Page 266 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Thomas Zittel

communicates macroinstitutional pressures toward party homogeneity
downward to the individual level and thus patterns behavior. Swedish
members are in the most desperate situation in this respect. They lack
their own budget and rely on allowances provided by their party. Most
Swedish members command no more than one third to one quarter of a
staffer. They lack the most basic resources to exploit the potential of the
Internet to communicate with constituents. A Swedish MP who uses a
Web site explains the situation as follows:

Because I was a computer programmer, I was happy to learn how
to design a website. I took a small course from a colleague who is
very into it. He taught me how to use FrontPage, which is not very
difficult. So, I did it myself. I also update it myself. All the news I
put in, I have to do it myself. It takes about one hour every Sunday.

Another Swedish member sets out:
Iread [e-mail] personally and I answer them directly. I have no
staff to do this. So, this is more work [ ... ]. A website is certainly
the thing I’d like to do but what I couldn’t do because of restricted
resources.
German members are more fortunate with a moderate budget that buys
up to three staffers. But even this is no comparison with the situation of
U.S. representatives who command a staff of up to eighteen people and a
budget of about $500,000 per year. Among this staff there is at least one
systems administrator, a press secretary, and several people in charge of
constituency communication who come up with ideas on how to apply
the Internet for the purpose of constituency relations; who design and
updateWebsites;andwhoeventuallyread,process,andanswerincoming
e-mail. The lack of staff and money to communicate with constituents
on the part of European representatives clearly functions as an incentive
to ignore new opportunities for increasing their personal profile and
focusing more on geographic constituencies rather than party.
The American political context is not wholeheartedly biased toward
electronic democracy. Some interviews suggest that this hesitancy of
American representatives in using discussion fora reflects the strong
first amendment tradition of the United States. While in Germany and
Sweden, the principle of freedom of speech is balanced with the principle
of fair speech, in the United States a clear hierarchy of values prevents
any kind of censorship, regardless of content. The rulings of the Supreme

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