Selective Deafness of Political Parties: Strategic Responsiveness to Media, Protest and Real-World Signals on Immigration in Belgian Parliament

How do political parties react to different signals from society indicating the saliency of a particular social problem? Are all parties equally responsive to all signals or do certain signals prove more effective in engaging some parties than others? We address these questions from an agenda-setting perspective. In particular, we investigate how media attention, protest activity and real-world signals shape parties’ attention for immigration in the federal parliament of Belgium. A time series model suggests that media attention, protest activity and real-world indicators all increase parliame... Mehr ...