Lost in Technology? Political Parties and Online-Campaigning in Mixed Member Electoral Systems 1

Transcription

1 Lost in Technology? Political Parties and Online-Campaigning in Mixed Member Electoral Systems 1 Thomas Zittel 2 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 onlinecampaigning 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, Dr. Thomas Zittel, Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (MZES), Postfach, D Mannheim, Germany, voice: +49 (0) , Thomas.Zittel@mzes.uni-mannheim.de 1

2 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, onlinecampaigns 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. 2

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 onlinecampaigns 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 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 3

4 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 4

5 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 20 th 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 5

6 more fragmented voting public. Gibson and Römmele (2001) stress 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 onlinecampaigns than participatory and more interactive campaign strategies are. However, this is certainly not the whole story when it comes to onlinecampaigning as an element of postmodern campaigns. 6

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 onlinecampaigns. 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- 7

8 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. Electoral Incentives Internet Generation Degree of individualized online-campaigning 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 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 8

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 onlinecampaigns, 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 9

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 onlinecampaigns 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. 10

11 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 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 nonincumbents (7:93) compared to the one in the population (11:89). 11

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 ( (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 12

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 Personal website developed and maintained by candidate Weblog Online chats Campaign spot produced for internet dissemination 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 topdown information with a personal face. The adoption of different means for onlinecampaigning 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. 13

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 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 onlinecampaigns. 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 Comprehensive online-campaign 3,3 Total ,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 14

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 Candidate-focused online-campaign Total 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 onlineactivities 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 partyfocused in their campaign behaviour. 15

16 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 Campaign budget (local) (.199) (.178) (.150) (.220).008***.006***.003***.005*** (.002) (.001) (.001) (.001) Mode of candidacy 1.909*** 1.337*** 1.417*** (.217) (.220) (.188) (.341) Competitiveness ***.780*** 1.887*** (.997) (.623) (.276) (.387) Incumbency (.997) (.745) (.335) (.515) Nagelkerke R (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 16

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 17

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. 18

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 onlinecampaigning 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 19

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 sociopolitical 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 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. 20

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. 21

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