The Effects of Issue Salience on Political Decision-making

Game-theoretic models of political decision-making regard policy outcomes as a combined result of actor preferences and institutions. This paper explores the effects of adding relative issue salience to the analysis. I focus on non-cooperative models of complete and perfect information that are based on the concept of structure-induced equilibrium (Shepsle in Am J Polit Sci 23(1):27–59, 1979). Assuming a progressive agenda-setter and two conservative voters, I show how a change of the relative issue salience for players in a game results in a different equilibrium outcome in a political decision-making body. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006