Electoral competition, political risks, and parties' responsiveness to voters' issue priorities

This article demonstrates how parties' issue responsiveness depends on the degree of electoral competition that they are facing as well as the salience of the issue on the party system agenda. While a growing literature on issue competition has presented empirical evidence on what parties and when they choose riding the wave strategies, we still lack an encompassing framework of why parties sometimes respond to voters' issue priorities and sometimes not. Taking into account the trade-offs between party supporters' priorities and those of the electorate as a whole this paper presents such a framework. It argues and empirically demonstrates that increasing levels of electoral competition as well as higher salience of issues on the party system agenda make parties more responsive to the priorities of the electorate as a whole at the cost of the priorities of their supporters.