Page 246 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Christina Holtz-Bacha

subject of discussion, particularly because the candidates have to raise
their own funds. Therefore, campaign financing has become a perma-
nent issue. Moreover, low voter turnout, a reason for worries in the
United States has raised the question about whether there is a corre-
lation with the way politics is presented during campaigns. In Europe,
the Americanization hypothesis, although critically commented upon
in the scientific community, stimulated and directly challenged in-
ternationally comparative research efforts. Even single-country stud-
ies dealing with national campaigns imply the comparative perspective
by referring to Americanization and the idea of a U.S.-style model for
Europe.
Many similarities can in fact be found across countries. In democratic
systems, campaign communication follows similar lines. However, re-
searchhasgivenupassigningthecharacterofamodeltoU.S.campaigns–
if there has ever been wholehearted support for the Americanization hy-
pothesis. A plethora of intervening variables, national specifics of the
political and the media systems, prevent the adoption of recipes for ef-
fective campaigning from one country to another. In the conclusion of
their book, Swanson and Mancini therefore speak of an “archetype” of
modern campaign practice (1996a, 268): While similarities in social de-
velopments lead to similar reactions by political actors and thus lead one
to the assumption of convergence, there is still much room for national
variance,inparticularincomparisonwiththeUnitedStates.Thefindings
of Plasser, Scheucher, and Senft (1999) from their survey of European
campaign consultants, point in the same direction when they speak of a
shopping model as opposed to an adoption model: Campaign organizers
in European countries take over from the United States what has proved
to be effective there but apply it to national conditions. Campaign con-
sultants maintain a “network of connections” (Swanson and Mancini
1996a, 250) for the exchange of manpower and know-how. Farrell has
called this a process of “internationalization of campaign consultancy”
(1998), in which American consultants, however, encounter increasing
competition from their European colleagues. The assumption that only
the United States exports modern campaign techniques is therefore no
longer valid.
The hypothesis of Americanization that regards U.S. campaigns as a
role model has changed into the modernization hypothesis that regards
professionalization as a necessity resulting from the social differenti-
ation and the changes of the media systems (Holtz-Bacha 2000). For
international comparisons, modernization – and this is an outcome of

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