Party institutionalization makes party labels meaningful to the electorate shaping the issues raised by parties and candidates. In systems with weak party institutionalization party labels are not understood by citizens who face uncertainty as to the positions of parties and candidates. These environments leave a void in the bag of issues politicians and parties have to highlight the party''s strengths during, and outside of, electoral campaigns. By using a novel dataset comprised of Op-Ed articles written by politicians in a highly institutionalized (United States) and a weakly institutionalized party system (Venezuela) I am able to compare how the dynamics of issue politics are affected by the level of institutionalization of the parties and the party system and show that the level of party institutionalization affects these dynamics. In contexts of high party institutionalization, the prevalence of issue advantage encourages politicians to talk-past-each-other. In contrast, were party institutionalization is weak politicians will engage with opponents more often than not, effectively talking-to-each-other.
