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POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN THE ERA OF PROFESSIONALISATION | 11

general distinction between an era in which party bureaucrats mobilised and
administered election campaigns and one in which a ‘culture of marketing’ has
established itself at the centre of a party organisation and offers both executive and
strategic support to the running of the election campaign.

In thinking about the professionalisation of political communication in respect of the
individuals to which it refers, we therefore need to consider both the external
dimension (e.g. who is being employed to do what?) but also the internal dimension
(e.g. what is happening from within) alongside a more general question relating to the
changing location of control (e.g. pollsters are being employed but who directs their
work and who makes the final decision?). In other words, there is a complex interplay
between outsiders and insiders and between those who exercise control (e.g. are they
party employees, party leaders, outside professionals?) and those who simply act as
experts or specialists fulfilling particular tasks. What we need to do is not simply ask
questions about the professionalisation of political communication but about the
insertion of the process of professionalisation in the development of political parties
themselves that sees them adopting models of organisation that had proved
themselves in other sectors. Forza Italia, for example, was modelled on a ‘company
model’ that had presumably worked for Berlusconi (Calise, 2000; Diamanti, 1994); the
Labour Party in 1997 adopted a campaign that was structured around the idea of a
‘war-room’ (Gould, 1998; Scammell, 1998). And the Labour Party’s ‘war-room’ was the
model for the German Social Democrats (SPD) when they established the ‘Kampa’ for
their 1998 election campaign. In both cases, campaign specialists from within the party
worked hand in hand with experts from market and media research or advertising
agencies (von Webel, 1999). These developments can be taken to represent a process
whereby political parties adapt by using ‘models’ or ‘practices’ that have been tried and
tested elsewhere; just as they did when they absorbed the lessons from advertising and
commerce (Kelly,1956; Mayhew,1997).

Nevertheless, the process of professionalisation is complex and uneven: different
political arrangements, different usages of technologies, different stages of
developments,and so on all create different conditions in which professionalisation can
take place. This explains why not all countries display the same characteristics in the
way that commerce has been injected into politics. Political Communication in the Era of Professionalisation

Framing the book’s central theme in this way, it places the contributions at a distance
from accounts that link contemporary developments to single causes – be they
Americanisation, or developments in particular technologies. To understand the
processes of professionalisation, we need to adopt a more holistic approach and one
that connects change in different spheres – politics, commerce, communication, social
change – and across time itself. Obviously not all spheres are equally significant or
dominant but the interaction and interpenetration of influences produces the
contemporary arrangements. 13