Replication Data for: Learning at Home and Abroad: How Competition Conditions the Diffusion of Party Strategies

How do parties decide about when to campaign on valence issues given high degrees of uncertainty? Although research provides evidence for transnational emulation of parties' position-taking strategies, these findings do not directly apply to saliency strategies. Moreover, the exact diffusion mechanism remains largely elusive. Based on the issue saliency literature, we develop novel theoretical propositions and argue that conscious learning enables parties to infer the relative utility of emphasizing consensual issues during an electoral campaign. Our theory gives rise to different expectations at the domestic and the transnational level because of the distinct logic of issue competition. By analyzing environmental issue emphasis in party manifestos, we find direct transnational dependencies and indirect spillover effects among the parties' saliency strategies. We further identify conscious learning rather than mere imitation or independent decision-making as the diffusion mechanism at work. Yet, in line with saliency-based theories, electoral competition mutes the diffusion of electoral strategies domestically.