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polling data and advertising techniques has led many to speculate on the extent to
which campaigns are now engaged in a wholesale process of the marketing of political
parties.(See Kavanagh,1995; Lees-Marshment,2001; Plasser,2002; Mayhew,1997)

One of the key themes developed in this book is that political parties and candidates
have come to appreciate the need for robust means with which to communicate with
their constituencies through, and in spite of, the media, and that those means have
often been imported from the world of commerce and particularly advertising and
public relations.At its most extreme,one could argue that politics has transformed itself
into a branch of commerce (which partly explains the growth of interest in the subject
area of political marketing).

Centralisation of communication activities
All the chapters have identified a process of centralisation, both within political parties
but also in government, that has created a tight framework for the control and conduct
of communication functions. In probably all cases, more care has been taken to deal
with communication, and to reflect and alter the processes and content of
communication to meet the challenges that have arisen from the changing nature of
media, changing nature of government and the changing nature of the parties
themselves.

There is also evidence of centralisation of political parties and their functions and an
acceptance that much of the professionalisation takes place at the centre rather than at
the periphery of each electoral system. In Italy, Berlusconi planned and followed a
highly personalised campaign based on the model of his companies. ‘Il Tavolo per
l’Italia’ (The Table for Italy) was the place where all important strategic decisions were
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
taken, and it is not by chance that these meetings used to take place at the same
location, and at the same time, that all the strategic decisions regarding Fininvest used
to take place. In Germany, centralisation was demonstrated at its best by the SPD’s 1998
campaign headquarters Kampa and the strategic use of an intranet for advising
members and activists during the campaign. In Britain, the 1997 and 2001 national
elections were run from the Labour Party’s headquarters in Millbank. Similar examples
are mentioned in most chapters in this book.

On the road to professionalisation?
There appears to be a general pattern to the involvement of skilled communicators and
marketeers across political parties and governments. At the (centralised) headquarters
of political parties, skilled and professional communication practices and practitioners
are used but not usually on a permanent, full-time basis. In practice, their use is most
common in the run-up to election campaigns and, as these tend to take place at
intervals of four or five years in Europe, there is less of a tendency to employ such
practitioners for anything but the duration of the campaign.Moreover,the employment
of professionals is limited by the important role that political party machines still play in
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