Looking for the party? The effects of partisan change on issue attention in UK Acts of Parliament

Shaun Bevan; Zachary Greene

doi:10.1017/S175577391400040X

Looking for the party? The effects of partisan change on issue attention in UK Acts of Parliament

Shaun Bevan, Zachary Greene

School of Social and Political Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Political parties matter for government outcomes. Despite this general finding for political science research, recent work on public policy and agenda-setting has found just the opposite; parties generally do not matter when it comes to explaining government attention. While the common explanation for this finding is that issue attention is different than the location of policy, this explanation has never truly been tested. Through the use of data on nearly 65 years of UK Acts of Parliament, this paper presents a detailed investigation of the effect parties have on issue attention in UK Acts of Parliament. It demonstrates that elections alone do not explain changes in the distribution of policies across issues. Instead, the parties’ organizations, responses to economic conditions, and size of the parliamentary delegation influence the stability of issue attention following a party transition.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-24
Journal	European Political Science Review
Early online date	29 Dec 2014
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S175577391400040X
Publication status	Published - Mar 2015

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

parties
issue attention
Britain
agenda-setting

Access to Document

10.1017/S175577391400040X

Bevan, Greene (2015) Looking for the Party?
© Bevan, S., & Greene, Z. (2015). Looking for the party? The effects of partisan change on issue attention in UK Acts of Parliament. European Political Science Review, 1-24. 10.1017/S175577391400040X
Accepted author manuscript, 190 KB

http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S175577391400040X

1 Active

CAP: Comparative Agendas Project
Bevan, S., Baumgartner, F. R., Jones, B., Walgrave , S. & Green-Pedersen, C.
1/01/93 → …
Project: Research Collaboration with external organisation

2 Chapter
1 Paper
1 Article

Gone Fishing: The Creation of the Comparative Agendas Project Master Codebook
Bevan, S., 22 Mar 2019, Comparative Policy Agendas: Theory, Tools, Data. Baumgartner, F., Breunig, C. & Grossman, E. (eds.). Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, p. 17-34
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Open Access
File
The UK Policy Agendas Project
Bevan, S. & Jennings, W., 22 Mar 2019, Comparative Policy Agendas: Theory, Tools, Data. Baumgartner, F., Breunig, C. & Grossman, E. (eds.). Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, p. 176-183
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Transitional Brexit: Interventions on Bureaucratic Activity in the United Kingdom
Bevan, S. & Greene, Z., 7 Apr 2018.
Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

Acts of Parliament
Bevan, S. (Creator) & Jennings, W. (Creator), UK Policy Agendas Project, 2016
DOI: 10.7488/c9f53478-2eb4-4362-8a62-032a47fd37ed, http://www.comparativeagendas.net/uk
Dataset

Cite this

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abstract = "Political parties matter for government outcomes. Despite this general finding for political science research, recent work on public policy and agenda-setting has found just the opposite; parties generally do not matter when it comes to explaining government attention. While the common explanation for this finding is that issue attention is different than the location of policy, this explanation has never truly been tested. Through the use of data on nearly 65 years of UK Acts of Parliament, this paper presents a detailed investigation of the effect parties have on issue attention in UK Acts of Parliament. It demonstrates that elections alone do not explain changes in the distribution of policies across issues. Instead, the parties{\textquoteright} organizations, responses to economic conditions, and size of the parliamentary delegation influence the stability of issue attention following a party transition.",

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Looking for the party? The effects of partisan change on issue attention in UK Acts of Parliament

Abstract / Description of output

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Projects

CAP: Comparative Agendas Project

Research output

Gone Fishing: The Creation of the Comparative Agendas Project Master Codebook

The UK Policy Agendas Project

Transitional Brexit: Interventions on Bureaucratic Activity in the United Kingdom

Datasets

Acts of Parliament

Cite this