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We need therefore to monitor the trends among different societies and to try to trace
these trends where in some cases and countries they are apparent while in others are
latent. This is the reason that this book follows both a comparative and country-by-
country approach.

PROFESSIONALISATION, MODERNISATION AND AMERICANISATION
Professionalisation, as we use it here, cuts across other equally contested concepts such
as modernisation, Americanisation, homogenisation, as it deals with a more general
process of change taking place in contemporary societies. In this respect,
professionalisation does touch on the idea of Americanisation (see, amongst others,
Negrine & Papathanassopoulos, 1996) – in as much as it highlights the existence of
practices in the US that are also used elsewhere – but it sees these developments not
simply as a transfer of ideas or practices from one country to another but as essentially
representing the desire that appears to be ever-present in nearly all contemporary
societies to utilise the best ideas and practices available. So, for example, even in
Hungary, a country that has only recently undergone a process of democratisation, the
willingness to use modern methods, i.e. methods that are deemed to be the best ideas
and practices currently available,is very much in evidence (see chapter 10).

The emphasis we place on the idea of professionalisation is of a process of continual
self-improvement and change towards what is deemed to be a better way of doing
things, be it winning an election, achieving consensus, gaining support for policies,
ensuring successful governance, that is made possible by technological and
communications innovations, as well as a more general process of skills specialisation.
Though it obviously does matter where these ideas originated, it matters less than the
apparent willingness to use them in different settings. The idea of professionalisation
touches on that element of willingness to change, and the reasons underpinning that
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
willingness.
What does the idea of professionalisation derive from the idea of modernisation which
also addresses this sense of gradual change and improvement? Paolo Mancini and
David Swanson suggest that in the modernisation process one finds an

increasing functional differentiation within society (that) leads to growing numbers
of subsystems of all kinds that develop to satisfy the specialised demands of
particular groups and social actors. The rise of these subsystems undermines the
traditional aggregative structures of socialisation, authority, community, and
consensus,producing social fragmentation and exclusion (1996,p.253).

Our view is that inherent in the idea of modernisation is not only the creation of
differentiation in employment generally, but also the general trend towards claims to
professionalisation amongst many old and newer occupations.These things go hand in
hand with such things as rising educational levels, high levels of specialisation, the
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