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Lost in Technology? Political Parties and Online-Campaigning in Mixed Member Electoral Systems1 Thomas Zittel2
The internet alters the technological context of election campaigns in dramatic ways.
This gives way to two competing hypotheses regarding its larger impact on the
structure of election campaigns. The orthodox view perceives the new medium as
facilitating centralized campaigns allowing political parties to target and mobilize
groups of voters in more efficient and direct ways. A revisionist view stresses the
internet as a means for individual candidates running candidate centred campaigns at
the local level independent from their own political party. From this perspective, the
internet has a decentralizing effect on the structure of election campaigns. This paper
tests both hypotheses on the basis of the German Candidate Study 2005 (GCS 2005).
It looks in particular at the impact of the electoral context on the style of online-
campaigning in Germany.
Keywords: election campaigns, online-campaigns, political parties, electoral systems,
candidates, local campaigns
1 Paper for ECPR General Conference, panel on party organisations and new
information and communication technologies (ICTs), Pisa, 6. - 8.9.2007. 2 Dr. Thomas Zittel, Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung
(MZES), Postfach, D–68131 Mannheim, Germany, voice: +49 (0)621 181-2878, e-mail: [email protected]
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1 Election campaigns online: an orthodox and a revisionist view
Today’s election campaigns are distinct from past campaigns. This is what students of
political campaigns argue concordantly in their most recent contributions on the topic
(Farrell and Webb 2000). Concepts such as “postmodern”, “professionalized” or
“modern” are meant to define and summarize the difference in systematic and more
general ways. 3 They portray today’s election campaigns as highly centralized
processes which aim to directly target groups of voters in differentiated and efficient
ways via new communication technology reaching deep down to the local level of
campaigning while bypassing intermediaries such as regional and local party
organizations or the mass media.
Professionalized campaigns are a double edged sword regarding their impact on
the democratic process. Increasing the scope of direct communication is bad on the
one hand because the mass media serve the important functions of structuring the
political discourse (Luhmann 1970) and of critically screening and evaluating its
content (Habermas 1962). Increasing the scope of direct communication is good on
the other hand, because the mass media are increasingly criticized for excessively
focusing on conflict and persons instead of putting issues and substance into the
forefront of their coverage (Thelen 1996). From this latter perspective, online-
campaigns carry the promise of a more rational campaign discourse.
Despite the mixed blessings emerging from professionalized campaigns, their
growing importance seems to be out of question. The proliferation of the internet as a
new powerful tool to directly communicate with the voting population is a major
reason for this. Political interests furthermore parallel this innovation in media
technology and support its proliferation. Political parties are less and less able to rely
on party organization as a vehicle for election campaigns in most established
democracies. Because of declining party membership, less and less people are
available to distribute campaign material and to interact with voters on a face to face
basis. This development creates the need for new tools and strategies to directly
communicate with the voting public on the part of party elites. Far reaching socio- 3 I will use these concepts in this paper as synonyms. They do differ in certain
respects. But this analysis firstly focuses on their overlaps rather than their differences. It secondly does not aim at a comprehensive clarification of these concepts. This justifies using them in synonymous ways for the purpose of this paper.
3
political changes act as further stimuli to apply professionalized campaign strategies.
More and more voters are without any stable party affiliation and need to be
constantly mobilized by means of communication. The internet is a particularly
powerful tool to achieve this very aim.
I propose in this paper a revisionist view on online-campaigning. I argue that
the internet provides a powerful tool for individual candidates to run independent
individualized online-campaigns contradicting any efforts for centralized control by
party headquarters. Individualized online-campaigns are characterized in an ideal way
through candidates who actively seek a personal vote on the basis of a candidate
centred local organization, a candidate centred campaign agenda and candidate
centred means of online-campaigning. I do not expect to find such ideal patterns in the
real world. But I expect to find constituency campaigns that are gradually approaching
this ideal. I do not expect a determinist effect of the internet on campaign behaviour
online. But I expect a relationship between the internet and individualized online-
campaigns if electoral systems allow voters to cast their vote for individual candidates
rather than closed party lists. Under this condition the internet should have a
decentralizing effect on campaign organization rather than a centralizing one, as
suggested by concepts such as postmodern or professionalized campaigning.
I will develop and test my main argument in four steps. I will firstly define and
operationalize the two core concepts that form the cornerstone of the analysis:
professionalized and individualized online-campaigning. I will secondly provide a
descriptive analysis of online-campaigns in the German Federal Election 2005. This
analysis is based on a survey of all candidates in this election campaign of all five
major parties. This survey was conducted in the context of the German Candidate
Study 2005 (GCS 2005). In a third step, I will test for the impact of electoral
incentives on the online-campaign strategies of the candidates. I will fourthly
conclude this paper with a brief discussion of my findings.
2 Individualized online-campaigns and their explanations
Concepts such as professionalized or postmodern campaigns are flashy bargaining
chips in the never ending quest for new and innovative ideas in the academic world.
Comprises in terms of analytical clarity and rigor are sometimes the price to pay. The
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definitions of these concepts are not always clear and in agreement over core elements.
This does not hold for one aspect in the debate this paper is most concerned with.
Authors such as Bowler and Farrell (1992), Swanson and Mancini (1996), Norris
(2000), and Gibson and Römmele (2001) consistently and clearly emphasize the
centralization of campaign structures as a critical property of professionalized
campaigning.
Bowler and Farrell (1992) summarize the literature on election campaigns up to
the late 1980s as being predominantly particularistic, descriptive and highly
ethnocentric with a strong emphasis on the American case. They furthermore argue
that little attention is devoted to the procedures inside of the parties related to
campaigns as opposed to research on campaign tools and themes. Their own
contribution aims to foster knowledge on the structure of campaigns outside of the US
and to pursue a “pre-theoretical enterprise” to explore the basic patterns of changes in
campaigning in different setting. Conceptual work thus takes the back seat in the
context of this early work. However, Bowler and Farrell (1992: 223) conclude their
study with the observation that “the modern campaign is manifestly a party
campaign” with a strong bias towards centralization of the campaign organization and
greater efficiency.
Mancini and Swanson (1996) use the concept of modern campaigning to label
changes in campaign styles. The authors identify five main properties of modern
campaigns, namely personalization, the increasing use of technical experts supplying
expertise and making decisions that formerly were made by party apparatus, a market
research approach in view of the voting population, the pre-eminent role of the mass
media that are assumed to develop into independent, powerful actors socializing and
educating the public, and the conduct of a never ending campaign aimed at constantly
renewing public approval. At the organizational level, the concept of the modern
campaign signifies a centralization of campaign activities “from grassroots
organisation or volunteers who campaign locally for candidates to centralized
structures of executives and managers" (Mancini and Swanson 1996: 12). Mancini
and Swanson do suggest that modern campaigns might also bring about decentralizing
tendencies with the emergence of new small and medium size intermediaries as
opposed to traditional alignments and with the return to microcircuits of communities
and interpersonal forms of communication (Mancini and Swanson 14). But this
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consideration remains to be a more or less isolated theme in their definition of modern
campaign practices which are said to be overall dominated the centralization of
campaign organization.
Pippa Norris (2000) distinguishes in her historical analysis of campaign styles
between three distinct campaign types in the course of the 20th century: premodern
campaigning, modern campaigning and postmodern campaigning. According to
Norris, postmodern campaigns distinguish themselves on the basis of three properties:
First, they are defined by the increasing importance of the constituency level of
campaigning; second the are seen as highly centralized and party driven endeavours
with strong top down control; thirdly they are characterized by new campaign tools
such as direct-mailing or online strategies of campaigning. The centralized character
of postmodern campaigns enabled by new media technology distinguishes
postmodern from premodern campaigns. While the latter according to Norris also
focused on the local level, it did so in a much more decentralized and eclectic fashion
compared to postmodern campaigns. The very notion of postmodern campaigning
nicely labels the basic idea of a campaign strategy combining different elements of
previous campaign practices in a patchwork like fashion.
Some authors such as Gibson and Römmele (2001: 34) try to square the cycle
reconciling the notions of centralization and decentralization in their definition of
professionalized campaigning. The authors argue that professional campaigns lead to
a “bifurcation” of campaign structure, that this type of campaigning is centralized and
decentralized at the same time. However, Gibson and Römmele neither tell us how
this might exactly look like in organizational terms nor are they consistent in their
message. They conclude their analysis with the observation that professional
campaigns are defined by the upward and outward movement of power and that they
are more likely to flourish in parties with “existing norms of internal hierarchy”
(Gibson and Römmele 2001: 37).
Modern media technology is perceived to be a powerful force driving the
process of professionalization. Römmele (2002) stresses direct-mailing as a core
means in the context of professionalized campaigns. This campaign tool enables
parties to bypass traditional intermediaries such as the mass media and party
organization to communicate with voters. Even more important, direct-mailing allows
parties to tailor their message to particular groups of voters in light of a more and
6
more fragmented voting public. Gibson and Römmele (2001) stress “e-mail sign-up
subscription lists for regular news updates” as one particular internet application
characterizing professionalized campaigns at the operational level. Other internet
applications can be related in similar ways to the construct of postmodern
campaigning.4 However, not any internet application automatically falls into line with
a professionalized campaign effort. Some internet application supports
professionalized campaigning while others are pointing into a quite different
direction.
The World Wide Web (WWW) should be in the centre of any postmodern
campaign. It should be applied in form of a central campaign website which could
serve several functions. It could help to disseminating the party message, it could be
used to extract resources from the voters through fund raising activities, and it could
lend itself to market oriented research methods through the conduct of public opinion
polls. Personal websites of individual candidates can also be perfect means of
postmodern campaigning. They enable political parties to communicate with
geographical segments of the voting population and to “narrowcast” their message,
accessing constituencies via individual candidates in light of specific local concerns
and characteristics. In the context of professionalized campaigns, the graphics and the
content of these websites should be tightly controlled by the central campaign
organization. Parties should for example provide templates for the candidates and
should offer services in the process of maintaining their sites. The party program and
the party image should be at the core of such websites.
This paper highlights a different aspect of online-campaigns. It argues that
online-campaigns can take forms that do not sit well with the concept of
professionalized campaigning and its centralizing tendencies in particular. These
alternative forms of online-campaigns can be summarized through the concept of 4 The empirical literature on online-campaigning is only loosely connected to
main constructs such as postmodern or professionalized campaigning. This loose connection is partly due to the fact that students of online-media are consumed with participation and the question whether the internet is used to facilitate new forms of voter engagement. This question is not entirely irrelevant for the debate on professionalization. Strategies of information dissemination are certainly better compatible with centrally driven online-campaigns than participatory and more interactive campaign strategies are. However, this is certainly not the whole story when it comes to online-campaigning as an element of postmodern campaigns.
7
individualized campaigning. The concept of individualization assumes that candidates
use the internet to campaign independently from their party and to attract as much
attention as possible to their own person rather than to their party. Gibson and
Römmele (2002: 106) observe traces of such forms of online-campaining in the 2002
German Federal Election concluding that “[…] divergence and individuality are in
evidence in German […] candidates’ web presence […].” The crucial question is that
of measurement. How can we measure “individuality” and “divergence” in objective
and systematic ways? An individual design of a Webpage or even an individual URL
might disguise a uniform campaign message and a tight campaign organization after
all. In this paper, I propose three indicators that can be applied through survey
research and that will help us to tell the difference between professionalized and
individualized campaigning online. These indicators are summarized in table 1.
Professionalized Campaign Indivdualized Campaign
Subjective norm focus on party focus on candidate
Organizational substructure controlled by party controlled by candidate
Comprehensiveness Low / only website High / multiple applications
Table 1: Two types of online-campaigns
A first indicator distinguishing between professionalized and individualized
online-campaigns focuses on the organizational substructure of a website. If personal
websites are developed and maintained by party organizations, they should serve as
means for professionalized campaign activities. If they are developed and maintained
in turn by candidates themselves they should rather serve as means for individualized
campaigning. A second indicator focuses on the comprehensiveness of online-
campaigns. Personal websites are perfect means to organize a top-down flow of
campaign information tightly controlled by a central campaign organization. A more
comprehensive campaign strategy that is characterized by multiple and more
interactive internet applications such as blogging and chatting is pointing into the
direction of individualized campaigning. Such a comprehensive strategy of online-
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campaigning renders top-down control much more difficult. The relationship between
campaign behaviour online and the subjective norm of a campaign can be perceived
as a third crucial indicator to distinguish between individualized and professionalized
campaigns. If campaign-activities online are related to the subjective norm to attract
attention to the individual candidate and his or her local campaigns rather than to the
national campaign of the party, this should serve as an indicator for individualized
campaigning and vice versa.
InternetDegree of individualizedonline-campaigningGeneration
Electoral Incentives
Campaign budget
Figure 1: A model of individualized online-campaigning
Are individualized online-campaigns a plausible scenario for the future? The
model in figure 1 frames my argument regarding this question. The internet is
portrayed in the literature as a cost effective means for unmediated communication
which benefits candidates and parties with limited resources in particular and thus
“levels the playing field” (Bimber 2003, Norris 2001). Empirical studies emphasize in
contrast to this rather techno-centrist perspective the role of resources as a factor
influencing the use of the internet (Gibson et al. 2003. Adequate campaign budgets
should thus also facilitate the conduct of individualized online-campaigns. The
process of generational change should produce more and more candidates inclined to
use the internet to its full potential as a means of campaigning. Candidates who came
9
to age with the internet should be subject to media socialization and should share a
high degree of internet literacy and a positive attitude towards the medium as a
consequence (Sackmann and Weymann 1994). This should set them apart from older
colleagues who should have more troubles in applying the internet and who should be
more doubtful regarding its benefits. Recent empirical findings support this claim in
quite convincing ways (Zittel 2003; Herrnson et al. 2007, Carlson 2007).
The electoral system should be a decisive factor explaining choices in campaign
strategies. While this argument is widely shared, most analyses are restricted to only
testing the impact of district competitiveness on online-campaigning (Ward & Gibson
2003). This paper goes beyond this narrow focus. It stresses and tests the impact of
the ballot structure on online-campaigning. It assumes that if voters are given the
possibility to vote on individual candidates, candidates should perceive this as an
incentive to individualize their campaign and to use the internet for this very purpose
(Bowler and Farrell (1992: 8). Ballot structure is paramount to the impact of
competitiveness on elite behaviour and should be accordingly tested in a
comprehensive research design.
The German case provides a useful example for testing the impact of ballot
structure. Its mixed member electoral system pitches together a personalized voting
system with a list based voting system generating different electoral incentives for
different groups of candidates while holding many contextual factors constant
(Klingemann and Wessels 2001). This allows for a quasi-experiment in researching
the electoral sources of campaign behaviour online. If my assumption regarding the
impact of the ballot structure holds true, district candidates should use the internet as a
means to individualize their campaigns while party list candidates should either
abstain from using the internet or should use the medium in a professionalized form of
campaigning.
District competitiveness should add a further piece to the puzzle of online-
campaigns, particularly in the German case. The German electoral system allows for
double candidacies meaning that one candidate can compete for a district and for a list
vote at the same time. Many candidates take advantage of this opportunity, many of
them running in hopeless districts while occupying a safe or nearly seat on their
party’s list. Differences in the competitiveness of districts suggest under these
conditions a systematic difference between district candidates running in hopeful
10
(competitive) districts on the one hand and all other candidates on the other. Hopeful
candidates should run individualized campaigns online while candidates without any
chances to win a district (pure list candidates as well as district candidates in hopeless
meaning non-competitive districts) should either abstain from campaigning online or
should run professionalized campaigns.
Why should district candidates occupying a safe slot on their party’s list invest
any effort in their district candidacy? Isn’t their list position the crucial determinant
for their behaviour? The answer to this question is no. Anecdotal evidence suggests
that an election victory in the district is highly valued as a means to foster the policy,
career and election/re-election goals of candidates or incumbents. The ability to win a
district simply translates into a high status within the party organization and it secures
an own electoral basis and thus relative independence. It is thus valued more highly
among candidates than election via a party list.
Incumbency is a much looked at factor in the debate on the electoral sources of
online-campaigns. Most empirical studies find no relationship between online-
campaigns and the status of incumbency. Michael Herrnson et al (2007) explain this
pattern for the US by pointing to the opportunities for incumbents to use their
congressional websites as “hidden means of campaigning” during the legislative cycle.
One study on the incumbency advantage in the US House of Representatives finds
that incumbents enjoy better access to the mass media in their district which
downplays the need to use alternative types of media (Prior 2006). When it comes to
the particular style of campaigning, one should assume on the one hand that
incumbents are more inclined to follow the party line being in most cases important
players within their own parties. But incumbents enjoy on the other hand independent
electoral bases in their districts which should make them more autonomous in the
nomination process and thus more inclined to campaign in an individual fashion.
Because of these inconclusive considerations, I will tests for the impact of
incumbency on online-campaigning without expressing a clear expectation regarding
the outcome.
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3 The Internet as a campaign tool in the German Federal Election 2005: individualization or professionalization? 5
The Internet proofed to be an important campaign means in the German Federal
Election of 2005. This is firstly true in quantitative terms. A majority of candidates
(59%) claimed to having maintained a personal website to communicate with voters.
Compared to the finding of Gibson and Römmele (2005) for the German Federal
Election in 2002, this indicates a significant increase in online-campaigning over time.
According to these authors, 42 percent of candidates used a personal website in the
2002 election. The level of online-campaigning in Germany is also significant from a
cross national perspective. A comparable study by Gibson and McAllister (2006)
finds for Australia with 40 percent a much lower number of candidates with a
personal website in the 2004 Federal Election.
The importance of personal websites as campaign means in the German Federal
Election of 2005 is secondly true in qualitative terms. Table 2 shows that candidates
perceived websites as important means of campaigning compared to other campaign
tools. It does not come as a surprise that candidates consider visits to social events as
the most important means of campaigning. But personal websites rank third trailing
5 This analysis is based on the German Candidate Study 2005 (GCS 2005). The
study is a postal survey of all 2346 district and party-list candidates of the five parties represented in the German Bundestag in 2005: the Social Democrats (SPD), Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), Free Democrats (FDP), Greens and the Socialist Party (Left.PDS). The majority of candidates, namely 1050 (45%), were double candidacies, competing in a particular district as well as on a party list. Only 434 (18%) of all candidates solely ran in one of the 299 electoral districts and 862 (37%) competed only on a respective party list. The response rate of our survey with 1032 completed questionnaires (44%) was more than satisfactory. 669 district candidates and 363 party-list candidates did participate. The realized sample largely represents the population. Evidence for this is the following: In the realized sample the distribution of candidates by party does not systematically deviate from a theoretically expected uniform distribution (SPD 18 percent; CDU/CSU 21 percent; FDP 20 percent; Greens 20 percent; Left.PDS 21 %); the mean age of the candidates in the realized sample as well as in the population of all candidates of these parties are identical (46 years); even when considering the mode of candidacy, the distribution in the realized sample (35 percent party-list-only candidates; 20 percent are district-only candidates) is essentially the same as in the population (37 percent party-list-only candidates; 19 percent are district-only candidates). The share of double candidacies in the realized sample is the same as in the population (45 percent). Moreover, the realized sample does realistically reflect the rate of incumbents to non-incumbents (7:93) compared to the one in the population (11:89).
12
leaflets only by a narrow margin and leaving office hours and personal campaign
posters behind. Almost 57 percent of our respondents claim that a personal website
was a very important or important means in their campaign. This contradicts the
assumption that candidates’ websites are an experimental “add on” to the established
repertoire of campaign activities (Gibson and McAllister 2006: 250). The findings
reported in table 2 characterize websites as one important campaign tool among others.
Not important / of little importance
Important / very important Total
Visits of social events 27.1 (266) 72.9 (719) 100 (985)
Personalized leaflets 35.6 (349) 64.4 (631 100 (980)
Personal website 43.3 (428) 56.7 (561) 100 (989)
Personal campaign poster 45 (442) 55 (541) 100 (983)
Office hours 44.2 (429) 55.8 (542) 100 (971)
Personal campaign adds in newspapers 33.3 (335) 65.7 (642) 100 (977)
Table 2: Tools of campaigning and their importance
What are the implications of personal websites for the structure of election
campaigns? What is their exact meaning? Do they indicate in the German case the
professionalization (centralization) or the individualization (decentralization) of
election campaigns? In search for an answer to this question, the GCS 2005 asked at a
first level in a closed question format for those actors who shouldered the main
responsibility for developing and maintaining candidates’ personal websites. The
responses show that almost ¼ of all the respondents’ websites (13.5%) were indeed
developed and maintained by the party organization while the other ¾ (45%) are
characterized as independent publications developed and maintained by the candidate
and his or her campaign team. The first type of website can be perceived as a means
of professionalized campaigns while the second type of website is pointing more into
the direction of individualized campaigning. This is despite the fact that we did not
ask for the exact level of party organization involved in the development and
13
maintenance of the websites. But it seems fair to assume that candidates and personal
campaign teams are more independent from the national campaign than any level of
party organization that could possibly be involved.
N %
Personal website 609 59.1
Personal website developed and maintained by candidate 469 45.5
Weblog 102 9.9
Online chats 149 14.5
Campaign spot produced for internet dissemination 37 3.6
Table 3: The means of online-campaigns
Personal websites are specific means of online-campaigns. Their technological
characteristics render them particularly useful in the context of professionalized
campaign structures. They can be easily used as channels for the distribution of top-
down information “with a personal face”. The adoption of different means for online-
campaigning such as chats or weblogs suggests in contrast to this a more
individualized type of campaign. Such applications emphasize the interactive aspect
of the internet and are much less suited for centralized top-down campaign styles.
The GCS 2005 asked for internet related campaign activities reaching beyond
the publication of personal websites. Table 3 demonstrates in line with other findings
in the literature that online-campaigning is predominantly focused on information
provision rather than the interaction with voters. Only a small minority of our
respondents used weblogs (9.9%) and online-chats (14.5%) for campaign purposes.
The production of personal campaigns spots to be shown on the internet (3.6%) was
an even less frequent occurrence. The information in table 3 was used to calculate an
index measuring the comprehensiveness of online-campaigning. This index ranges
between 0 (no online-campaign) and 4 (comprehensive online-campaign). My
assumption is that more comprehensive online-campaigns adopting a larger number of
means of online-campaigning suggest more individualized types of campaigns.
14
Table 4 demonstrates that few candidates conducted a full blown
comprehensive campaign on the internet. Only three candidates out of 1030 used a
personal website, conducted online-chats, produced a personal campaign spot to be
shown on the internet and published a weblog at the same time. These three
candidates were the vanguard in online-campaigning in the German Election 2005. A
small number of 30 candidates (2.9%) came close to the ideal applying three different
forms of online campaign activities. A sizeable number of 151 candidates (14.7)
moved into the direction of the ideal with 2 activities. The largest group of candidates
(47.7%) focused only on one form of online-campaigning, mostly personal websites.
Only very few candidates conducted online-chats or kept a weblog without using a
personal website. Websites thus represent the baseline in the context of online-
campaigns. The campaigns of those candidates that stick to this baseline should be
more in line with the concept of professionalization rather than individualization.
Candidates who move away from this baseline by adopting additional means for
online-campaigning individualize their campaign accordingly.
N %
No online-campaign 355 34.5
1 491 47.7
2 151 14.7
3 30 2.9
Comprehensive online-campaign 3 ,3
Total 1030 100,0
Table 4: The comprehensiveness of online-campaigning
The meaning of online-campaigns is not solely defined by campaign
behaviour as such. The underlying subjective norms of candidates should be a factor
shaping campaign behaviour and defining the nature of particular online activities. To
measure the subjective dimension of campaigns the GCS 2005 asked on a 10-point
scale for the candidates’ assessment on whether their main goal was to maximize
15
attention to their party (= 10) as opposed to themselves as candidates (= 1). The
responses to this question demonstrate that every fourth candidate aimed to draw the
utmost attention to his or her party rather than to him- or herself (= 10). But 5 percent
of the candidates report that their main campaign goal was to maximize attention to
themselves rather than to their party (= 1). If we divide up our 10-point scale into two
halves, and if we perceive candidates locating themselves between 10 and 6 as sharing
party-centred norms and, conversely, candidates locating themselves between scale
values 1 and 5 as sharing candidate-centred norms, we find 30 percent of all
candidates falling into this second category.
N %
Party-focused online-campaign 345 57.7
Candidate-focused online-campaign 253 42.3
Total 598 100.0
Table 5: The subjective dimension of online-campaigns
The subjective dimension of campaigning provides the basis for another
distinction in my analysis aimed to understand the nature of online-campaigning. I
distinguish in table 5 between candidates with a personal website leaning towards the
party extreme on my 10-point scale one the one hand and candidates with a personal
website leaning toward the candidate extreme of the 10-point scale on the other. Table
5 reports the frequencies for each of these subgroups of candidates. The assumption is
that those candidates who aimed at attracting a higher degree of attention for their
own person were also using their websites in more individualized ways. Candidates
who aimed more at attracting attention to their party should conduct their online-
activities in a similar fashion and should fall more into line with professionalized
campaign strategies. Table 5 demonstrates a clear and almost equal division between
candidates with websites with a slight majority of candidates being more party-
focused in their campaign behaviour.
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4 The sources of individualized online-campaigns
What are the explanations for the patterns in online-campaigning described in the
previous section? Table 6 shows four regression analyses to answer this question.
Regression analysis 1 provides the baseline for my argument. It shows that the
decision to publish a personal website is systematically related to the three factors
discussed in the theoretical part of the paper. The size of the campaign budget is
positively related to the publication of a personal website. The higher the local
campaign budget the more likely it gets that candidates use a personal website in their
campaign. Personal websites can be furthermore explained by the generation of
candidates. Candidates born after 1965 are more likely to publish a personal
campaign page. The mode of candidacy also stands in a positive relationship to the
publication of personal websites. Candidates who campaigned in a district for a direct
vote were more likely to publish a personal website.
Reg. 1: Website
Reg. 2: Independent
Reg. 3 Comprehensive
Reg. 4: Norm
Generation .628*** .615*** .475*** .222
(.199) (.178) (.150) (.220) Campaign budget (local) .008*** .006*** .003*** .005***
(.002) (.001) (.001) (.001)
Mode of candidacy 1.909*** 1.337*** 1.417*** -.454
(.217) (.220) (.188) (.341)
Competitiveness 18.706 1.821*** .780*** 1.887***
(.997) (.623) (.276) (.387)
Incumbency -18.208 -.795 -.038 -.038
(.997) (.745) (.335) (.515)
Nagelkerke R2 .406 .353 .247 .339
(N) (824) (824) (824) (536) Note: Entries are unstandardized regression coefficients, robust standard errors in parentheses; * p<.1; ** p<.05; *** p<.01. Data source: GCS 2005
Table 6: Online-campaigns and their explanations
17
All three findings can be interpreted within the model of professionalized
campaigning. They do not necessarily point into the direction of individualized
online-campaigns. The size of the campaign budget could firstly signal the spending
priorities of political parties supporting particular district candidates to communicate
national campaign messages in personalized ways to particular geographical
constituencies via websites. Young candidates who came to age with the internet
could be simply more inclined to follow national guidelines and to use available
resources designed to facilitate online-campaigning in a professionalized context.
Even the effect of the mode of campaigning could be in the German case perfectly in
line with the notion of professionalized campaigning.
Research on the German Mixed Member Electoral System suggests a
contamination effect between the first tier and the second tier of the electoral
competition. This means that increases in the district vote translate into increase in the
list vote (Hainmüller und Kern 2006). Parties thus take the district vote in each of the
299 single member districts serious even if they cannot win a particular district. They
will ask their district candidates to employ all means possible to conduct a serious but
party driven campaign to mobilize as much district votes as possible, even if the
competition in the district itself is a hopeless case.
Regressions 2 through 4 in table 6 differ in two important aspects from the first
regression model. These two differences in relationship with the different nature of
the independent variables at hand support the individualization hypothesis outlined in
this paper. We firstly see in all three remaining regressions a statistically significant
effect of the competitiveness of the district on online-campaigning.6 In districts that
6 I am assuming that candidates estimate their chances to win on the basis of the
results of the previous elections in terms of the margin between the first and the second winner in the district vote. I am furthermore assuming that candidates will calculate this estimate on the basis of a threshold rather than working on the basis of continuous increments. If candidates’ won the previous elections or if the lost by a narrow margin, the chances to win will be considered as high and the incentives for an individualized campaign will increase with this estimate. If candidates’ lost by a large margin in the previous elections, the chances to win will be considered as low in turn with few incentives to run an individualized campaign. I define the threshold between a competitive and a non competitive districted with the margin of <10 percent and > 10 percent. This is a frequently used assumption in the literature. A 10 percent threshold to distinguish between safe and competitive districts is used e.g. by Turner (1953) or for the German
18
are in close reach candidates are more likely to use an independently developed and
maintained website, to conduct a more comprehensive internet campaign and to focus
more closely on their own candidacy as the main subject of the campaign. The
isolated existence of one or two of these relationships could be interpreted as an
indicator for party driven efforts to win a close district. But the consistency of these
effects across all three indicators, the sharp contrast to the finding in Regression 1 and
the nature of the indicators itself suggests an entirely different story pointing into the
direction of individualized campaign efforts online.
The relationships between the ballot structure and the competitiveness of the
districts on the one hand and the three independent variables in regressions 2 to 4 on
the other signal the use of the internet for more individualized and independent
campaign efforts. These efforts are driven by individual candidates who are enabled
by the technological capacities of the internet and their own media socialization and
who are driven by ballot structure and the competitiveness of the race. Candidates
campaigning in competitive districts are thus more likely to distance themselves from
the national campaign of their party and to use the internet to campaign in a more
individualized fashion.
A second difference that is relevant in the context of my argument can be
observed between regressions 1 and 4. In contrast to regression 1, regression 4 shows
no effect of generation whatsoever. This demonstrates that electoral incentives are
strong and pervasive enough to stimulate serious campaign activities even in cases
where technology and media socialization is no longer the issue. Regression 4 is only
based on the subgroup of those candidates who published websites in their campaign.
Their goal to focus the voters’ attention on their own campaign rather than their
party’s campaign is obviously driven to a large part by the individual goal to secure a
decisive number of direct votes in the quest for a district mandate.
The size of the campaign budget is a crucial determinant across all four
regressions shown in table 6. Online media obviously do not solve the problem of
scarcity as some commentators suggested. Resources remain to be an issue for
candidates struggling to meet the impossible demands that campaigns make on their
case by Schmitt and Wüst (2002). The New York Times uses this criterion, too, for electoral district predictions.
19
time and resources. This very fact certainly provides opportunities for parties to
“bribe” individual candidates providing resources for online-campaigning to make
them fall in line with a top-down professionalized campaign effort. However, as long
as candidates also have the legal opportunities to finance their local campaigns via
private contributions or through their own money, as it is the case in Germany, other
sources of income are available to financially support a more individualized campaign
effort.
5 Conclusion and discussion: how save are party driven campaigns in technology?
My analysis shows that new media technology does not provide a safe heaven for
political parties as the concept of professionalization suggests. Online-campaign
activities in the German Federal Election 2005 reveal also traces of individualized
campaigning with candidates independently developing and maintaining websites,
conducting comprehensive online-campaigns and using the internet with the
subjective aim to attract attention to their individual campaign rather than their party’s
campaign. These developments reach beyond the narrower confines of online-
campaigning and are relevant for other debates as well. They might mirror and
facilitate general trends in campaign behaviour (Zittel and Gschwend 2007), party
organizational change (Carty 2004) and changes in parliamentary behaviour (Katz
2001). Candidates who campaign online in individualized ways might do so too in the
offline world and might be more prone to distance themselves from their party if
elected to parliament.
Media technology is not a factor which determines campaign behaviour in
automatic ways. It might do so increasingly in a direct way via generational change
with candidates becoming more and more inclined to use the technological potential
of the internet in most comprehensive ways. My findings support this understanding
to some respect. Generation does not only affect the use of personal websites for
campaign purposes but it also affects the choice of an individualized campaign style.
But my findings also demonstrate that the internet functions as a catalyst to other
factors such as electoral incentives affecting campaign behaviour in an indirect way.
Electoral systems giving voters the opportunities to personalize their vote, as the
German Mixed Member System does, might become more consequential for elite
20
behaviour because of the internet. This indirect effect of the internet might amplify
already existing electoral incentives and might translate into increasing levels of
individualized campaign behaviour.
The sky is obviously not the limit when it comes to the subject of individualized
online-campaigning. Online-campaigns require resources which still are
predominantly controlled by parties in Germany as well as in most other European
democracies. To individualize online-campaigns in further and more decisive ways
candidates need to become more independent from their party in terms of their
campaign budget. This is obviously a significant factor that will determine the
structure of online-campaigns to come. In some countries where candidates might
lack an independent source of funding, this raises legal issues and presupposes a
process of change in formal institutions. In other countries, this simply presupposes
changing norms and practices in the funding of campaigns.
This paper did not touch upon socio-political change as a factor in explaining
campaign behaviour online. The weakening of political parties in the electorate might
push candidates to no longer rely on a declining brand name in their campaigns but to
rather establish themselves as brand new start up enterprises. The internet could act as
a catalyst to this incentive. Whether socio-political change will have this kind of
effect in autonomous and direct ways remains to be an open question. Institutionalists
might argue that socio-political change needs to be supported by personalized
electoral systems. If not, if candidates lack the institutional incentive to individualize
their campaign, socio-political change should rather result in professionalized
campaigns. The empirical realities of the online world suggest in turn that socio-
political change translates into advocacy coalitions articulating the voters’ need for
more individualized products in the electoral game independent from the electoral
system. In the German case, the initiative www.abgeordnetenwatch.de provides an
interesting example for such developments. This initiative collects the issue positions
and political profiles of German legislators at the state and federal level and asks
voters to pose questions to legislators and to enter into an interactive dialogue with
them. Such initiatives might act as incentives to legislators and candidates to
individualize their behaviour at all levels of the political process independent from
electoral incentives.
21
The case of Germany is characterized by at least one variable that is important
in the context of my individualization-hypothesis and that was not subject to this
analysis either. The German political system being a federal system is highly
decentralized in many of its political structures. This also translates into the sphere of
political parties in ways which merit Peter Lösche’s (1998) metaphor of parties as
“loosely coupled anarchies". Political parties are fragmented in Germany at the
vertical dimension. The regional and local organizational levels have considerable
autonomy in election campaigns. This very fact calls for comparative research
controlling for the impact of Federalism to test the general argument of the paper. The
demonstrated independent effect of electoral incentives on individualized campaign
behaviour online needs to be tested in unitary systems with a more centralized party
structure in order to gauge its scope and pervasiveness.
22
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