Page 240 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Christina Holtz-Bacha

between the electoral systems, the position of the president in France and
in the United States, as well as with differences in the regulation of elec-
toral campaigns and in the media systems. In fact, the hypothesis that
was put forward in the introduction of the book, generally indicating
the Americanization of French election campaigns, has fallen short of
a fruitful comparison of the two countries. Instead, the project became
an exemplary model of the difficulties that internationally comparative
research is facing.
Beyond the differences in important factors that influence political
communication processes the project teams from France and the United
States had to cope with the different research traditions prevalent in
both countries. Disagreements about the theoretical approach, the re-
search questions, and the methods proved to be barriers that could not
be overcome in any case. Thus, the project demonstrated that interna-
tionally comparative research not only has to deal with a whole network
of political and cultural factors that influence the subject but also with
difficulties that arise from differences in academic cultures.
Against the backdrop of the experiences from this Franco-American
project, David Swanson (1992) discussed strategies of how to manage
theoretical diversity in an international research team. As the simplest
approach he recommends the avoidance strategy: Problems stemming
from theoretical diversity are avoided when researchers in a project share
atheoreticalapproachandthereforehavenodifficultiesinagreeingupon
aspecific research question and the method for the study. By avoid-
ing theoretical alternatives, this strategy, however, forgoes the potential
of cross-national cooperation to bring together diverse theoretical ap-
proachesandthusleadtonewandfruitfulperspectivesforresearch.Nev-
ertheless, because international comparisons have to deal with variance
in their subject anyway and, in addition, have to consider a multitude of
influential factors, the avoidance strategy is a way to reduce the overall
complexity that adds to the difficulties of cross-national research.
A second approach in dealing with theoretical diversity is the prethe-
oretical strategy that was applied by the 1979 European Election project.
Using a pretheoretical strategy means that the international team of re-
searchers agrees upon common research questions and the methods to
be employed. Data are collected on this basis, theoretical considerations
then come to bear only for analysis and interpretation. Thus, in this case
the concept for empirical research is not deduced from theory. Instead
the findings are used for theory building. Because it is the general ob-
jective of the comparative approach to detect common, transnational

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