Attacks and Issue Competition: Do Parties Attack Based on Issue Salience or Issue Ownership?

Various studies have been devoted to explaining the conditions under which parties engage in attack behavior. However, the existing literature has overlooked the issues on which parties attack. This study addresses this gap by arguing that the issues on which parties attack others are conditioned on their salience and the parties’ ownership. We argue that parties decide to increase attacks on issues that receive high levels of scrutiny in society and in the media (salience hypothesis). At the same time, the attention devoted to attacks is also expected to be higher on issues that parties own (issue ownership hypothesis). Therefore, attention to attacking others on a salient issue is expected to be the highest for parties that own a salient issue (congruence hypothesis). Using data on parties’ attacks during question time sessions from Belgium and the United Kingdom, together with a diverse set of measures on salience and ownership, we confirm our expectations in both cases. Parties attack others on salient issues and on issues that they own, and when a party has ownership over a salient issue, it will devote the greatest attention to attacking on that issue. These results provide an understanding of parties’ attack behavior and contribute to the broader issue competition literature.