Challenging dominant parties issue ownership a study of the religious parties the BJP and the PAS 1

Both the theoretical and analytical components presented in this thesis are restricted only to the point where religious political parties can defeat the dominant party in elections and

1

Chapter 1 Introduction Research Question

In this thesis I explore the following question – why do some religious political parties emerge to form democratically elected governments in some democracies, while others fail to do so? This is an important question because in recent decades, religion has undergone a form of revivalism or renaissance which has seen it figure rather prominently in various guises in the politics of many states The so-called return of religion to the public domain is exemplified by momentous events like the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the prominent role of Pope John Paul II in bringing down the ‘Iron Curtain’ across Europe, amongst others things Religion has undergone a renaissance because secular nationalism in the postcolonial era has simply failed to make good on its promises of economic modernisation, material well-being and social justice for all At the same time, secular nationalism has been blamed as the cause of moral decadence and the widespread rise of social ‘evils’ at the societal level.1

Religious activists and leaders have therefore aggressively promoted religion as the panacea for the apparent failures of secular nationalism Religion can hold great appeal across a wide section of society because the ends that it pursues are transcendent and all-encompassing, and religion is considered the guarantor of

1 Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1993), 21-23

Turkey, and the Indian People’s Party (Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP) in India The Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut, or FIS) won the 1991 elections in

Algeria, but the results were invalidated and the FIS was outlawed by the army, plunging Algeria into years of civil war thereafter In the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ in the Arab world, several Islamist parties have also come to power as well, like the Ennahda

in Tunisia and the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt On the other hand, many others have floundered or have not achieved similar levels of success

This thesis focuses specifically on non-anti-systemic religious political parties that operate in political systems where a dominant political party is experiencing a crisis or a

2 Ibid., 24; 32

Main Argument

To explain this puzzle, I draw my explanation from the literature on issue ownership I begin with the basic premise that forming the government is the undeniable and intrinsic aim of all religious political parties Therefore, they must present themselves as a credible party that is ready to take up the mantle of governance and leadership Since elections are the only legitimate means of coming to power in democracies, it is in the electoral arena where the religious party’s display of credibility

as a governing alternative should be witnessed The party’s strategies and tactics during the electoral campaigning period is therefore extremely crucial in influencing its chances of winning the elections to place it in a good stead to form the government

I argue that religious parties must successfully display credible issue ownership over what I label as ‘national-temporal’ issues in elections This is crucial for two simple reasons Firstly, emphasising religious issues that are typically within the domain of the religious parties will not increase their electoral chances Religious issues only resonate with the party’s constituents, who most likely comprise a small segment of the electorate Without winning the support of a larger segment of the electorate, the party

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cannot claim to be representative of a wider section of society In some cases, emphasising religious issues might even backfire as an electoral tactic Secondly, it is precisely the ownership of these national-temporal issues that have enabled the dominant party to have formed the government in the first place Even if the dominant party did not depend on the ownership of such issues to come to power in the first place, at the very least it is its ownership over these issues that has helped the party to prolong and entrench its dominance It follows that if the religious party then wants to contest for governmental power by displaying itself as a credible governing alternative, it has to wrest away or ‘steal’ the ownership of such issues from the dominant party In the following chapter I lay out the explanatory framework in further detail to illustrate how religious parties can hijack the ownership over these ‘national-temporal’ issues

At this juncture I would like to distinguish between emphasising and aiming to own national-temporal issues, and the concept of party moderation or the inclusion-moderation hypothesis Political party moderation involves the rejection of radicalism and the pacification of strategies by adopting measures that are conciliatory, cooperative and less confrontational A party can either go through behavioural or ideological moderation, or even both.3 The inclusion-moderation hypothesis, which refers more to Islamist political parties, describes ‘the idea that political groups and individuals may become more moderate as a result of their inclusion in pluralist political

3 See Günes Murat Tezcür, “The Moderation Theory Revisited: The Case of Islamic Political Actors,” Party Politics

16, no 1 (2010): 69-88

5

processes.’4 Discarding religious issues and trumpeting national-temporal issues might

be akin to going through party moderation, conditioned by its inclusion in the democratic processes of contestation for political power However, in the process of elaborating my theoretical framework by no means do I suggest that religious political parties indeed go through a process of moderation A party might still be considered ‘radical’ in the sense that it might still hold dear to its agenda of wanting to enforce a moral order upon society, but at the same time it might consciously project a ‘moderate’ image during elections by highlighting and campaigning on issues that are irreligious in nature How does one reconcile those two seemingly contradictory ‘faces’ of a religious political party? In this paper I avoid discussing and making claims about the ‘moderateness’ or

‘radicalness’ of a religious party at any point in time This subject matter is not the central concern of this thesis

I also want to underline that issue ownership is not the only factor that influences the chances of a religious party in making a successful claim for governmental power There are many other factors at play as well, which include successful coalition-building strategies, the strength of party organisation, the party’s ability to mobilise effectively, the financial strength of the parties, its links with civil society actors, and many others Without dismissing the importance and relevance of these key factors, this thesis aims

to highlight a largely underspecified and under-researched yet vital aspect of electoral politics that concerns the nature of the political and strategic ‘talk’ employed by religious

4 Jillian Schwedler, “Can Islamists Become Moderates? Rethinking the Inclusion-Moderation Hypothesis,” World

Politics 63, no 2 (2011): 348; see also Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “The Path to Moderation: Strategy and Learning in

the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party,” Comparative Politics 36, no 2 (2004): 205-228; Jillian Schwedler, Faith in

Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1-34

6

parties in electoral campaigns I argue that this is an underrated yet critical factor that influences the chances of success at the ballot box for a religious party, and this thesis aims at advancing this aspect of electoral politics in a theoretical and systematic fashion

Both the theoretical and analytical components presented in this thesis are restricted only to the point where religious political parties can defeat the dominant party

in elections and become the party of government How they will deal with the commitment problem of actually implementing any of their policies or even their religious agenda once they come to power is beyond the scope of this paper.5 Since I

am only interested in how the religious party competes against the dominant party from the perspective of issue ownership, the focus of this thesis will only be limited to the paths and strategies adopted during the period of electoral campaigning as part of their aim in winning elections and governmental power, and no further than that

Case Selection

I concentrate on cases where a religious party is contesting an election in which the dominant party is either in decline or facing an extended period of crisis The dominant party is therefore not as dominant as before, and so this provides a window of opportunity for the religious party to stake a credible claim for governmental power I

select two cases (n=2) based on the paired comparison approach6 to demonstrate my

5 See Stathis N Kalyvas, “Commitment Problems in Emerging Democracies: The Case of Religious Parties,”

Comparative Politics 32, no 4 (2000): 379-398

6 Sidney Tarrow, “The Strategy of Paired Comparison: Toward a Theory of Practice,” Comparative Political Studies

43, no 2 (2010): 230-259

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theoretical framework I choose to focus on two cases instead of only one because a paired comparison approach allows the researcher to match the known confounding variables between the two cases, although admittedly the limited number of cases makes it difficult to control for a larger number of such variables.7 Analysing two cases also ‘reduces the possibility that a supposed determining variable is as critical as it might seem from a single-case study alone.’8 I also do not go beyond two cases as the paired comparison approach ‘offers a balanced combination of descriptive depth and analytical challenge that progressively declines as more cases are added’ and ‘as we increase the number of cases… the leverage afforded by paired comparison becomes weaker, because the number of unmeasured variables increases.’9 Of course, the paired comparison approach is not without its own shortcomings and limitations However, for the purposes of outlining the causal process involved in the theoretical framework of this thesis, adopting a paired comparison approach is sufficient to that end

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of India constitutes the first and the ‘success’ case for this thesis The BJP is a Hindu nationalist party that was established in 1980, but the party traces its roots to its predecessor party, the Indian People’s Organisation

(Bharatiya Jana Sangh, or BJS), founded in 1951 As with the BJP today, the BJS was regarded as the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer

Organisation, or RSS), which is essentially a paramilitary organisation established in

7 Ibid., 244

8 Ibid

9 Ibid., 246

8

1925 whose ideology revolves around Hindu nationalism.10 For the 1977 general

elections, the BJS, together with other opposition parties, merged to form the Janata Party as part of a concerted effort to unite against the Indira Gandhi-led Indian National Congress (the Congress Party, or simply the Congress) in the aftermath of Emergency Rule in India (1975-1977) The Janata Party managed to defeat the Congress Party in the 1977 elections, but party factionalism precipitated its eventual downfall in 1980.11 In

the wake of the electoral humiliation that the Janata Party suffered in 1980, the BJS faction left the party to found the BJP Since then, the BJP has continually contested subsequent elections, finally winning for the first time in 1996 In that year the BJP won

161 seats to emerge as the largest party in parliament However, the BJP government resigned after only thirteen days in power because its leadership knew it would not survive an impending vote of confidence due to a lack of support from other political parties In 1998 there was a snap election which the party again won, but this time round it managed to form a government that survived a vote of confidence even though

it eventually lasted a little over a year This precipitated the 1999 elections which the BJP won yet again, and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government managed to last its full term through to 2004 before it lost in the elections that year Technically speaking, the BJP was therefore in power for six years between 1998 and

2004 In this thesis I focus on the BJP’s electoral campaign in the 1998 General

10 Manjeet S Pardesi and Jennifer L Oetken, “Secularism, Democracy, and Hindu Nationalism in India,” Asian

Security 4, no 1 (2008): 25-26

11 For details on the Janata Party interregnum between 1977 and 1980, see Lloyd I Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber

Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1987), 159-177

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Elections as that year marks the start of the six years that the party was in power I argue that in 1998 the BJP was successful in wresting away ownership over the issue of economic reforms from the erstwhile dominant Congress Party

In contrast, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, or PAS) of

Malaysia constitutes the second and the ‘failure’ case for this thesis The PAS was established in 1951, the same year of founding as the BJS In fact, it first grew as an offshoot of the dominant party in Malaysia today, the United Malays National

Organisation (Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Melayu Bersatu, or UMNO).12 For much of the

1960s the PAS was identified with an ideology that blended Islam and postcolonial precepts, while the 1970s saw the PAS project itself more as a Malay-nationalist party

It is only from the year 1982 onwards that we see the evident emergence of the PAS as

an Islamist political party Under the tutelage of Yusof Rawa as party president, the

party refashioned its institutions and ideology Islamic scholars, or ulama, were

parachuted into positions of leadership in the party, and the party underwent an

‘Arabisation’ and radicalisation of its political discourse Future UMNO-PAS battle lines were now being waged along the lines of religion (Islam) rather than ethnicity (Malay or Malay nationalism).13 In this thesis I focus on the PAS’s electoral campaign in the landmark 2008 Malaysian General Elections This election is considered a landmark election because it was the first election in decades whereby the opposition stood a very good chance of making a huge dent in the electoral prospects of the UMNO-led

12 N J Funston, “The Origins of Parti Islam Se Malaysia,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 7, no 1 (1976): 69

13 Farish A Noor, Islamic Embedded: The Historical Development of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, PAS:

1951-2003 Volume 2 (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Sociological Research Institute, 2004), 349-371

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coalition of parties Eventually the combined total of seats won by the three major opposition parties in Malaysia, including the PAS, successfully denied the government parties its traditional two-thirds majority for the first time since 1969, but this was not enough for any of the three to form the government For the PAS in 2008, I argue that it largely failed to wrest away the ownership over the issue of the economy from the

UMNO, which heads the dominant ruling coalition called the National Front (Barisan

Nasional, or BN)

The selection of the BJP and the PAS is appropriate for this thesis as India and Malaysia provide us with comparable units of study of two not too dissimilar polities Both are former British colonies that endured a combination of both direct and indirect British rule.14 The similarities in the institutional and political make up of both states

strongly bear the imprints of British imperialism, seeing that they both have parliamentary systems of government with first-past-the-post single member plurality electoral systems Both are also federal states, and therefore both central governments share power with the respective state governments Elections are thus held at both the state and the federal levels.15 In terms of pure numbers, India’s population far outpaces Malaysia’s (1.2 billion versus just 30 million) but more importantly, in terms of the level

of ethnic fractionalisation, they are rather comparable India’s ethnic and cultural fractionalisation indices are 0.811 and 0.667 respectively, while Malaysia’s are 0.596

14 Matthew Lange, Lineages of Despotism and Development: British Colonialism and State Power (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 2009), 5

15 In this thesis I focus largely on elections at the federal level, since I am analysing the religious party’s success at the national level

11

and 0.564.16 India and Malaysia are in fact highly heterogeneous and compose of fractured societies, which makes the BJP’s success all the more stellar considering how abnormally large and fractured India’s electorate is Also, as stated earlier, both states have a history of dominant governing parties The Congress has governed India for much of its independence since 1947, while the UMNO-led coalitions (first, the Alliance, and from 1974 onwards, the BN) have governed Malaysia since its independence in

1957

The last point that I want to clarify in this section is the issue of regime type comparability While India is generally regarded as a democracy, Malaysia is usually classified as an authoritarian state But even this distinction is a moot point Malaysia and India have both been classified as democracies by some scholars.17 India, for one,

has also been classified as quasi-democratic.18 In fact, Ayesha Jalal has gone on to argue that even under India’s first and most prominent Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru the Congress Party had an institutionalised brand of authoritarianism that was covert.19Malaysia, on the other hand, is at best a ‘hybrid regime’, or more specifically, a type of

16 James D Fearon, “Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country,” Journal of Economic Growth 8, no 2 (2003):

215-219

17 Edward Friedman and Joseph Wong, “Learning to Lose: Dominant Parties, Dominant Party Systems, and Their

Transitions,” in Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems: Learning to Lose, eds Edward Friedman and Joseph

Wong (New York: Routledge, 2008), 3

18 Marco Rimanelli, “Introduction: Peaceful Democratization Trends in Single-Party-Dominant Countries,” in

Comparative Democratization and Peaceful Change in Single-Party-Dominant Countries, ed Marco Rimanelli (New

York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), 14

19 Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 38-48

authoritarian regimes like Malaysia are considered legitimate, meaningful and competitively contested under relatively free and fair conditions.23 Even if the claim can

be made that the ostensibly authoritarian regime in Malaysia has the means of ensuring favourable electoral results at its disposal, the opposition parties in India have likewise been disadvantaged to the point that elections can grossly favour the Congress Party.24

22 Kenneth F Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico’s Democratization in Comparative Perspective (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 258-259

23 Levitsky and Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” 54-55

24 Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose, 259

In 2008 Malaysia was coded as ‘6’, up from ‘3’ which was its score for much of the late 1990s and 2000s This effectively places Malaysia within the bracket of ‘democratic countries’ as well Therefore, selecting the cases of the BJP in 1998 and the PAS in

2008 should not pose any serious issues of incomparability of cases for the purposes of this thesis

Methods

I rely extensively on a reading of local newspaper reports from India and Malaysia to explicate my argument Newspapers remain an important medium through which information and coverage on political parties are disseminated to the electorate, and they are a readily accessible source of data for a study on elections and electoral campaigning Since the focus of this thesis is the electoral campaigning period of each party, as a general rule I mostly take into consideration newspaper articles featured from the point when the respective parliaments were dissolved up to the day of the elections itself.26 For the Indian case study, I am only limited to an analysis of the major

14

English dailies and weeklies as I do not know any Indian languages.27 However this

should not constitute a major problem, since English language dailies and weeklies in India are the more prominent newspapers as they are more widely circulated than the local language newspapers.28

As a native speaker of the Malay language I am able to analyse both the major English language and Malay language newspapers in Malaysia.29 However, in Malaysia,

the media companies are only privately-owned in name Many of the major stakeholders

of the media companies that own these newspapers have links to the ruling UMNO, and

so there is a reporting bias evident in the newspapers Jason Abbott’s analysis of two

major Malay language newspapers, Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia, clearly showed

that even though the opposition parties received substantial news coverage during the

2008 elections, pro-government reporting bias was greatly evident.30 However, on the

whole both the English language and Malay language newspapers gave substantial media coverage to the opposition parties, and certainly much more so relative to previous election years In 2008 it was also an open secret that much of the campaigning by the opposition parties were carried out through the new media as a

27 The dailies include The Hindu, Business Line, The Times of India, The Economic Times, Hindustan Times, The

Indian Express, and India Today The only weekly analysed in this thesis was Outlook India

28 In the rare instances I had also included foreign English newspaper articles which were relevant, both in the Indian and Malaysian case studies

29 The English language newspapers include The New Straits Times, The Malay Mail, and The Sun Daily The Malay language newspapers include Berita Harian, Harian Metro, and Utusan Malaysia I translated the Malay-language

newspaper reports that I had selected for analysis into English myself

30 Jason P Abbott, “Electoral Authoritarianism and the Print Media in Malaysia: Measuring Political Bias and

Analyzing Its Cause,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 38, no 1 (2011): 1-38

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means to circumvent the pro-government bias of the major newspapers However, the impact of the new media in 2008 has been exaggerated to some degree, and thus its role as a tool for political change and generating alternative discourses and narratives in Malaysia is still questionable.31 Furthermore, a post-electoral survey conducted by

Merdeka Centre found that an overwhelming majority of respondents from peninsular Malaysia at least still heavily relied on the traditional print media, especially newspapers, as a source of information for the 2008 elections.32 With limited data at

hand I am only able to work with newspaper reports, which remain an important source

of information for the public and one that is more easily accessible for research purposes At the same time I bear in mind the general pro-government biasedness of the more prominent Malaysian newspapers in the conduct of my research and analysis

As far as possible I also try to only include and examine direct quotations where the politician’s words were recorded verbatim in the newspaper reports that I analysed for both case studies

Organisation of the Thesis

The organisation of this thesis is as follows The following chapter will address the literature on religious political parties, opposition party strategies in dominant party

31 Joseph Chinyong Liow, “Malaysia’s March 2008 General Election: Understanding the New Media Factor,” The

Pacific Review 25, no 3 (2012): 293-315

32 Respondents were asked to state their top three sources of information for the elections As first choice, 55% of respondents stated ‘Newspapers’, 36.7% stated ‘TV’, and only 3.8% stated ‘Internet/Political Party Websites/Blogs/Emails’ For their second choice, the figures for the three options were 26.8%, 50.7% and 2.7% respectively In another question, respondents were asked the top 3 Internet sources they had referred to – at least 87% of respondents stated that they did not refer to the Internet as a source of news See “Peninsula Malaysia Voter Opinion Poll: Perspective on Issues, the Economy, Leadership and Voting Intentions, 14 th – 21 st March 2008,” Merdeka Centre, accessed January 28 2013, http://www.merdeka.org/pages/02_research.html

16

systems, dominant political parties, and party issue ownership in elections It will also then elaborate on how religious parties attempt to wrest ownership over issues from the dominant political party Chapters 3 and 4 will discuss the case studies of the BJP and the PAS respectively Chapter 5 will conclude the findings of this thesis and its implications for future research

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Chapter 2 Literature Review and Theoretical Framework Religious Political Parties

I begin with a seemingly straightforward question – what exactly is a religious political party? In other words, what makes a political party ‘religious’, as opposed to being ‘socialist’, or ‘conservative’, or even ‘secular’? Yet even the term ‘political party’ is difficult to define Giovanni Sartori argues that political parties are organisations that

embody both an ‘expressive function’, in that they ‘transmit demands backed by

pressure’, as well as a manipulative function, where parties shape public opinion.33

According to Alan Ware, a political party ‘is an institution that (a) seeks influence in a state, often by attempting to occupy positions in government, and (b) usually consists of more than a single interest in the society and so to some degree attempts to ‘aggregate interests.’’34 The first part of Ware’s definition highlights the point that parties, to varying degrees, ultimately aim at influencing state policies, and the most direct way to do so is

by occupying governmental positions The second part of his definition reconfigures Sartori’s point that parties are organisations that both express and manipulate opinions From the perspective of rational choice, John Aldrich argues that the political party is an endogenous institution created and ultimately subject to the whims and fancies of

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political actors, who include the politicians, party activists and seekers and holders The political party is a vehicle for them to achieve political ends, and so the party is maintained or disregarded depending on when it becomes advantageous towards achieving the required political ends.35

office-In an attempt to introduce a new typology of political parties in the world today, Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond provide a conceptual framework that consists of fifteen ideal-types of political parties based on three broad criteria – the type of party organisation, the party’s programmatic orientation and whether the party is pro-democracy or anti-systemic.36 Religion, according to Gunther and Diamond, is one of

three programmatic appeals for mass-based parties, the other two being nationalism and socialism Mass-based religious parties consist of two types – the denominational mass-party, which is a term that they adopted from Otto Kirchheimer, and the proto-hegemonic religious party, also known as the religious fundamentalist party Denominational mass-based parties first emerged in Europe, and examples of these are Christian democratic parties The core beliefs of these parties are religiously informed, decided and interpreted by clerics or even a religious institution like the Catholic Church itself The religious fundamentalist party, on the other hand, relies on a strict and parochial interpretation of religious traditions and texts as the fundamentals of the party’s agenda which it then seeks to impose upon the body politic The authors argue

35 John H Aldrich, Why Parties? A Second Look (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 4-24

36 See Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond, “Types and Functions of Parties,” in Political Parties and Democracy,

eds Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 3-39; Gunther and

Diamond, “Species of Political Parties: A New Typology,” Party Politics 9, no 2 (2003): 167-199

19

that ‘[t]he principal difference between this and the denominational-mass party is that the fundamentalist party seeks to reorganize state and society around a strict reading of religious doctrinal principles, while denominational-mass parties are pluralist and incremental in their agenda.’37

Manfred Brocker and Mirjam Künkler suggest a looser definition of religious political parties For them, religious political parties are ‘parties that hold an ideology or

a worldview based on religion (having, thus, a cross-class appeal), and mobilize support

on the basis of the citizens’ religious identity.’38 While any other party can appropriate religious symbols and terminologies as part of their programmatic appeal, the difference between them and religious parties is that these symbols and terminologies are so central and fundamental to the religious parties.39 At various points in time religious

parties might aggregate and promote non-religious issues in elections, but as both Gunther and Diamond, and Brocker and Künkler point out, at the very core of what defines the identity of such parties is religion and its principles, either as a way to maintain a semblance of ideological purity or even as a means of ‘product differentiation’40 vis-à-vis other competing parties

I posit that the other defining feature of a religious political party is the paramountcy of governmental capture as an overriding party objective Although Ware’s

37 Gunther and Diamond, “Species of Political Parties,” 182

38 Manfred Brocker and Mirjam Künkler, “Religious Parties: Revisiting the Inclusion-Moderation Hypothesis –

Introduction,” Party Politics 19, no 2 (2013): 175

39 Ibid., 176

40 Herbert Kitschelt, The Transformation of European Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1994), 118

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definition of political parties implicitly assumes that most parties eventually aim to occupy governmental positions at least in the longer term, for the religious party this objective is imperative Religious parties are driven by their self-professed aim that a religiously-inspired moral order (but not a religious order per se) needs to be established in a polity, and that they are the agents and facilitators of such a change

They therefore need to become the government In polities where elections serve as the

only legitimate means of governmental capture, religious parties simply must perform well in elections However, if the religious party becomes part of a coalition government but not its dominant or leading party, it might find it difficult to get the backing of other non-religious parties in the coalition to lend support for the enforcement of the party’s moral governing order Winning elections and then being able to form a majority government on their own is therefore the ideal objective of all religious parties This contrasts with other types of political parties, especially those that at most only aim to influence the policy agendas of governments, and are thus content to do so from the margins of power Religious parties can be considered as office-seeking parties, but not

of the strictly rationalist vein, where the pursuit and control of political office to derive material benefits is the party’s end goal.41 Religious parties pursue office as a stepping stone in the hope that they can enforce their moral order upon society

41 For Kaare Strøm, office-seeking parties aim to ‘maximise… their control over political office’, so that they can attain the ‘private goods bestowed on recipients of politically discretionary governmental and subgovernmental

appointment.’ See Kaare Strøm, “A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties,” American Journal of

Political Science 34, no 2 (1990): 567; see also Steven B Woelinetz, “Beyond the Catch-All Party: Approaches to

the Study of Parties and Party Organization in Contemporary Democracies,” in Political Parties: Old Concepts and

New Challenges, eds Richard Gunther, José Ramón Montéro, and Juan J Linz (New York: Oxford University Press,

2002), 152-153

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Opposition Political Parties and Dominant Political Parties

As do most opposition parties many religious parties begin from the margins of power, outside of the governmental fold Starting out as peripheral parties as part of the opposition camp, the aim of governmental capture for many religious political parties is made difficult by the very fact of the incumbency of the parties in government This task

is made even more onerous when the party in power is of the dominant type The literature on dominant political parties is replete with a myriad of definitions of a

‘dominant political party’, and also the ways in which a party becomes and maintains its dominance

Maurice Duverger postulates that ‘a party is dominant when it is identified with an epoch; when its doctrines, ideas, methods, its style, so to speak, coincide with those of the epoch.’42 Dominance is ultimately a function of both influence and belief – a party is said to be dominant when the public essentially holds a party to be dominant.43

Giovanni Sartori cautions the reader on confusing ‘dominant parties’ and ‘dominant party systems’, or what he terms as ‘predominant party systems.’44 Predominant party systems are those where the major party consistently wins an absolute majority of the legislative seats for at least four consecutive elections, as a direct consequence of winning a majority of the electoral votes.45 T.J Pempel suggests a four-dimensional

42 Maurice Duverger, Political Parties, Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State, trans Barbara North

and Robert North (New York: Wiley, 1954), 308

43 Ibid

44 Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, 192-195

45 Ibid., 196

‘historical project’, which involves mutually-supportive policies that shape a national agenda as a legacy of the dominant party).46

Marco Rimanelli describes single-party-dominant polities as the ‘systemic monopolisation of domestic political power, all national structures, and the decision-making process, by an entrenched, single party over a long period of time.’47 Hermann Giliomee and Charles Simkins accept T.J Pempel’s definition of one-party dominance, but unlike him they argue that it is very difficult to distinguish between dominant parties

in ‘full’ democracies, which are mostly industrialised countries, and in dominant party regimes in industrialising countries They conceive the dominant party as a separate regime type with its own unique features, where at least some democratic procedures are upheld.48 Matthijs Bogaards and Françoise Boucek emphasise the

one-structural effects of the political systems and the strategic effects of choices by parties

in electoral competition as a response to the prevailing structures that enable parties to

46 T J Pempel, “Introduction,” in Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes, ed T.J Pempel

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 3-4

47 Rimanelli, “Introduction,” 14

48 Hermann Giliomee and Charles Simkins, “Introduction,’ in The Awkward Embrace: One-Party Domination and

Democracy, eds Hermann Giliomee and Charles Simkins (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1999), xv-xviii

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become dominant.49 Patrick Dunleavy offers a method of identifying ‘dominance’ independent of the party’s tenure in office, which means that we can potentially move away from a post hoc determination of a party’s dominance He links dominance to a party’s level of efficacy – a party is said to be dominant when it is accepted by voters to

be ‘exceptionally effective.’50 Jean-François Caulier and Patrick Dumont propose a mathematical method of measuring party dominance, which they understand to be ‘the access to government or the ability to control majority decision-making in parliament.’51They propose employing voting power indices which reflect the extent of dominance that the largest party in a parliament holds vis-à-vis other parties in controlling the decision-making and voting processes in parliament, arguing that this is a better measurement of party dominance than the traditional effective number of parties (ENP) index proposed earlier by Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera.52

What are the means through which parties become, and remain, dominant? The answers to this question simultaneously address why attempts by various opposition political parties, including religious parties, to defeat the dominant parties in elections repeatedly fail The list of reasons include the entrenchment of resource asymmetries

49 Matthijs Bogaards and Françoise Boucek, “Introduction: Setting a New Agenda for Research,” in Dominant

Political Parties and Democracy: Concepts, Measures, Cases and Comparisons, eds Matthijs Bogaards and

Françoise Boucek (New York: Routledge, 2010), 7-8

50 Patrick Dunleavy, “Rethinking Dominant Party Systems,” in Dominant Political Parties and Democracy: Concepts,

Measures, Cases and Comparisons, eds Matthijs Bogaards and Françoise Boucek (New York: Routledge, 2010),

23-44

51 Jean-François Caulier and Patrick Dumont, “Measuring One-Party Dominance with Voting Power Indices,” in

Dominant Political Parties and Democracy: Concepts, Measures, Cases and Comparisons, eds Matthijs Bogaards

and Françoise Boucek (New York: Routledge, 2010), 45

52 Ibid., 46-57

24

that favour dominant parties,53 the practice of clientelism by the dominant party with

added protection for the beneficiaries of such a system,54 the failure of opposition

parties to co-operate on electoral strategies,55 the near-monopoly of the media, the

press and means of advertising by the dominant party,56 and/or the co-optation of

anti-regime or anti-dominant party elites.57

Dominant parties also aim at ensuring that they attain an overriding monopoly of the vote in elections In that way, they send out signals to any potential challengers that the party is too strong to be challenged Therefore any potential within-party challengers

or even opposition candidates will have to think very carefully about rebelling against the dominant party This means that it pays off for all parties involved to stick to the status quo, thus ensuring elite unity in the dominant party and the preference for the opposition camp to remain as the ‘loyal opposition’ Voters also see no reason to change the status quo by voting against the dominant party, since they benefit materially from doing so Unless this balance is upset, one would expect this intricate

53 Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose, 1-70

54 Ethan Scheiner, Democracy without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1-30

55 Ray Christensen, Ending the LDP Hegemony: Party Cooperation in Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,

2000), 1-8

56 James J Zaffiro, “The Press and Political Opposition in an African Democracy: The Case of Botswana,” The Journal

of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 27, no 1 (1989): 51-73

57 Carlene J Edie, “Democracy in the Gambia: Past, Present and Prospects for the Future,” Africa Development 25,

no 3&4 (2000): 161-198; David White, “Dominant Party Systems: A Framework for Conceptualizing Opposition

Strategies in Russia,” Democratization 18, no 3 (2011): 655-681

25

order to perpetuate.58 Attempts at opposition coalition building can also repeatedly fail because some component parties suffer from an ‘organisational crisis’ To build coalitions, component parties have to give up some of their party aims and goals to come to a compromise with other component parties However, for parties whose only differentiation factor and incentive for attracting party membership solely rely upon the purity of party ideology and identity, the compromise of such ideals for the sake of coalition-building leads its disillusioned members to believe that the party leadership has ‘sold out’ the party The decline in intra-party cohesion ensues, which greatly destabilises the party and as a result inter-party coalitions become short-lived.59

While much has been theorised about the emergence of party dominance and its

perpetuation, dominant party decline is another matter altogether This describes the

period whereby a dominant party might still be in power, but aspects of its dominance are being threatened greatly The dominant party is muddling through, but it is still hanging on However, much scholarship is devoted only towards discussing the demise

of the dominant party as part of the larger process of democratisation, or only concentrate on specific time periods where the dominant party is already faced with the prospect of losing in elections Bogaards and Boucek claim to ‘explain why dominant parties endure, decline and break down’,60 but they do not actually provide any overarching theory to explain the decline of dominant parties From the perspective of

58 Beatriz Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1-43

59 Stephen Johnson, Opposition Politics in Japan: Strategies under a One-Party Dominant Regime (New York:

Routledge, 2000), 57-61

60 Bogaards and Boucek ”Introduction,” 2

26

political economy Kenneth Greene argues that a party’s dominance is sustained by the incumbent’s access to resources that advantages it and makes it an uneven playing field for opposition parties Thus, when the ability to tap on such resources become greatly constrained, either through privatisation drives or the fallout from economic crises, the incumbency and dominance of the party is in jeopardy.61 Alternatively, based

on Pempel’s four-dimensional concept it can be argued that when any of these dimensions are at great risk it should signal the decline of a dominant party Of the four dimensions described, a party’s dominance would be most seriously threatened when the party struggles to maintain its governmental dominance (the fourth dimension), especially when its ‘historical project’ is no longer deemed as all-important or as relevant as it once used to be by the electorate

Even if we can identify when a dominant party is in decline and that the playing field is now becoming more advantageous for opposition parties (in the case of this thesis, the religious political party), what should the response of opposition parties be? Here it is pertinent to emphasise that dominant party decline is just one side of the equation Decline in party dominance does not directly translate to the coming to power

of opposition parties; what matters more is whether opposition parties are ready and in pole position to defeat the incumbent dominant party in elections.62 Adroit strategies and

tactics that are well-planned out and well-executed by opposition parties greatly

61 Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose, 5-6

62 Valerie J Bunce and Sharon L Wolchik, “Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive

Authoritarian Regimes,” World Politics 62, no 1 (2010): 47

27

increase the chances of them coming to power.63 In polities where elections are the

primary means of contestation for power, and where elections are relatively free, fair, competitive and meaningful, it is crucial then for the religious party to work on an electoral strategy that will greatly enhance the likelihood of winning elections as well as governmental capture

It used to be the case that until the recent past, elections worldwide were contested along the lines of social cleavages.64 But changes in the social structure of

societies, especially in Europe, have led to the decline in cleavages-based voting in favour of issue-based voting.65 As elections are increasingly fought along issues and

issue opinions, I consider it pertinent that any theory on winning elections and governmental capture must centre upon theories and concepts related to the ‘owning’ of such issues Dominant parties continue to be dominant because they consistently portray themselves as credible owners of important electoral issues from election to election, a fact that is largely under-theorised in the scholarship on dominant parties Even if their initial rise to dominance was not as a result of the ownership of such issues, the maintenance of their dominance results from the continued ownership of such governmental issues However, this is not the central concern of this thesis What

63 Ibid., 73; see also Larry Diamond, “Thinking About Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy 13, no 2 (2002): 24

64 Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An

Introduction,” in Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, eds Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (New York: The Free Press, 1967), 1-64; Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity, Competition, and

Electoral Availability: The Stabilisation of European Electorates 1885-1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1990), 212-249

65 Russell J Dalton, “Political Cleavages, Issues, and Electoral Change,” in Comparing Democracies 2: New

Challenges in the Study of Elections and Voting, eds Lawrence LeDuc, Richard G Niemi, and Pippa Norris (London:

Sage Publications, 2003), 201-204

28

is more relevant here is that in order for the religious party to project itself as a credible governing alternative, it must then seek to wrest away the dominant party’s ownership over important issues of the day But there must be an understanding of the concept of issue ownership itself, before one can elaborate on how issue ownership can be contested and then wrested away

Political Parties and Issues

‘Issue competition’ is an umbrella term that includes spatial theory, directional theory, issue salience theory and issue ownership theory They are all related theories that try to explain a particular phenomenon – how parties convince voters that they are

‘in charge’ of a particular issue, and that voters should vote for a particular party because of that Different parties have different ‘reputations’, and so voters respond accordingly to which party they have an affinity with based on issues that are important

to them These inter-related theories diverge on how they try to explain the sources of this ‘reputation’, and how they also try to explain the incentives for a rational voter to side with a particular party in elections.66 In this thesis I focus more specifically on issue

ownership theory

But firstly we need to begin by defining the term ‘issue’ Here I adopt Ian Budge’s definition, which takes issues to be ‘topics raised by one or more party leaderships and/or important among electors.’67 Donald Stokes makes a distinction between

66 John R Petrocik, William L Benoit, and Glenn J Hansen, “Issue Ownership and Presidential Campaigning,

1952-2000,” Political Science Quarterly 118, no 4 (2003): 600

67 Ian Budge, “Issues, Dimensions, and Agenda Change in Postwar Democracies: Longterm Trends in Party Election

Programs and Newspaper Reports in Twenty-Three Democracies,” in Agenda Formation, ed William H Riker (Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993): 43

29

‘position issues’ and ‘valence issues’ Position issues are ‘those that involve advocacy

of government actions from a set of alternatives over which a distribution of voter preferences is defined’, whereas valence issues ‘are those that merely involve the linking of the parties with some condition that is positively or negatively valued by the candidate.’68 Stokes had advocated an understanding of the existence of valence issues alongside position issues as a response and critique to Anthony Downs, who had argued that issue preferences take a scalar form, in that they can be ranked in terms of values ranging from 0 to 100, for example For Downs, proximity matters – voters would prefer to vote for a party whose issue position is the closest to them along that scale.69

Therefore valence issues clearly do not fit the Downsian spatial model, because certain issues simply cannot be quantified as a matter of degree For example, the issue of abortion would only consist of two alternatives – either being pro-abortion or anti-abortion Classifying abortion as a Downsian-style position issue simply does not make sense Valence issues involve achieving a certain ideal or desired aim and therefore do not involve an ordering of alternatives as per the Downsian spatial model Rather, ‘when parties manoeuvre in terms of valence-issues, they choose one or more issues from a set of distinct issue domains.’70

68 Donald E Stokes, “Spatial Models of Party Competition,” The American Political Science Review 57, no 2 (1963):

373

69 Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 115-116; see also James

M Enelow and Melvin J Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1984), 8-14

70 Stokes, “Spatial Models of Party Competition”, 374

30

Returning to Budge’s definition of issue, it also gives us a clue as to the origins of issues, or more specifically, the sources of issue competition The sources of issue competition include

(1) the promotion of particular issues by strategic politicians as effective leverage in the struggle for power, (2) issues moved to the centre of public discourse when highlighted by external disruptions to the established order, (3) new issue species that are old issues transformed by isolation and specialisation in a new context to something quite different than their origins, and (4) cybernetic issues selected for importance because internal contradictions and imbalances in the political system generate corrective needs 71

Issues therefore do not emerge in a vacuum, and neither do they just arise naturally It

is clear that in some cases politicians intentionally make salient issues as part of a strategic choice, while in other cases issues emerge and become predominant because

of external conditions that are beyond the control of the government, parties and politicians alike

For the religious party that wants to challenge the dominant party over the ownership of issues, the range of contestable issues under consideration must comprise the ‘national-level’ types, like economic and security issues, inter alia, which are so critical because they matter greatly to a rather large segment of the electorate.72

Therefore religious political parties must transform themselves into truly national-level

71 Edward G Carmines and James A Stimson, “On the Evolution of Political Issues,” in Agenda Formation, ed

William H Riker (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993): 153-156

72 For a broad classification of electoral issues, see Ian Budge and Dennis Farlie, Explaining and Predicting Elections:

Issue Effects and Party Strategies in Twenty-Three Democracies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), 28-30

The emphases on ‘national-temporal’ issues by the religious party signal to the electorate its credibility and readiness to be considered a worthy option or alternative for government candidacy, especially when a window of opportunity arises in favour of the religious party It is undoubtedly a great irony that a religious party should come to power not because of its religious credentials but because it has focused on ‘national-temporal’ issues The next step is to consider how religious political parties and its leaders then grapple with the national-temporal issues at hand They must try to ‘work’ the issues in such a manner that it will be to their greatest advantage in order to grant

73 Éric Bélanger, “Issue Ownership by Canadian Political Parties 1953-2001,” Canadian Journal of Political Science

36, no 3 (2003): 555

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them the much-needed leverage vis-à-vis the dominant party Issue ownership theory lends much insight towards how they can ‘work’ these issues in their favour

Issue Salience and Directional Theory

Issue ownership theory really developed from saliency theory, first properly formulated by Ian Budge and Dennis Farlie Based on the concept of selective emphasis, they argue that political parties will only make salient issues that present the parties themselves in a more favourable light, rather than raising issues that are clearly identified with other opposing parties Parties then try to make as prominent as possible the issues that they raise, and to that effect increase the profile of the party in the hope

of garnering more votes.74 The stakes involved in mentioning unfavourable issues that play into the hands of other rival parties are pretty high – ‘mentioning them at all runs the risk of rendering an unfavourable issue salient and helping to push voters into another party.’75 The Dominance Principle and Dispersion Principle postulated by William Riker are also similar to saliency theory, although Riker does not mention issue salience explicitly.76 Therefore, even if a party in the Downsian sense adopts a position

on all the contestable issues in an election, it would be more rational not to make salient any issue(s) which would prove detrimental to their vote garnering efforts

74 Budge and Farlie, Explaining and Predicting Elections, 23-25

75 Ian Budge, “Electoral Volatility: Issue Effects and Basic Change in 23 Post-War Democracies,” Electoral Studies 1,

33

As an alternative theory in understanding party issue competition, George Rabinowitz and Stuart Elaine MacDonald propose a directional theory of issue voting based on the concept of symbolic politics Instead of issue positioning, they argue that a voter grasps an issue in terms of direction – whether he takes a favourable or an opposing stand on it In other words, issues are represented as a dichotomy and not as ordered dimensions on a scale The second component of the theory involves intensity; that is, the strength of emotions and feelings evoked about a particular issue for the voter, and the magnitude of effort put in by the candidate to rally voters around that issue.77 The authors argue that a party’s candidates should then take clear and strong stands to persuade voters that it wants to be closely identified with a particular issue Simultaneously ‘candidates who can successfully evade an issue are able to make that issue far less relevant for judgement about themselves.’78 In fact, in multi-issue settings

‘candidates are likely to be intense on issues that benefit them and silent on issues that are potentially damaging.’79 Therefore Rabinowitz and MacDonald are effectively describing issue salience Directional theory diverges from the Downsian spatial model not only with regards to the dichotomous nature of issues, but also by incorporating the issue salience dimension

77 George Rabinowitz and Stuart Elaine MacDonald, “A Directional Theory of Issue Voting,” The American Political

Science Review 83, no 1 (1989): 93-121; see also Stuart Elaine MacDonald, Ola Listhaug, and George Rabinowitz,

“Issues and Party Support in Multiparty Systems,” The American Political Science Review 85, no 4 (1991):

1107-1131

78 Rabinowitz and MacDonald, “A Directional Theory of Issue Voting,” 98

79 Ibid., 99

on to theorise the ownership aspect of issue competition It is assumed implicitly that ownership can naturally follow from salience, which is not necessarily always the case Making an issue salient and pressing claims of ‘owning’ an issue are two distinct matters Rabinowitz and MacDonald, on the other hand, present their claims using a spatial model that includes a ‘region of acceptability’ – a party will be penalised if it finds itself out of this region as it is perceived to be so extremely intense.81 The most dominant position for any party would then be ‘the most extreme position in the direction

of that preference still lying within the region of acceptability.’82 Yet if this was the party strategy for two parties who claim to have similar directional preferences and similar levels of intensity on an issue, what would then differentiate them in the eyes of the voter? There is nothing to stop these two parties from adopting such a strategy, since any points within that region are equally advantageous anyway.83

80 Budge, “Electoral Volatility,” 149

81 Rabinowitz and MacDonald, “A Directional Theory of Issue Voting,” 108

82 Ibid., 109

83 Ibid., 108

35

Issue Ownership Theory

There is a case to be made then that issue ownership should be made distinct as

an analytical concept in its own right John Petrocik, in developing his issue ownership theory, pays homage to Budge and Farlie and Rabinowitz and MacDonald by alluding to the similarities between his theory, and issue saliency theory and directional theory.84

Nevertheless, issue ownership theory goes beyond both these theories since it is evident that issue ownership is more than just about identifying one’s own party or one’s self with an issue and highlighting it because it is to their advantage and strengths Petrocik states that a candidate is said to have acquired issue ownership when he

‘successfully frames the vote choice as a decision to be made in terms of problems facing the country that he is better able to “handle” than his opponent.’85 Issue ownership has two sources – incumbency record and party constituencies Incumbent candidates or parties can gain ownership over issues through the level of competency that they have shown or proven during their time in office Challenger parties or candidates additionally acquire an advantage in the form of ‘performance-based ownership’, when they can successfully convince voters that the incumbent party or candidate has failed to ‘handle’ issues and problems while in office Party constituency sources, however, are much more long-term in nature, and they depend on the

84 John R Petrocik, “Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study,” American Journal of

Political Science 40, no 3 (1996): 826

85 Ibid

36

politicisation of group cleavages that the party or candidate has chosen to exploit over the years.86

For Petrocik, issues are not merely ‘topics’ to be raised during elections, but are

in fact problems that require solutions Issue ownership requires the party or candidate

to signal to and convince the voters that a certain issue is a ‘problem’ that they can actually ‘fix’ if given a chance to do so The differentiating factor between parties is any party’s capacity to ‘handle’ an issue, which is gauged by its perceived competency level

to solve problems.87 However, the competence dimension of issue ownership tells only

part of the story According to Stefaan Walgrave, Jonas Lefevre and Anke Tresch, issue ownership theory consists of another element – what they refer to as the ‘associative’ dimension This dimension describes ‘the spontaneous identification of parties with issues in the minds of voters, regardless of whether voters consider the party to be the most competent to deal with these issues; it is rather the consequence of long-term party attention to the issue.’88 They argue that scholars have tended to fuse the associative and competence dimensions together and have given due deference to the competence dimension, whereas both these elements are analytically distinguishable.89

However, it is very difficult to find evidence on the competence dimension of issue ownership, more often than not due to a lack of substantial and relevant data For the

86 Ibid., 827-828

87 Ibid., 830

88 Stefaan Walgrave, Jonas Lefevre, and Anke Tresch, “The Associative Dimension of Issue Ownership,” Public

Opinion Quarterly 76, no 4 (2012): 772

89 Ibid

to buttress its dominance The advantages of having claimed issue ownership over national-temporal issues therefore lie firmly within the dominant party Its longtime record of governance is both the cause and effect of its ability to ‘handle’ problems (competence) and to repeatedly ‘talk’ about such issues (association) Issue ownership and governmental stability reinforce each other, and this makes it extremely difficult for the religious party to challenge the dominant party during elections when important issues of the day are clearly ‘owned’ by the dominant party

Issue Trespassing and the ‘Stealing’ of Issue Ownership

However, there can be instances where issue ownership can change hands Cases of issue trespassing can occur, whereby a party talks about issues that are

90 Petrocik, Benoit, and Hansen, “Issue Ownership and Presidential Campaigning,” 601

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already owned by other parties.91 Given the stack of evidence to show that talking about other parties’ issues might backfire on the party, why and when would a party still engage in issue trespassing anyway? David Damore suggests that factors related to the political environment and the campaign process itself can entice a party to engage in issue trespassing When the ‘mood of the country’ does not allow for the parties to emphasise certain sensitive issues, parties then have no choice but to talk about other parties’ issues to suit the ‘mood’ and the whims of the voters There are also certain issues that voters hold as very important, regardless of which party owns them Therefore, parties are left with little choice but to have to talk about these issues anyway, even if other parties already own them From the electoral campaign point of view, party candidates might engage in issue trespassing if they feel that they are lagging behind their opponents in terms of voter support during the campaigning period

If the issues raised by their opponents resonate well with the voters and are the reasons for their popularity, there is nothing to lose in engaging in issue trespassing for the trailing candidate Whenever possible and justified, candidates can also highlight the opponents’ perceived weaknesses over the party’s issue ownership while at the same time touting their own credibility It might be better for the candidate to trespass positively by emphasising their own credibility, instead of resorting to negative appeals that cast the opposition in a bad light as such tactics might backfire.92

91 David F Damore, “The Dynamics of Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections,” Political Research Quarterly 57,

no 3 (2004): 391-397

92 Ibid

David Holian’s explanatory framework plugs the gap that Damore’s theory did not address He argues that parties can actually attempt to ‘steal’ or even neutralise other parties’ issue ownership Given the correct rhetorical ‘spin’ when talking about an issue, parties can actually present themselves as credible issue owners.93 This ‘spin’ is most effective when an opponent is faced with what William Riker termed as a ‘heresthetical dilemma’, which ‘structure[s] the decision-making situation to the speaker’s advantage and the respondent’s disadvantage.’94 Heresthetics, according to Riker, entails ‘the art

of setting up situations… in such a way that even those who do not wish to do so are compelled by the structure of the situation to support the heresthetician’s purpose.’95Simply put, it is about ‘structuring the world so you can win.’96 From the perspective of issue ownership, it is thus insufficient to merely ‘talk’ about an issue owned by another

93 David B Holian, “He’s Stealing My Issues! Clinton’s Crime Rhetoric and the Dynamic of Issue Ownership,”

Political Behavior 26, no 2 (2004): 99

94 William H Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 8

95 William H Riker, The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1996), 9

96 Ibid

40

party This ‘talk’ must be configured in such a manner that denies the ownership of an issue to the party that originally owned it while simultaneously stealing its ownership Giving the right ‘spin’ on an issue structures the decision-making process so that it can compel voters to vote for the party that has engaged in heresthetics Giving the correct

‘spin’ to an issue would also suffice in at least claiming short-term ownership or having

an issue ‘on lease’, especially over the period of only one election.97 Therefore, issue ownership is thus not as stable as it is made out to be since it can be contested from election to election Parties will be more inclined to discuss issues that resonate greatly with the electorate regardless of ownership, and they will also be emboldened to ‘talk’ their way out of their weaknesses in order to portray themselves from a position of strength instead.98

Holian lists three criteria for the successful neutralisation of an opponent’s ownership of an issue Firstly, public opinion must change to become less biased towards the party that owns the issue Accordingly, this might arise as a result of factors not related at all to the campaigning process itself, like the state of the economy for example Secondly, the challenger party must frame the issue in such a way that is different from how the original owners had claimed issue ownership In other words, the dimension and the parameters of the debate over an issue must be changed by the challenger party Thirdly, the media must also take up this new issue dimension and

97 Stefaan Walgrave, Jonas Lefevre, and Michiel Nuytemens, “Issue Ownership Stability and Change: How Political

Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances,” Political Communication 26, no 2 (2009): 155

98 Holian, “He’s Stealing My Issues,” 99