Page 29 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

Conservative government of John Major on numerous occasions in
the early 1990s (the Iraq arms scandal, the Pergau dam affair, etc.);
and disinformation tactics such as ‘leaking’.
The design and execution of these forms of political communi-
cation is the province of that new professional class referred to in
the Preface – nowadays known variously as media or political
consultants, image-managers, ‘spin-doctors’, and ‘gurus’ – which
has emerged in the course of the twentieth century and is now
routinely employed by political parties.

Public organisations

If parties are at the constitutional heart of the democratic political
process they are not, of course, the only political actors. Surrounding
the established institutions of politics are a host of non-party
organisations with political objectives. Some, like the British trade
unions, have clear organisational links with one or more of the
parties (the trade unions, indeed, gave birth to the Labour Party as
the organised political expression of workers’ interests).
Others, such as consumers’ associations and lobby groups, will
be more peripheral, dealing as they do with relatively narrow
constituencies and issues. Others will, by virtue of the tactics which
they adopt, be excluded from constitutional politics altogether, and
may have the status of criminal organisations.
We may divide these non-party actors into three categories. First,
trade unions, consumer groups, professional associations and oth-
ers may be defined as public organisations. They are united not by
ideology but by some common feature of their members’ situation
which makes it advantageous to combine, such as work problems
(trade unions), or the weakness of the individual citizen in the face
of large corporations (consumer groups).
In such organisations individuals come together not just to help
each other in the resolution of practical problems associated with
their common situation, but to campaign for change or to raise the
public profile of a particular problem, often through enlisting the
help of elected politicians. These organisations have, to a greater or
lesser degree, institutional status and public legitimacy, as reflected
in their access to policy-makers and media, receipt of charitable
donations, and official funding. Chapter 8 will examine the tech-
niques used by such organisations to influence the political process,
such as ‘lobbying’, advertising and the organisation of public
demonstrations.

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