Page 233 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Political Campaign Communication

Conditional Convergence of Modern Media Elections

Christina Holtz-Bacha

Though not at all a new phenomenon, Americanization as a “useful
hypothesis” (Mancini and Swanson 1996, 4) opened the researchers’
eyes for common interests and developments in Western democracies
and triggered new research efforts. At the same time it became clear that
beside some overarching trends, national characteristics of the political
structure, including electoral systems and party structure, as well as
characteristics of the media system, have an impact on the way electoral
campaigns are designed today. Campaign communication proves to be a
field that more than any other has stimulated cross-national research and
cooperation. The paper’s aim is to take stock of this research and discuss
the advantages and difficulties of the comparative perspective on this
topic. The overview will show that – not least due to the Americanization
hypothesis – the majority of the studies took U.S. campaigns as a point
of reference while only a few compared campaigns across Europe, for
example, thus revealing a need for further research although research
efforts have been intensified during recent years.
Until recently the prime interest of electoral research has always been
with voter behavior. When Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet (1944) pub-
lished their classical study The People’s Choice, its subtitle How the Voter
Makes Up His Mind in an Election already pointed in this direction. At
the same time this study, along with its follow-up, Voting, by Berelson,
Lazarsfeld, and McPhee (1954) laid the basis for the sociological ap-
proach in voter research. With the publication of The American Voter
(1960) by Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes this was supplemented
by the sociopsychological approach of the Michigan school. Accord-
ing to the Michigan model or Ann Arbor model as it is alternatively
named, party identification plays the central role in voter behavior. Party

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