Page 212 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Hanspeter Kriesi

addressing the public to get its attention and support. The top-down
strategies of “going public” have first been observed with U.S. presidents
(Kernell1988).Thesuccessfuluseofsuchstrategiesgenerallydependson
very restrictive conditions: The public’s attention and support are only
forthcoming when the established political actors who use this strategy
are highly prominent and very prestigious.
Under current conditions, the strategy of going public can be used in a
more focused way and as early as the early stages of the decision-making
process.Thepointofdepartureforsuchastrategyisthesystematicobser-
vation of public opinion through surveys and focus groups. The answers
that the political actors receive for their policy-specific questions allow
them to formulate a political offer that can count on the citizens’ sup-
port. For such a strategy to be successful, it is important that the answers
are not made public, but are exclusively used by the actors concerned
with elaborating their political offer. Only once the offer is carefully
engineered based on the indications of citizens’ demands, the political
actors communicate it to the media which then report on it to the public.
The presentation of the political offer in the media, in turn, is profes-
sionally prepared by “spin doctors” or public relations specialists who
place it in the right media at the right time (Esser 2000, 22). Based on
the public’s reaction, which is commented on and interpreted by the
media, political actors expect to reinforce their position in the political
process.
This strategy has two versions: a proactive and a reactive one. The
proactive version is described by Morris (1999), who advertises its ad-
vantages for the American government. In his view, the art of governing
does not consist of slavishly following public opinion, but of controlling
public events by carefully packaging one’s preferred public policy so as
not to lose public support. The reactive version consists of adapting the
policy pragmatically to public opinion as measured by surveys in order
to avoid errors. This version does not allow for innovative programs and
reinforces the trend toward incrementalism (Neveu 1998).
Of course, political actors cannot count on being able to simply in-
strumentalize the media. Journalists do not necessarily concentrate on
the substantive part of the messages supplied by political actors, but they
tryto demonstrate their independence by focusing on the social and
personal aspects of the political contest and on the strategic intentions
of the political actors’ campaigns. Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) note an
increasingly critical relationship between journalists and political actors.

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