Online Campaigning in Germany: The CDU Online Campaign for the General Election 2009 in Germany

The German election year 2009 saw the first attempts by political parties to include Web 2.0 services in their online campaigns. The 2009 election therefore offers the opportunity to examine how political parties outside the USA – where online campaigning has become commonplace – choose to use online tools in their campaigns. This paper examines the online campaign of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with a special focus on the campaign's use of Web 2.0 services. The different elements of the campaign will be discussed with regard to three basic functions of online campaigning provided by the relevant literature: 1) presence in the online information space; 2) support of the infrastructure of politics; 3) creation of symbols for political support and participation. This paper shows that these functions were all present in the CDU's use of online tools in the campaign of 2009.     

The Role of the Internet in Political Campaigns in Germany

The Internet has become an important infrastructure for political campaigns around the world, and various online tools have become pervasive campaigning devices. Still, most research on the role of the Internet and online tools in political campaigns focuses on US presidential campaigns. Due to the specific institutional context in the US, this research might not provide realistic observations about the role of the Internet in future campaigns in other countries. Researchers will have to enrich the debate through systematic studies of the role of the Internet and various online services in campaigns in political, legal and cultural contexts different from those prevailing in the US. This special issue aims to add to the discussion by presenting a number of empirical studies focusing on the role of the Internet and various online services during the campaign for the German federal election of 2009 and its aftermath.     

Model or deterrence? The United States presidential election campaigns and the bundestag election campaigns

This article focuses on the election of the President of the United States of America in 2004 and on the premature election of the Bundestag in Germany in 2005. The main questions which are discussed are: Where can we currently discern central similarities in campaigning, which remain functionally powerful despite the considerable differences in system and context? What can be learned from the United States 2004 presidential election campaign for future Bundestag election campaigns in Germany? Can we observe developments in the USA which we have already seen in the 2005 Bundestag election? Could these trends be useful for the German parties in the future? This contribution argues that there are some developments in the United States which may prove useful to the German parties in future Bundestag campaigns.     

Campañas negativas en las elecciones 2000 y 2006 en México

This article explores the nature of negative campaigns that were held in both 2000 and 2006 Mexican presidential elections. The purpose is to establish that the generalized use of negative campaigning concurs with the development of two unusual electoral processes: the transition of the State party into an opposition party (2000), and its consolidation as government (2006). Based on the theoretical claims of Shiv (1997), Lau (1999), and Finkel (1998), the author describes the development of negative campaigns in those elections that represented the starting point and the presumed consummation of the use of this kind of campaigns. With journals’ documented records and the monitoring of tv spots of both elections it is established that the 2000 presidential election used negative campaigns based on decrying the official party, while the 2006 election resorted to negative tv spots.     

Third‐Party Campaigning and Issue‐Advertising in Australia

Large‐scale issue‐advertising by third parties appears to be increasing in Australia. This article analyses recent official data on political expenditure, and situates such campaigning in historical perspective with case studies of the bank nationalisation, Medibank, WorkChoices and mining tax campaigns. The success of the latter two campaigns illustrates the potential for well‐resourced sectors to employ what has traditionally been seen as an “outsider” tactic. The various drivers of the phenomenon are discussed, including evolving trends in political engagement and the media, and fluctuations in perceptions of governmental strength or weakness. The most distinctly Australian aspect of the phenomenon is the tendency in recent decades for governments and third parties to engage in a “call‐and‐response” cycle of issue‐advertising.     

The Liberals and Vietnam1

How did the Menzies Governments of the early to mid 1960s arrive at the position of sending Australian troops to Vietnam? During the 1950s, Menzies, and especially his External Affairs Minister Richard Casey, developed an appreciation of the strategic significance of Indochina, but struggled to view the conflict in Vietnam in ways other than through Cold War lenses. By the 1960s too, Britain's capacity to demonstrate a lead for Australia in foreign policy for the region was diminishing with its power, and the Menzies Governments were mindful of the need to support an American preparedness to intervene in Southeast Asia against communist‐led forces. This logic became more compelling in the face of Indonesia's “Confrontation” with Malaysia from 1963. As a result, the Liberals were not reluctant to support US military intervention in the region, in Vietnam.     

The Price of Nostalgia: Menzies, the "Liberal" Tradition and Australian Foreign Policy

This article surveys some of the key contributions to the secondary literature on Australia's foreign and defence policy during Robert Gordon Menzies' two prime ministerships (1939–41, 1949–66), and seeks to identify Menzies' place in a "Liberal" and Liberal Party tradition through a reading of this work. Via a study of Menzies' imperialism, British race patriotism, nationalism, and attitudes towards Asia and the United States of America, it argues that the prime minister stands in an ambiguous relationship to the transformation that occurred in Australia's international orientation between the 1930s and 1960s. In the 1950s the Australian government's cold war foreign policy, and the political language that Menzies used in private and public to articulate it, were largely successful in balancing the competing claims of Britishness, Australianness and the newly-formed "American Alliance". By the early 1960s, however, his nostalgia for a dissolving imperial order was sufficiently pronounced that it contributed powerfully to a symbolic and rhetorical defeat for his side of politics, allowing Labor to claim the mantle of Australian foreign policy modernity.     

A failure of imagination: R.G. Casey and Australian plans for counter-subversion in Asia, 1954-1956

This article is a study of some aspects of the non-military response of the Menzies government to the decolonisation of the European empires and the cold war in Asia. In the mid-1950s R.G. Casey, the Minister for External Affairs, was given responsibility by the cabinet to develop a programme of Colombo Plan - educational, cultural, propaganda, intelligence and political initiatives - which the Menzies government hoped would influence the outcome of the cold war in Asia. This article suggests that an examination of these government initiatives reveals some important insights into the nature of the Menzies government's understanding of and response to the revolutionary changes which swept through Asia in the decade after the Second World War.     

“The Politics of Political Advertising” in Australia and Britain, 1970–1989

The role of advertising in the production of political campaigns deserves more consideration than it has previously received. My study examines advertising agencies associated with election campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, investigating their decisions to accept or reject political accounts. Focusing on Britain and Australia, and using a range of primary sources including the industry press, interviews and memoirs, I demonstrate that an agency's decision to accept a political account is always complex, contested and highly contingent. Accepting a political account may alienate clients and agency staff who support another party. Campaigns are labour‐intensive and may detract from an agency's core business. Involvement in a losing campaign can damage an agency's reputation, just as association with a successful one may attract clients. Agencies are often unsure how to approach political advertising where traditional techniques may not be suitable. Such concerns about accepting a political account will likely be put aside where an agency principal has close personal ties to a party or leader.     

Web campaigning from a global perspective

Since the mid-1990s, political parties around the world have been moving into cyberspace. During the early years, it was not evident that many of them had any clearly defi ned ideas about why the internet would prove useful, or how they should present themselves on it. As time has passed, however, a number of key uses for the new technology have emerged as well some common trends in parties' and candidates' website content and appearance. Paramount among those uses has been the increasing use of the World Wide Web (WWW) and email as electioneering tools. This paper aims to chart the development of so-called "cyber-campaigning" by political parties both in terms of what they are doing (supply side) and also how the electorate are responding (demand side). The two key questions that will be addressed are 1) whether the practice is adding anything new to parties' campaign practices, and 2) what difference, if any, it is making for voters. Does cyber-campaigning play a decisive role in terms of changing minds, if not hearts? The analysis covers developments in cyber-campaigning across a number of contexts but has particular emphasis on Europe, the US, and Australia. Beginning with an historical overview, we chart the rise of web campaigning since the mid-1990s in the US and then move to look at the academic research that has attempted to compare and contrast website content and quality and also explain the distribution of party and candidate sites. After identifying some of the key elements within the cyber-campaign tool box, and the factors that appear to promote its practice, we then turn to look at the audience for election websites and discuss the crucial issue of the extent to which having a website actually matters for parties. One obvious measure of success may be whether the site actually produces an increase in the electoral support for the party. However, using such a measure may present problems given that more than half of the electorate in most countries remains without access to the web. Perhaps cyber-campaigns benefi t parties and candidates in more subtle and diffuse ways? Would perhaps having an attractive and user friendly website contribute to a positive image of organisational competence, and more importantly, contemporary relevance?     

Moving Beyond 100 Years: The “WA Approach” to National Party Survival

Since its formation in 1913, the Western Australian branch of the National Party has faced many challenges to its survival. Electoral reform removing rural malapportionment in 2005 prompted changes in strategic direction, including abandoning coalition with the Liberal Party and creating a discrete image, branding and policy approach. Holding the balance of power after the 2008 election, the party adopted a post‐election bargaining strategy to secure ministries and funding for its “Royalties for Regions” policy. This “WA approach” is distinctive from amalgamation and coalition arrangements embraced elsewhere in Australia. This article updates progress of the strategy following state and federal elections in 2013 and finds that it has been a success measured by increased votes, seats and policy influence and expansion into regional Western Australia to displace Labor. However, its applicability to other branches of the National Party is likely to be limited.     

A Matter of Timing? A Study of Regional Election Campaigns in Germany

Unlike national elections, subnational levels of politics have rarely been the subject of research. The small number of investigations stem from the field of psephology. While these have supported the assumption that the national level exerts a time-dependent impact on regional voting behaviour, election campaigning's time-dependency has yet to be investigated. Against this backdrop, this article offers a unique longitudinal and quantitative investigation of election campaigns in Germany's federal states. Using campaign managers' perceptions as a basis, it discusses time-relevant effects on electoral campaigning with regard to the degree of regionalisation, emotionalisation, and personalisation.     

The 2007 Australian Federal Election: The Story of Labor's Return from the Electoral Wilderness

In an era of continuous campaigning, elections are seldom won in the final weeks of the formal campaign period. The 2007 Australian federal election saw voters dispatch a Liberal Party and Nationals Coalition government that had presided over a buoyant economy, and return the Australian Labor Party from the electoral wilderness it had occupied since 1996. The explanation of this revival in Labor's stocks can be traced to the Wheat Board scandal, the unpopularity of the labour market deregulation, and to a series of other political tribulations that the fourth Howard Government faced during 2005 and 2006. Initially their impact was masked by the failure of Labor's parliamentary leadership. But when caucus elected Kevin Rudd and freed him to position Labor as offering fresh ideas and a safe pair of hands, Labor seized a lead in the opinion polls and retained it throughout 2007. Rudd's tactical leadership of his party proved critical. This article describes how the 2007 campaign unfolded and the pattern of events which saw a refashioned ALP win an eighteen‐seat lower house majority.     

The Transformation of Australian Electoral Analysis: The Two‐Party Preferred Vote — Origins,Impacts, and Critics

Measuring party support in Australia by constructing a “two‐party preferred” vote has had a profound effect, not only on the way political scientists, journalists, and politicians understand electoral “swing” and predict electoral outcomes, but also on their understanding of the party system, their thinking about electoral fairness, and their views about which party or parties can legitimately claim government. This article traces the origins — the maternity as well as the paternity – of the “two‐party preferred”. It documents its spread from federal to state elections, even as voting systems in some states have switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential. It discusses its wide‐ranging impact, and its implications for notions of electoral fairness and the legitimacy of election outcomes. It evaluates various criticisms of the concept — technical, pragmatic, and conceptual. And it notes the implications for marginal seat campaigning of the commonly observed “uniform swing”— implications completely at odds with the idea that marginal seats matter.     

Leadership Lessons: Minority Governments,Independents and Relationships

The 2010 Australian election returned the first “hung” House of Representatives since the Second World War. This paper tracks the political lessons of history to the only other time when a prime minister had to work in a hung parliament. Circumstances and political parties differ, but on closer examination some common themes emerge. The prime ministership is both a gift and a burden, where control is, for the most part illusory. R.G. Menzies lacked the personal qualities his parliamentary colleagues found in Arthur Fadden. In 1941 he lost the prime ministership because he lost the support of his party room. Just as she had defeated Kevin Rudd in 2010, Julia Gillard was eventually defeated in a caucus ballot in June 2013. However, at least initially, Gillard displayed personal traits which Rudd lacked and which enabled her to retain the trust of both the ALP caucus and key independent members. History contains some valid lessons which, given recent events, need restating: relationships in politics matter.     

Social media and citizen mobilisation in the biometric voter registration (BVR) process in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

Considerable research has, in recent years, focused on the utility of social media platforms in political campaigns in both developed and developing countries, but there has not been significant analysis of social media use in voter registration campaigns. In seeking to address this lacuna in the literature, this article examines the use and efficacy of social media networking sites (SNS), namely Facebook and Twitter, in mobilising, informing and educating citizens to participate in a new system of biometric voter registration implemented in Zimbabwe. The article draws on a qualitative research methodology. The article contends that social media use amplified political knowledge of the Zimbabwean electorate ahead of the 2018 national election as exemplified in the upsurge of voter registrants under the biometric voter registration system.     

German parties and internet campaigning in the 2002 federal election

This article examines German national parties' use of the Internet in the 2002 federal election. Its main goals are to determine what the parties were doing in their online campaigns and how far their use of the Internet can be understood in terms of two party-specific variables – organisational size and primary goal. These questions are of significance given the relatively limited study of parties' use of the net in Germany in the comparative literature on this topic. Also, research on parties' use of the Web across countries has suggested that while context does produce differences in approach, partyspecific factors also play a major role in determining online strategy. The article attempts to investigate these questions systematically by examining nine German parties' use of the Internet (specifically websites, e-mail, and intra-nets) using questionnaire data from national party personnel and content analysis of web pages. Our findings show that while the divide between major and minor parties can be seen quite clearly in the German context in terms of website quality and visibility, evidence to support the impact of party outlook in shaping parties' online strategy can also be found. In addition, the study reveals that major parties are now beginning to take the Internet very seriously as a communication tool, particularly in terms of election campaigning.     

The Election in Iraq

Although election of the Iraqi Interim National Assembly on 30 January 2005 was a step on the path toward democracy, it is too soon to judge it a resounding success. Further, it 7is important to keep in mind that the election is significant not only regarding the democratic process for the people of Iraq but also for the US and the future of US policy toward the Middle East.

Many Iraqis strongly desired democracy and some steps toward democratization showed resemblance to the democracy movement in Europe. However, the exclusion of popular political movements and the emergence of mistrust failed the political process.

At last, with the involvement of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the election was realized. However, the Iraqi elections do not merit unreserved acclaim. This election allows, for the first time in Iraq's history, competition among ethnic and religious factions. Different attitudes among these groups toward the election and its results may further widen the gap separating them. In fact, the most important consideration regarding the election is what happens from now on.     

From newspapers to social media? Changing dynamics in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

Switzerland is a laggard in terms of digital campaigning. Direct democratic votes, more particularly, are centered around issues and little personalized. Combined with the specificities of voters’ information behaviour in direct democratic campaigns, these features are likely to disincentivize political actors from extensively campaigning online. Instead, we expect political actors to continue relying on traditional media. These propositions are tested on a large data base of social media posts and newspaper advertisements published before direct democratic votes held in Switzerland from 1981 to 2020 and 2010 to 2020, respectively. Counterintuitively, this research note finds a strong discontinuity in campaign communication practices. Over the past decades, and between 2010 and 2020 in particular, newspaper ads have become less central to direct democratic campaign communication. At the same time, political actors are increasingly shifting their communication to the digital sphere.     

The Challenges of Transitioning from Opposition to Government: Liberal Party Planning for Government 1983 – 1996

Studies examining opposition transition to government processes and planning usually emphasise the responsibility of oppositions as a legislative institution and the role of party leaders. However, such approaches place too much emphasis on notions of responsible opposition and party leaders. They de‐emphasise the importance of partisan considerations that shape transition planning or how party organisations have attempted to assert control over parliamentary parties. Drawing on archival materials, policy documents, and elite interviews, this study examines both public and internal transition to government strategies undertaken by the Liberal Party of Australia during their opposition years (1983–1996). The paper finds that while party leaders became more important over time, the party organisation's involvement remained significant. The Liberal Party transition planning focused primarily on cabinet processes, Australian Public Service (APS) organisation, particularly the senior bureaucratic level, and selecting political staff. In so doing, the Liberal Party anticipated many of the Hawke government's 1987 reforms to the APS. The Liberal Party was motivated by its desire to restructure the machinery and culture of government and to allocate sufficient political staff resources to government. Its aim was to better equip the party to achieve its political and ideological goals when next in government.