Page 244 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Christina Holtz-Bacha

Comparison of campaigns in North and South America, Western and
Eastern Europe, and Israel confirms Swanson and Mancini’s (1996a)
assumption that there is a common pattern of modern campaigning
that can be interpreted as a response to the modernization process. The
authors find similarities for the following key features that they inter-
weaveina “modern model of campaigning.” A direct cause for campaign
innovations is seen in the changing relation between parties and the
electorate. This mainly refers to the weakening of party ties: voting is no
longer “an expression of solidarity with one’s group and its institutions”
but rather “an expression of one’s opinions” (Swanson and Mancini
1996a, 250). This process goes hand in hand with a detachment of the
parties from their ideological basis and their transformation into parties
that can accommodate diverse opinions and attitudes that in turn results
in a growing interchangeability of these parties.
The necessity for parties to keep the ability to shape public opinion
in their own hands as far as possible proved to be another common
feature across countries, which can also be regarded as a consequence
of the development previously described. Parties thus try to determine
themselves the way that politics is presented to the public. The resulting
“‘marketing’ approach to campaigning” (251) is orientated toward the
electorate and the media audience and stands for the adaptation of party
decisionsandactivitiestothelogicofthemediaandthelogicoftelevision
in particular. This goes along with “a style of political reporting that
prefers personalities to ideas, simplicity to complexity, confrontation
to compromise, and heavy emphasis on the ‘horse race’ in electoral
campaigns” (251).
Beyond similar trends that become visible in the various countries
und thus confirm the model of a media-centered campaign as developed
by Swanson and Mancini, context factors specific to countries affect the
design of campaigns and their effects. Political culture is among the
most influential factors, used here in a sociological sense comprising
the shared values and social practices of a country that shape the ex-
pectations vis-` a-vis the political system and political behavior. Against
this backdrop the editors divide the countries included in their book
into three groups. The first group is made up of established democra-
cies with a stable political culture. The second group combines the new
or recently restored democracies. Finally, countries with a democratic
system but currently or recently undergoing the pressure of destabiliz-
ing factors belong to the third group. By adopting this categorization
Swanson and Mancini assume that a country’s political culture mirrors

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