Political Communication In Direct Democratic Campaigns

The contributors to this volume analyze the communication processes in Swiss direct democratic campaigns and their effect on the information processing and opinion formation of the citizen public. The book adopts an integrated approach to the study of political communication that combines a demand side with a supply side vision of democracy.

The key question it tries to answer is whether, in direct democratic campaigns, the political elites are capable of manipulating the voters in such a way as to impose their policy goals without taking the voters' preferences into account. Based on a detailed analysis of the politicians' strategies, media coverage, and the opinion formation of the public, the authors arrive at the optimistic conclusion that direct democratic campaigns are rather more enlightening than manipulating.

The voters learn considerably in the course of the campaigns and based on their enhanced knowledge the overwhelming majority make choices consistent with their preferences. Review: 'Interest in political campaigns and the role of the media has increased dramatically over the last few years. Political Communication in Direct Democratic Campaigns offers an impressively broad study of the interactions among politicians, the media and citizens.

Based on a comprehensive data collection on three direct democratic campaigns in Switzerland, the contributors to this volume offer fascinating new insights on how media and politicians interact and how this interaction affects and is affected by citizens. Given the innovative and comprehensive design of the data collection this book will influence future work on political communcation.' - Simon Hug, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva, Switzerland