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POLITICAL TRANSITION AND THE PROFESSIONALISATION OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION | 169

In fact, the Socialists conducted their first real campaign for the 2002 elections.
Frustrated by the humiliating political activities of the ruling right-wing between 1998
and 2002, and fearing that the right-wing was preparing for a long-term political reign,
the Socialists succeeding in rallying the party and challenging the incumbent
government. This time they had carefully prepared their programme, involving many
intellectuals from the left and liberal side.The perceived crisis situation helped them to
overcome the objections to using so-called professional campaign tools and methods.

The Socialists were ambivalent about using so-called professional communication
methods and had for a long time been reluctant to employ them, arguing that they
have negative effects on the democratic process. Politics based on symbolism and
emotion is foreign to their modernist philosophy of politics, based on rational dialogue,
discussion, and deliberation. (This philosophy received strong support from their
coalition partner, the liberal Free Democrats.) Equally foreign were the push-button
techniques of advertising, and the military discipline of promoting the message. The
belief in internal pluralism and of internal party democracy contradicted the principles
of effective advertising and PR, and could result in difficulties in communication to the
outside world. Another obstacle for the Socialist party in communicating with the
public was the fact that it was accustomed to institutional, impersonal, legal, or
bureaucratic regulation and coordination, and their communication style reflected this
legacy.

The Socialists (and their allies, the liberal Free Democrats), who pointed out the risk to
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democracy of using professional political communications tools , nonetheless could
not afford to ignore these tools as long as the opposition used them. It was interesting
to observe, for example, that the Socialist Party used political communicational tools
and methods similar to those of the Young Democrats in the 2002 campaign, at the
same time exploiting the advantages of their traditional, relatively extensive party
organisation. The use of scandal and negative campaigning and targeted
communication were also characteristic of the Socialists. The campaign was organised
by a well-known expert from Israel, Ron Weber. (Incidentally, this provided an Political Transition and the Professionalisation of Political Communication
opportunity for the right-wing press to point out the Socialist Party’s connection with
Israel, thereby conflating the unsavoury character of ‘manipulative’ political market
methods with explicit or implicit anti-Semitism.)

The Socialists’ campaign in 2002 was strictly planned, organised, and coordinated with
special emphasis on internal party information and cooperation. The novelty of the
2002 campaign was the ‘dual campaign’: the campaigns of the Socialist’s prime
ministerial candidate and the party were conducted separately, but in concert. The
intention was that they would complement each other, and so expand the circle of
potential voters in the middle. Peter Medgyessy, the prime ministerial candidate of the
Socialist Party, stressed his relative independence from the party (he wasn’t a party
member at the time), and wanted to be judged on his own merit, and hoped to enlarge 171