Page 204 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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EIGHT

Strategic Political Communication

Mobilizing Public Opinion in “Audience Democracies”

Hanspeter Kriesi

Thedemocraticsystemsofgovernmentarechangingprofoundlybecause
the form of representation is fundamentally changing. This is the posi-
tion defended by Bernard Manin (1995, 247–303) in his influential book
on the principles of representative government, the term he uses for the
form of government of Western liberal democracies. After the classical
parliamentarianism of the nineteenth century and the party democracy
that was established at the beginning of the twentieth century, accord-
ing to Manin, representative government currently takes the form of
1
an “audience democracy.” The characteristics of this new form of gov-
ernment include personalization of elections and the rise of experts in
political communication, increasing importance of political offers for-
mulated so vaguely that the governing elites possess a large maneuvering
space, the omnipresence of public opinion, and the transfer of the po-
litical debate from the backrooms of parliamentary committees and the
central offices of parties and associations to the public sphere.
Manin has formulated concisely what party and media experts have
observed for quite a while. Party researchers point to the decline of the
ideologically oriented and structurally rooted mass party and the rise of
the “electoral professional party” (Panebianco 1988) or the “cartel party”
(Mair 1997). This transformation has led, on the one hand, to the declin-
ing importance of the traditional party apparatus and of party militants,
and, on the other hand, it has reinforced the importance of the party
leaders and of the much more independent electoral audience. Media
researchers note that political communication is no longer focused on
parties but on the media (Swanson and Mancini 1996). They observe the
increasing independence of the mass media from the political parties.

1
Manin (1995, 279) uses the term d´emocratie du public in French.

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