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Political Campaign Communication
emergence of the international perspective may lie in the development
of campaigns and campaign research as described here. It is certainly
also due to the particular difficulties research in this area has to deal with
because of a multitude of context variables that have to be considered.
Compared to the impressive number of national campaign studies in
some countries, the body of internationally comparative research is still
meager.
If research builds on the method of international comparison, which
means comparing phenomena in at least two countries, it takes on the
systemic perspective: Several of the variables that influence the design
of a campaign and therefore have to be taken into account in the study
of campaign communication, do not vary within a country, often not
even over periods of time, but only between countries. Among these
systemic variables are the political system, the electoral system, party
structure, regulation of election campaigns, political culture, and the
mediasystem(BowlerandFarrell1992,7–8;ManciniandSwanson1996,
17–20).
COMPARATIVE RESEARCH ON CAMPAIGN
COMMUNICATION
One of the earliest European studies that compared various countries,
was a study initiated by Jay Blumler on the occasion of the first direct
election of the European Parliament in 1979. Fifteen researchers from
all nine countries that were members of the European Community at
that time took the opportunity of a common event for a multimethod
study on the role of television during the European election campaign
(Blumler 1983a). It included interviews with representatives of the par-
ties and of the broadcasting corporations, content analyses of television
campaign reporting, and finally surveys of the electorate. In the interest
of an international comparison across countries the national research
instruments were kept as identical as possible.
Although high symbolic relevance for the integration process was
attributed to the direct election of the European Parliament and even
though this was regarded as a further step in the development of
European identity, the campaigns in the individual countries proved
to be surprisingly different and concentrated more on national than
Europeanaspects.Itwasnotsomuchthecommoneventthatdetermined
how campaigns were led. Instead, the new situation was dealt with ac-
cording to the traditional patterns of existing national campaign models,
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