Changing Campaign Communications: A Party-Centered Theory of Professionalized Campaigning

Abstract

Models explaining the rise of American-style or so-called postmodern campaigning have focused primarily on changes taking place at the systemic level. While these models help explain variance across countries where these techniques are used, they do not explain variations among individual parties. Given that not all parties adopt these tactics and techniques at the same time, the authors argue that there are party-specific variables that need to be taken into account when understanding the shift to the new campaigning era. Building on the existing literature, the authors identify the key traits of what they term professionalized campaigning and the variables that prime a party to adopt it. The article goes on to develop a causal model, based on external and internal party events or shocks, that explains why a particular party would embrace this new style of campaigning. Finally, the authors operationalize their theory and develop indicators to measure the key variables for empirical testing.

The professionals speak: Practitioners’ perspectives on professional election campaigning

“…Two main approaches can be identified in these measurements: (1) the CAMPROF-index introduced by Gibson and Römmele (2001), slightly adjusted by Strömbäck (2009), which concentrates on one dimension, that is, campaign structures (finances, personnel, infrastructure and communicative resources), and (2) the professionalization-index introduced by Tenscher (2007) and Tenscher et al (2012) which differentiates between two dimensions: campaign structures and strategies. [ A Q1] While campaign structures refer to organizational adaptations of political parties or their campaign 'hardware', campaign strategies incorporate a number of activities, such as event and news management, narrowcasting, personalization, free media or paid media activities, that is, a campaign's 'software' (Tenscher and Mykkänen, 2014: 7-9).…”

“…With regard to the evolution of campaigning, a number of influential works (Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999;Gibson and Römmele, 2001;Lees-Marshment, 2001;Norris, 2000: 137-147;Plasser and Plasser, 2002: 4-7) have characterized the transformation in campaigning into three ages or phases which are said to be different in their communicative modes, structures and strategies: a premodern (party and organization-centred), modern (candidate-centred) and postmodern (message-and marketing-driven) phase. While the phase model provides useful classification of how campaigning has generally changed over time, we should be careful not to rely on the model necessarily as a reflection of growing professionalization.…”

“…In their original article on the party-centred theory of campaign professionalism, Gibson and Römmele (2001) outlined conditions that are likely to lead to the adoption of professional campaign techniques. Here, we follow their advice in operationalizing the key features they note when arguing, 'the move toward professional campaigning is seen as most likely to take place in a well-funded, mainstream, right-wing party with significant resources and a centralized internal power structure that has recently suffered a heavy electoral defeat and/or a loss of governing status' (Gibson and Römmele, 2001: 37).…”

Blogging in the Shadow of Parties: Exploring Ideological Differences in Online Campaigning

“…On the ground that members carry a mindset of preexisting party goals and norms, previous research has, at times, explained different campaign strategies by ideological differences (Gibson, 2001;Kavanagh, 1996). In relation to different forms of representation, Holmberg (1974) specifically points out collectivism-individualism as the crucial dimension.…”

Typical Tools for Assessment of Communicative Performance

“…Even though concepts such as popularity, reputation, image and recognition are frequently used in these evaluations there is a lack both of a conceptualization and a discussion about what these really assess. Rather, assessments have been carried out by the help of e.g., models such as Lees-Marshment's (2008) product-sales-or market oriented party, Ormrod's (2005) political market orientation (see also Ormrod, 2007;Ormrod & Henneberg, 2010) and Gibson & Römmele's (2001) professionalization index which measures campaign communication by the use of e.g., opinion pulling, databases, targeting, and continuous campaign (see e.g., Nord & Strömbäck, 2009;Strömbäck, 2007).…”