The Politics of Partisan Issue Attention: Connecting Congress and Policy Subsystems

Abstract

Attention is a disruptive force in politics; it is also a scarce resource. Decision-makers must prioritize which issues receive attention—typically educing policy change—and which issues are ignored. While issue attention is a key component of policymaking at various levels of analysis, these differing analytical constructs are often compartmentalized and treated as separate from a theoretical standpoint. This study uses the concept of issue attention to analyze connections between two such levels of policymaking abstraction: Congress and policy subsystems. Specifically, issue attention from the two major parties in Congress is analyzed using a unique dataset of over 43,000 speeches given on the floor of the House of Representatives. Times series analysis indicates the parties engage in a clear, substantive policy debate using these floor speeches. More importantly, the minority party is actually able to influence the majority party’s level of attention to specific policy issues—when the minority party shifts focus, the majority party responds. Finally, a case study on U.S. offshore oil and natural gas drilling policy demonstrates how changes to partisan issue attention interact with other exogenous effects—e.g., economic indicators, public opinion, and focusing events—to disrupt subsystem dynamics and result in significant policy change. Taken together, the findings from this study highlight how shifts in attention at the highest levels of decision-making directly impact lower levels of policymaking, such as policy subsystems. The policy process is broad and complex, but understanding these dynamic connections brings the system into sharper contrast.