The evolution of political campaigns – the 3 phases

Political Campaigns. Week 5. Dr Matthew Wall

Discussion of campaigns’ historical evolution – the ‘three phases’ and their characteristics.

Discussion of the impact of campaign evolution on citizen activism.

A party-level study of campaign professionalization (Gibson and Romelle, 2009) in Germany’s 2005 federal election.

A case study of a current ‘postmodern’ campaign: #KONY2012.

Structure of this talk

Literature typically refers to 3 historical ‘phases’ of campaigning.

Each ‘phase’ related to a set of technologies, themes and practices, as well as to certain organisational traits.

Each phase also related to evolving patterns of voter behaviour.

Important to note that the ‘mix’ of elements from each phase varies by country and party.

The evolution of campaigns

The ‘first’ or ‘pre-modern’ phase: Late 19th century to 1950s. Initiated by: extension of the franchise to broad mass public.

The ‘second’ or ‘modern’ phase early 1960s to late 1980s. Initiated by: mass diffusion of television, growing media independence, development of professionalized polling.

The ‘third’ of ‘post modern’ phase : 1990s + initiated by: fragmentation of media, development and diffusion of internet.

The evolution of campaigns

Party campaign organisation: decentralised. Local party organisations and volunteer campaign workers key agents, loose coordination by party leadership.

Tools – face-to-face/people intensive: Local rallies, public meetings, ‘whistle stop’ leadership tours, speeches door-to-door canvasses.

‘Hardware’: billboards, signs, posters, flags and rosettes.

Phase 1‘pre modern’

Media – Partisan newspapers, radio election broadcasts. Common practice was for newspapers especially to have well-known and fearsome partisan leanings.

Of course, this was the case for party publications, but parties also often subsidized papers, editors and journalists often also worked for parties and/or candidates.

In ‘pillarised’ societies, newspapers catered to clearly defined social and political segments.

Newspapers as intermediaries between parties and their supporters, focused on their party’s narrative and events:

Summers (1994) “The truth was not suppressed. It was simply hard to get in any one place”.

Phase 1‘pre modern’

Campaign planning: short term/ad hoc.

Campaign co-ordination: party leaders.

Public feedback: non-scientific feedback from local agents/membership, doorstep canvassing and local rallies.

Campaign budget – typically campaigns in this period were relatively low budget events, relied on human capital rather than monetary capital.

Phase 1’pre modern’

Advent and rapid diffusion of television radically transformed (and centralised) communications environment.

Party campaign organisation: nationally/centrally co-ordinated, larger numbers of professional campaign workers.

Tools – Daily press conferences, controlled

photo opportunities, paid TV ads and party broadcasts, targeted direct mail.

Phase 2 ‘modern’

Media – television broadcasting through news and current affairs programmes of major channels.

Most industrialized countries restricted to 2 or 3 channels. ‘Prime time’ coverage sought by campaigns.

Media exercised greater independence, including newspapers, through either state subvention or commercial advertising, more critical coverage, agenda setting role.

Campaign preparation – ‘long’ campaign, starting a year or longer before the election date.

Phase 2 ‘modern’

Campaign coordination- central party HQ, incorporating specialist advisors, growing focus on media management.

Public feedback – occasional (and continuously growing in most systems) use of opinion polling.

Costs – moderate, larger in systems where paid TV advertising is allowed.

Phase 2 ‘modern’

Campaign organisation – nationally coordinated, but with regional targets and organisational sub-units.

Tools – in addition to previous phase tools, this period saw the advent of telemarketing, websites, blogs, campaign e-mail lists, party intranets, and more recently, candidate SNS.

Phase 3 ‘post modern’

Media – more fragmented media scene, arrival of 24 hour news channels, also talk radio, and, most importantly, internet.

Move away from ‘objective’ standards of the modern period and back towards partisan model of ‘pre modern’?

Campaign preparation – ‘permanent’ campaign, where news management is part of the routine of day to day politics and government.

Phase 3 ‘post modern’

Campaign coordination – Party ‘war rooms’, greater use of professional consultants and pollsters.

Difficult to get measures on influence of consultants: but the industry has grown rapidly, increased specialisation (‘modern’ consultants were often marketing/advertising generalists).

Public feedback – regular opinion polling, use of focus groups, as well as online methods (social media sentiment analysis is a growing source of political information).

Costs – high, with professional consultancy and polling costing a considerable amount.

Phase 3 ‘post modern’

Evolution of the internet itself (Web 2.0) sees us in relatively new territory:

Centrality of user generated content and new possibilities for campaign interaction.

Potentially diffusing campaign management, though so far has been centrally controlled in most instances.

We will be looking at latest instances of such campaigning in the coming weeks.

Phase 3 ‘post modern’

Move towards a more ‘businesslike’ or ‘professional’ model, with parties seeking to market their ‘product’ (i.e., candidates and policies) to an increasingly fickle audience.

Move from ‘Labour intensive’/’people intensive’ communication channels to ‘broadcasting/capital intensive’ channels – may be driven by a decline in party memberships in many states.

Power within parties shifting both upwards to leaders/central coordinating committees and outwards to media and external consultants.

Overall patterns

‘Diffusion effects’ - Negrine and Papathanassopoulos (1996) refer to an ‘Americanisation’ of political campaigns.

Innovative and successful campaigns such as the 2008 Obama campaign or New Labour’s 1997 campaign are often imitated around the world.

Involvement of American campaign consultants directly in campaigns both in established and emerging democracies.

Overall patterns

Declining partisan loyalties in voting populations: a cause or consequence of modernisation of political campaigning?

A movement from ‘activation’ of loyalists towards persuasion of floating voters.

Are floating voters capricious or more calculating?

Overall patterns

Personalisation of campaigns: Mass media and decline of party loyalties

favours a focus on party leaders and the personalities of leaders.

Modern and postmodern campaigns as ‘beauty contests’?

Greater reliance on negative campaigning focusing on opposing leaderships.

Overall patterns

Development of campaign themes and content more driven by market research.

Such research identifies key issues, and seeks to identify strengths and weaknesses of candidates/parties.

Campaigns are then themed around key issues where candidate/party is strongest.

Campaign professionalisation - effects

Important to note that ‘pre modern’ activities are still central elements of campaigns specifically in small district candidate-based systems: UK, Ireland, Japan.

Greater distance between activists and politicians?

Decline in levels of political participation?

Open to debate – among younger cohorts non partisan, single issue, and protest based political participation is more popular.

Activists in political campaigns are generally from older cohorts – debates about whether this is a ‘generational’ of ‘life cycle’ effect.

Is ‘post modern’ environment seeing a shift back towards greater activism – albeit online?

Campaign fatigue? Over-coverage?

Campaign professionalisation - effects

The extent to which these techniques and tools are adopted by parties can be influenced by national regulatory regimes.

Campaign spending limitations, and/or limitations on the amount that can be donated by a single individual/entity are common across the EU.

Restrictions on partisan access to paid advertising on TV is also common in several states.

Regulatory regimes

Gibson and Romelle (2009) noted that, while the literature refers to an overall pattern of campaign professionalization, there are few comparative, empirical measures to test this claim.

They therefore develop such a measure CAMPROF, which is based on 10 key observable professional campaign practises.

They then measure the extent of campaign professionalization among parties competing in the 2005 German federal elections. Data source: semi-structured interviews with campaign managers of parties being studied (SPD, CDU, FDP, Greens).

Measuring/quantifying campaign professionalization at the party level

1) Use of telemarketing 2) Use of direct mail 3) Internal/intranet communications system 4)Email subscription/newsletter 5)External campaign headquarters (and/or

presence of an externally recruited campaign unit within party HQ)

CAMPROF

6) Continuous campaigning – how long outside of ‘hot’ campaign period was party deploying these campaign tools?

7)Use made of PR/media consultants 8) Use of computerised databases of voters 9) Use of opinion polling (highest score if

party has own dedicated and professional survey research unit)

10) Opposition research.

CAMPROF

‘Vote seeking’ versus issue-based parties. Party financial resources. Ideological stance (right wing parties more likely) Internal party structure (more likely in parties where

power is centralised/hierarchical)

Events that can bring about increases in campaign professionalization:

1) Electoral ‘shocks’ 2) Internal party change – change in leadership or

dominant faction inside a party (e.g. ‘New Labour’ in the UK)

Party professionalization - explanations

SPD scored highest – having made extensive use of nearly all of the CAMPROF campaign tools – with a particularly impressive telemarketing and direct mailing campaign, as well as extensive use of consultancy and on-going research using a database of voters.

Both SPD and CDU used internet technologies to co-ordinate campaign activities, and to motivate and guide members in supporting the campaign.

Both also relied heavily on the advice of media consultants in developing campaign strategy and advertising approach.

CAMPROF - Results

The FDP came in third place – similar use of campaign tools to CDU/SDP but less of a role for consultants.

Greens had by far the lowest professionalisation score of the four parties – decentralised, left wing, under resourced, issue oriented.

CAMPROF – Results

Hugely successful recent viral campaign conducted by ‘Invisible children’ charity organisation.

Organisation ‘uses film, creativity and social action to end the use of child soldiers in Joseph Kony's rebel war and restore LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army)-affected communities in central Africa to peace and prosperity’.

Seeking: funding and legislative action (greater military aid to Uganda state army from USA).

Faced with a classic problem of low levels of knowledge/salience among the general public.

#KONY2012

KONY2012 viral video has received over 7 million views on YouTube as of this morning.

Brilliantly produced video – but also contains layered participation options – with most basic being to share and spread the video.

Also, they are explicit in their dissemination strategy – piggybacking on the profile (and SNS profiles) of sponsor celebrities ‘culture makers’.

#KONY2012

Furthermore, they offer campaign ‘hardware’ that cleverly plays on 2012 election campaign.

Also, there is clearly a strong ‘ground campaign’ of rallies, protests and speeches.

‘Cover the night’ offers ‘people to people’ element.

Evidence of high degree of campaign professionalism here – even though organisation is charitable.

#KONY2012

Does this sort of campaign offer a new vision of political campaiging?

More issue-specific (less party specific) More global in concern Bottom up?

Or, are such campaigns likely to mostly build ‘weak ties’ and minimal participation?

Worrying role of ‘culture makers’?

#KONY2012

Use of campaign mailing lists Usage of Twitter and Facebook Non-partisan websites.

Case selection: which candidates/sites. Data gathering. Analysis.

Discussion – data gathering for online campaign assignments