The evolution of political campaigns – the 3 phases

1. The evolution of political campaigns – the 3 phases Political Campaigns. Week 5. Dr Matthew Wall

2. Structure of this talk • 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.

3. The evolution of campaigns • 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.

4. 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.

5. Phase 1‘pre modern’ • 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.

6. 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”.

7. 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.

8. Phase 2 ‘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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. Phase 3 ‘post 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. Overall patterns • 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.

17. 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.

18. 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?

19. 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.

20. Campaign professionalisation - effects • 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.

21. 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?

22. Regulatory regimes • 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.

23. Measuring/quantifying campaign professionalization at the party level • 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).

24. CAMPROF • 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)

25. 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.

26. Party professionalization - explanations • ‘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)

27. CAMPROF - Results • 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.

28. 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.

29. #KONY2012 • 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.

30. #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’.

31. #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.

33. #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’?

34. Discussion – data gathering for online campaign assignments • Use of campaign mailing lists • Usage of Twitter and Facebook • Non-partisan websites. • Case selection: which candidates/sites. • Data gathering. • Analysis.