Ten years after: Is the party-centered theory of campaign professionalization still valid?

Abstract

This study tests the explanatory strength of the party-centered theory of electoral campaign professionalism. The theory was previously subject to testing in various types of elections during the first decade of the new millennium, covering Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Finland. Nevertheless, empirical research in this field has been on hold for almost a decade, obstructing the development of the theory during a time when politics and political campaigns have taken new paths. In this article, the theory is revisited, presenting results from a unique time series study covering 48 party campaigns between 2009 and 2019 in three consecutive European parliamentary elections in two multiparty democracies, Sweden and Finland. Our results provide weak support for the party-centered theory of campaign professionalism in the form it was originally operationalized. Only a centralized party organization and a large support base with a catch-all strategy were found to be statistically significant predictors of campaign professionalism.

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“…On the other hand, there was no change in the incumbent's relati investment in professionalization in 2016 and 2021. On both occasions, his investment w considerable in proportion to other spending areas-something we would expect from leading candidate with a catch-all stance and ideologically closer to the right (Gibson a Römmele 2001Mykkänen et al 2021). The investment was, nevertheless, very mo est in absolute terms in 2021, as Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa considerably reduced campai costs vis-à-vis 2016 (from around 180,000 euros to around 25,000 euros; see Table A1 the Appendix A).…”

“…The definition adopted here and our desire to interact with extant research on the country under study led us to use official campaign budgets and expense reports to measure campaign professionalization (in line with Lisi 2013, and, instead of candidate surveys or interviews (e.g., Gibson and Römmele 2009;Grusell and Nord 2020;Sampugnaro and Montemagno 2021). There are other studies of campaign professionalization that do look into campaign finances (e.g., Tenscher et al 2012;Tenscher 2013;Mykkänen et al 2021) but focus on the amount of money available to parties and candidates for the campaign and not on how that money is distributed among different categories of expenses.…”