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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: Thomas.Zittel@mzes.uni-mannheim.de

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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(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).

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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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