in this paper, we ask which factors explain parties’ issue attention at the subnational level. Building on a novel data set covering more than 600 regional election manifestos of 29 parties in Austria and Germany between 1991 and 2019, we assess the influence of party-specific and contextual factors on subnational parties’ issue attention. More specifically, we hypothesize that the party family as well as issue ownership have a positive influence on issue attention. However, we also argue that these effects are moderated by three contextual factors: (a) whether a regional party is in government, (b) whether a party’s national party organisation is in government, and (c) by the overall party system saliency, i.e., the political environment parties are competing in. We test our hypotheses by relying on a dictionary approach and multi-level linear regression analysis. Our results will have important implications for party competition at the subnational level.