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The Professionalisation of Political

Communication in Europe

Ralph Negrine

INTRODUCTION
How should one explore new developments in political communication and, perhaps
more critically, in what ways can these developments be considered part and parcel of
a process of professionalisation?

The key to answering both these questions probably lies in analyses of the changing
nature of political parties. Over the last century more and more political parties have
been transformed from parties with mass memberships to parties with small, and ever
declining, memberships. At the same time, and in a not unrelated way, they have come
to learn to utilise the newest communication technologies and campaigning and
persuasion techniques available in order to persuade and mobilise voters. And as
political parties continue to adapt to changing circumstances – declining
memberships, new leaders, election defeats – or to incorporate new technologies of The Professionalisation of Political Communication in Europe
communication or new persuasion and communication practices, they become
transformed, and they transform themselves, into vehicles geared up for electoral
success.They become, in other words, more professional and more professional in their
communication of politics. It is a point that one finds in Leon Mayhew’s work on The
New Public (1997). As he writes, the ‘new public’, a public ‘that is subject to mass
persuasion through systematic advertising, lobbying, and other forms of media
manipulation’ (1997, p. i) did not emerge full blown. It grew in increments as each
component built upon and reshaped practices already in place to create the system of
rationalised, specialised, and professionalised, public communication that defines and
dominates the New Public (Mayhew,1997,pp.190–191). 27