Overview

Have you ever see a politician fiercely attacking his opponent? Sure you have. Election campaigns without attacks on the rival candidate's performance, policy propositions and traits simply do not exist. Negative campaigning makes up a substantial part of election campaigns around the world. Though heavily covered in election news, the practice is strongly disliked by political pundits, journalists and voters. Some are even concerned that negative campaigning damages democracy itself.Negative campaigning has inspired numerous scholars in recent decades. But much of the existing research examines the phenomenon only in the United States, and scholars disagree on how the practice should be defined and measured, which has resulted in open-ended conclusions about its causes and effects.This unique volume presents for the first time work examining negative campaigning in the US, Europe and beyond. It presents systematic literature overviews and new work that touches upon three fundamental questions: What is negative campaigning and can we measure it? What causes negative campaigning? And what are its effects?

Full Product Details

Author:   Alessandro Nai ,  Annemarie Walter
Publisher:   ECPR Press
Imprint:   ECPR Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 23.00cm
Weight:   0.286kg
ISBN:  

9781785522369

ISBN 10:   1785522361
Pages:   398
Publication Date:   14 October 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Part I: Defining and Measuring Negative Campaigning2 Functional Theory: Negative Campaigning in Political TV Spots William L. Benoit3 What is Negative About Negative Ads? Barbara Allen and Daniel Stevens4 Comparing Measures of Campaign Negativity: Expert judgments, manifestos, debates and ads Francois Gelineau and Andre Blais5 Attack, Support, and Coalitions in a Multiparty System. Understanding Negative Campaigning in a Country with Coalition Government Wouter De Nooy and Jan KleinnijenhuisPart II: The Causes of Negative Campaigning6 Explaining the Use of Attack Behaviour in the Electoral Battlefield: A Literature Overview Annemarie S. Walter and Alessandro Nai7 Negative Campaigning in Proportional Representation - Yet Non-Coalition - Systems: Evidence from Switzerland Damien Bol and Marian Bohl8 Do Female Candidates feel Compelled to Meet Sex-Role Expectations or Are They as Tough as Men? A Content Analysis on the Gender-Specific Use of Attacks in German Televised Debates Jurgen Maier9 Going Negative in Direct-Democratic Campaigns Laurent Bernhard10 When Do Parties Attack their Competitors? Negative campaigning in Austria, 2002-2008 Martin Dolezal, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik and Wolfgang C. Mueller11 The Strategy of Electoral Spots in Brazilian Presidential Campaign: The Decision on When and Where to Broadcast an Attack Felipe Borba12 Understanding Negativity Within and Among Different Levels of Governments: Evidence from Turkey Emre Toros13 An OCEAN of Negativity. An Experimental Assessment on Personality Traits and the Chances to 'Go Dirty' in Debates on Political Issues Alessandro Nai, Valentina Holecz, Mario Marchesini, Adrien Petitpas and Ben Sanogo-WillersPart III: The Effects of Negative Campaigning14 How Negative Campaigning Impinges on the Political Game: a Literature Review Alessandro Nai and Annemarie S. Walter15 The Effects of Ad Tone on Information Processing and the Vote Choice Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk16 How the News Media Amplify Negative Messages Travis N. Ridout and Annemarie S. Walter17 When Do Attacks Work? Moderated Effects on Voters' Candidate Evaluation in a Televised Debate Wouter De Nooy and Jurgen Maier18 Feeding the Negative? Referendum Votes in Ireland Theresa Reidy and Jane Suiter19 Epilogue: Where to Go From Here in the Study of Negative Campaigning Annemarie S. Walter and Alessandro Nai

Reviews

The study of negative campaigning has mostly been about American elections. Refreshingly, the essays in this book look at what happens in other countries. By so doing, they truly offer new perspectives and thus advance our understanding of attack politics. Recommended to anyone interested in elections and campaigns. John G Geer, Vanderbilt University Negative campaigning, where politicians attack rivals, is a ubiquitous phenomenon, such as Trump belittling his Republican Party adversaries. Mud-slinging in the US is widely blamed for polarising party politics and demobilising citizens, yet the use of this strategy elsewhere, and its full consequences, remain unclear. In this first-rate new volume, Nai and Walter present fresh evidence from international experts covering a wide range of countries and contexts to examine how negative campaigning is best measured, what explains the adoption of this communications strategy, and what effects flow from this practice. This fascinating and accessible book provides a milestone in comparative communications research, settling the US case in comparative perspective. Pippa Norris, John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Author Information

Alessandro Nai is Lecturer in empirical methods at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). His work deals with citizens' behaviour in referenda and elections, political psychology, and campaigning effects. He is currently co-directing a three-year SNSF research project (2012-2015) on negative campaigning in Switzerland, with a special focus on its causes and effects. He has been a visiting fellow at the Rutgers University, USA (2008-2009) and at the University of Sydney, Australia (2014). Recent journal articles include 'What really matters is which camp goes dirty: differential effects of negative campaigning on turnout during Swiss federal ballots' (European Journal of Political Research, 2013) and 'The Cadillac, the mother-in-law, and the ballot: individual and contextual roots of ambivalence in Swiss direct democracy' (Electoral Studies, 2014).Annemarie Walter is a Marie Curie Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom). She received her PhD in 2012 at the University of Amsterdam. Prior to that she was an Assistant Professor in the Communication Science Department at VU Amsterdam. Dr Walter is currently working on a three-year Marie Curie/ NRF research project (2014-2017) entitled CSNCC: Comparative Study of Negative Campaigning and its Consequences. She has published numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Political Studies, Party Politics, Acta Politica and the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics.

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