The Winning Message
Candidate Behavior, Campaign Discourse, and Democracy

This study investigates candidate behavior in American electoral campaigns.

Adam F. Simon (Author)

9780521001915, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 April 2002

198 pages, 14 b/w illus. 24 tables
22.7 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.287 kg

"The deliberative character of political campaigns is an important subject worthy of careful and serious attention, which is what it receives in Adam Simon's The Winning Message." Perspectives on Politics

This study investigates candidate behavior in American electoral campaigns. It centers on a question of equal importance to citizens and scholars: how can we produce better political campaigns? The project takes an innovative approach to answering this question by bringing together critical and empirical methods as well as game theory in a sophisticated yet readable text. The answer comes in four parts. First, Simon develops the idea of dialogue as a standard for evaluating political campaigns. Second, he shows that candidates' self-interest in winning leads them to avoid dialogue, that is substantive campaign discourse. Third, he demonstrates the beneficial effects produced by the little dialogue that actually occurs. Fourth, he pinpoints the forces responsible for these rare occurrences. The major lesson of this work is that campaign reform under its present guise will not bring about the more substantive campaigns that the public desires.

List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Dialogue: a standard for campaign discourse
3. Understanding campaigns: background, theory, and methods
4. The ventriloquist's hand: a game-theoretic model of campaigns
5. Duck or Punch? Dialogue in a California Gubernatorial Election
6. Dialogue and its effects in contemporary American elections
7. Explaining and predicting the occurrence of dialogue
8. Conclusion: toward more substantive campaign discourse
Appendix A. Analysis of the model of campaigns in mass elections
Appendix B. Experimental procedures
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Political parties [JPL], Political structure & processes [JPH], Politics & government [JP], Media studies [JFD], Regional studies [GTB]