The Electoral Conditions of Campaign Behavior. Germany and the UK in Comparison

• In Event: Electoral Systems, Electoral Incentives, and Political Actors

Abstract

Constituency candidates are a crucial factor in mobilizing voters at the grassroots to better link citizens and the state, and thus to provide responsive government. Yet, past research indicates large variance in candidates’ campaign behavior. Advancing from this research, this paper aims to better understand what constituency candidates do, and why they do it in their campaigns. To achieve this goal, we adopt a comparative approach and explore this question on the basis of a data set that combines four candidate studies conducted in the UK and Germany between 2009 and 2015.

To make conceptual headway in researching what constituency candidates do, this paper suggests distinguishing between campaign efforts and styles. We envision resource investments in terms of money, time, and manpower as indicators of candidates’ and their parties’ common efforts to mobilize voters. We argue, however, that candidates’ campaign efforts must be considered independent of their campaign styles. In this paper, we explore a widely discussed choice in this regard, namely the extent to which candidates personalize their campaigns and thus facilitate a direct link between themselves and their constituents, independent from party linkage.

To make theoretical headway in researching campaign behavior at the constituency level, the paper adopts a comparative approach to exploring the nature and scope of electoral incentives. We expect to find different patterns in campaign behavior in Germany and in the UK due to electoral system differences. For example, we expect to find the well-documented effect of electoral vulnerability for the UK, but rather expect less pronounced effects for Germany in this regard. We distinguish campaign efforts and styles, since we assume electoral incentives significantly affect candidates’ campaign efforts, but to be less consequential with regard to their campaign styles. With regard to the latter, we hypothesize a greater role of non-electoral factors, such as party effects and also individual level factors such as candidates’ career and social backgrounds.

We explore the conditions of candidates’ campaign efforts and styles on the basis of a pooled data set that includes four recent candidate surveys conducted in Germany (2009, 2013) and the UK (2010, 2015). Since both national survey programs are part of the Comparative Candidate Studies network (CCS), all surveys include a large number of similar questions on candidates’ campaign efforts and styles together with further background data on the participating candidates and their electoral contexts.

Authors

• Rosie Campbell, University of London, Birkbeck College

• Thomas Zittel, Goethe-University Frankfurt