Page 23 - The Professionalisation of Political Communication Chaning Media, Changing Europe Volume 3

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number of seats in the parliament. Regional candidates from different parties compete
in each constituency and the candidate who gets the majority of votes is elected. The
candidate who wins a constituency gets one of the seats gained by the party as a
whole. Those seats that are not taken directly by the constituency winners are filled
through party lists. Because the party vote is more important, all parties campaign for
the party vote in the first place. This leads to party-centred campaigns with an
emphasis on the parties’top candidates, who usually are placed on the first ranks of the
party lists.The campaigns at the constituency level receive much less attention than the
national campaign. Also, candidates in the constituencies have fewer opportunities to
use the mass media for their campaign and instead put more emphasis on those means
that allow direct address to the voters.(See Holtz-Bacha,2004)

Media commercialisation and professionalisation
Many of the contributions to this book suggest that some of the major processes of
change in political communication professionalisation have taken place as a
consequence of the commercialisation of the mass media in the 1980s. Before then
there had already been changes to the nature of political competition and in respect of
government relations with the media (see in particular the case of Great Britain), but
these changes have probably accelerated and deepened as the processes of
commercialisation has gathered pace. In some countries, the move from an essentially
public service broadcasting system towards commercial television has had dramatic
impact on politics. In effect, the more commercial the media system, the more parties
and governments have sought new and different ways to get their messages across to
(usually a declining) audience for political content. In Germany, the move from an
essentially public service broadcasting system towards a dual system, and sometimes
fierce competition, has had a dramatic impact on politics. While this has meant more
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
potential outlets for campaigners, they also had to adapt to the new commercial logic
that came to prevail on the broadcasting market. This has also brought about new
formats and new environments for politics that has also required new skills of the
politicians. Or they have led to the emergence of new types of politicians: Berlusconi
decided to enter the political arena in 1994, exactly at the end of the commercialisation
process of the 80s.In Greece the modernisation of political campaigning and marketing
has changed as a result of the arrival, the development and the dominance of private
television in the communication landscape. In The Netherlands the progressive
disappearing of the traditional social pillars has been accelerated by the new media
environment.

Are there dangers in the professionalisation of political communication?
Are the risks in the trends towards greater professionalisation? Are there dangers to the
Are there risks in the trends towards greater professionalisation? Are there clangers to the
democratic process to which we need to be alerted? One position, expressed
particularly strongly by Leon Mayhew (1997), is that there are. In the course of the
‘rationalisation of persuasion’, the place for genuine discussion within the public sphere
disappears. Specialists/professionals dictate the content of the communication, set out
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