Issue Competition without Electoral Incentives? A Study of Issue Emphasis in the European Parliament

Niche party leverage over mainstream party policy agendas is a central theme in the issue competition literature. The literature has underlined that the electoral threat associated with niche party issue mobilization guides mainstream party responses to such niche parties. Yet how do political parties react to issue mobilization in an institutional setting not primarily steered by electoral considerations? We argue that the European Parliament constitutes such a case and study issue competition on the radical right’s core issue: immigration. To establish the leverage of radical right members of the European Parliament (MEPs), we use an original data set of parliamentary questions and motions between 2004 and 2016. Using time-series regression analysis, we find that mainstream party groups do not increase their emphasis of immigration issues in response to radical right MEPs’ issue emphasis. These findings indicate that the institutional context and the perceived electoral threat are crucial for issue competition dynamics.