Page 16 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

PREFACE TO THE SECOND
EDITION

Since the first edition of this book was completed and sent to the
printer in the autumn of 1994, the trends it identified have continued
to provoke contentious debate wherever politics is taken seriously.
In both Britain and the United States, from which societies the
majority of my examples and illustrations are drawn, communication
continues to grow in visibility and importance as a factor in the
management and organisation of the political process. The ‘spin
doctors’ and other categories of communication professional have
become, to an extent that was not true even as recently as 1995
when the first edition of this book was published, key players not
just in the tactical presentation of political messages, but in their
strategic design. The names of some of those players have changed,
as has the composition of the political elites for whom they work,
but across the advanced capitalist world, and wherever mediated
politics has become the dominant mode of democratic organisation,
the enhanced role of communication constitutes a common feature.
In the United States in 1996, Bill Clinton won a second term, largely
due to effective political communication. In Britain in 1997, on the
other hand, John Major failed to do so, and eighteen years of
Conservative government came to an end, in large part due to poor
political communication. This edition is fully updated to reflect these
developments, and includes discussion of the communications-driven
rise of New Labour in the UK, the political impact of the Monica
Lewinsky scandal in the USA, the resurgence of conflict between the
Western powers and Saddam Hussein in 1998, and the ‘ending’ of
the thirty-year sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland which was
signalled by the Good Friday peace agreement of April 1998.
If the names of some of the key players in the practice of political
communication have changed, the central arguments and themes
of the first edition remain valid, and have not required major revision

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