The main focus of this thesis is the analysis of political campaigns when candidates choose their statements in a strategic way. In the first chapter, 'Discretion and renegotiation in electoral campaigns', I present a model of electoral campaigning as a problem of competitive delegation. The chapter considers a situation in which there is uncertainty about what the optimal policy should be; in this environment voters may want to leave discretion to a candidate, in order to allow him to adjust his policies to the state of the world, once he is elected. The paper analyses how the ambiguity level of the political statements is influenced by the presence of uncertainty over the candidates' ideology, by the possibility of ex post renegotiation between the elected candidate and the voters and by several political variables. In the second chapter, 'Last minute policies and the incumbency advantage', joint with Stefan Penczynski, we investigate the timing of statements in political debates and campaigns. Early statements can influence the political agenda and signal competence and vision, late statements are based on more information about appropriate measures. We find that candidates speak early on issues they are better-informed about in order to signal relevance and move them up the agenda. Since opponents benefit from this revelation, however, candidates remain silent once their information is sufficiently precise and valuable. In the last chapter, 'Discretion and ambiguity in electoral campaigns: a look into the empirical evidence', I compare several models of ambiguity in electoral campaigns, including my own model which was introduced in the first chapter. I use the methodology of Campbell (1983) to have a proxy for ambiguity of the electoral statements, and the data from the American National Election Studies on Senate elections from 1988-1990-1992, to investigate which of the correlations predicted by these models seem to be present in the data.

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The methods political parties use to engage the electorate during election campaigns undergo a continual process of re-evaluation and modification; this study seeks to further understanding of this process by proposing the concept of a toolkit of techniques from which those who plan campaigns make selections, based on the type of campaign and the resources they have available. Using data gathered from interviews of experienced campaigners, a case study from the 2007 local elections, and the author's own experience as a political campaigner, the development of campaigning is considered from the perspective of the candidate and campaigner 'on the ground'. Three main drivers of change are considered: increasing levels of partisan dealignment and a decline in party membership, the opportunities that technological innovations have afforded, and regulatory change. The development of new communication channels and the ease of accessibility to sophisticated technology are changing the basic processes of electioneering. Several of the new techniques now gaining favour place less emphasis on the need for face-to-face communication, allowing 'campaigning at a distance'. New data manipulation techniques allow campaigners to target voters in more precise ways, using personalised literature, email and the internet. Greater dependence on technology has led to the role of central party organisations becoming more dominant; many of the new approaches are also more costly than traditional methods, raising concerns about the abilities of minor parties and independent candidates to campaign on equal terms. The introduction of on-demand postal voting has introduced a second peak of activity during a campaign, moving the focus of an election away from a single polling day and creating a period of uncertainty in the final days of a campaign.

The 2010 general election witnessed the UK's first ever televised pre-election leaders' debates, thereby heralding the introduction of a new form of mediated political discourse, in an instant changing the face of British electoral politics for good. The present study interrogates these debates, focusing specifically on the self-presentation work evident in the contributions of the three participating party leaders, in their attempts to construct credible and likable identities in their talk and discourse. Working with a broadly post structuralist understanding of discourse and identity, the study asks how the leaders construct the various identities evident in their discourse, what kinds of resources are drawn upon the process, and how the resulting identities might be consequential both for television audiences, and for the evolution of political discourse more generally. The study considers the construction of identities as individual, relational and collective phenomena, utilizing a pluralistic, mixed-methods approach. It incorporates the use of corpus tools alongside more traditional, fine-grained discourse analysis. The qualitative analysis offered draws upon the insights of scholarship conducted in a range of research traditions, including social and discursive psychology, self-presentation research, membership categorization analysis (MeA), face research, and narrative analysis. The study investigates not only how identities are constructed, contested and defended during the debates, but also the significance of the identity work observed in terms of political marketing, and the growth of perception politics. Some suggestions are made regarding the potential usefulness of the findings in terms of critical language awareness development in educational contexts, and the study concludes with a consideration of the next debates, and the future of electoral politics in the United Kingdom.

A number of scholars have studied the impact of negative ads in democracy, but they were unable to conclude whether this form of campaigning endangers or enhances political systems. Despite that, in every election, journalists, politicians, NGOs and many other actors claim that negative ads bring the worst side of political competition to the fore and, hence, should be restricted. However, how do we justify restrictions if we are not sure what negative ads do to democracy? To address this question, this research opts for an alternative perspective by asking how the problem of negative advertising is perceived by those institutions willing to protect or restrict it. The argument pursued here is that to evaluate what institutions do, we must describe what institutions perceive themselves to be doing. Based on a comparative study of 22 interviews collected in two institutions that watchdog negative advertising (the US NGO FactCheck. Org; and the Supreme Electoral Court, in Brazil), this research presents a policy analysis of how the problem of negative advertising is framed as a free speech problem. This research's findings endorse the position that in poliCymaking, facts and evidence can only be evaluated when understood as meta-products of policy discourse. The findings show that the problem of negative advertising is framed in largely different terms by experts in each case study; however, findings also show that interviewees make similar use of facts and evidence to support their framings. While interviewees disagree over what negative advertising is, they agree on what negative advertising does.

Twitter is ever-present in British political life and many politicians use it as part of their campaign strategies. However, little is known about whether their tweets engage people, for example by being retweeted. This research addresses that gap, examining tweets sent by MPs during the 2015 UK General Election campaign to identify which were retweeted and why. A conceptual model proposes three factors which are most likely to influence retweets: the characteristics of (1) the tweet’s sender, (2) the tweet and (3) its recipients. This research focuses on the first two of these. Content and sentiment analysis are used to develop a typology of the politicians’ tweets, followed by CHAID analysis to identify the factors that best predict which tweets are retweeted. The research shows that the characteristics of tweet and its sender do influence whether the tweet is retweeted. Of the sender’s characteristics, number of followers is the most important – more followers leads to more retweets. Of the tweet characteristics, the tweet’s sentiment is the most influential. Negative tweets are retweeted more than positive or neutral tweets. Tweets attacking opponents or using fear appeals are also highly likely to be retweeted. The research makes a methodological contribution by demonstrating how CHAID models can be used to accurately predict retweets. This method has not been used to predict retweets before and has broad application to other contexts. The research also contributes to our understanding of how politicians and the public interact on Twitter, an area little studied to date, and proposes some practical recommendations regarding how MPs can improve the effectiveness of their Twitter campaigning. The finding that negative tweets are more likely to be retweeted also contributes to the ongoing debate regarding whether people are more likely to pass on positive or negative information online.

Research on political marketing in Africa in general and Ghana in particular has focused little attention on the use of celebrity political endorsement in election campaigns. At the same time, prior research on the use of celebrity political endorsements in election campaigns has predominantly focused on Western democracies and the application of marketing brand theories to the examination of celebrity political endorsement. Such research studies include very little investigation on new and emerging democracies, especially in Africa while the theories have proven inadequate to explain how the persuasive qualities of celebrities are utilized within the political field. This thesis, like Driessens (2013) is advocating that theorising celebrity as a form of capital can explain the qualities of celebrity which can be transferred across social fields including the political field. At the same time the socio-political conditions that enable celebrities to migrate from the entertainment to the political field are specific to their national and historical contexts (Ribke 2015) as presented in the Ghana context. The study therefore examines theories of celebrity capital and how this capital is utilized in the form of political endorsements in the political field of an emerging democracy like Ghana. The thesis enhances the arguments about how theories of celebrity capital can be used to explain the role of celebrity political endorsements in shaping political communication and political marketing during election campaigns while providing the socio-political conditions that shape celebrity migration into the political field in Ghana.

Election campaigns are usually discussed in terms of a strategy designed to win elections, but, as this thesis argues, they also communicate the meaning of the collective identities they appeal to and therefore contribute to the (re)construction of these identities. In constructionist tradition, the argument in this thesis is that they do so by providing a narrative for these identities. My research looks at the 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Serbia and 2006 and 2010 campaigns in Bosnia and Herzegovina and examines the process of the (re)construction of targeted identities. The methodology used for this research is threefold. It includes the textual analysis of selected campaign materials (manifestos, slogans, TV debates, speeches at campaign rallies), interviews with campaign managers, consultants, candidates and pollsters, and focus groups and interviews with voters. The findings reveal that appeals to national and ethnic identities are the most common identity appeals in election campaigns in the two countries. They also suggest that Serbian campaigns typically direct their appeals at the majority of citizens and call for unity, while in Bosnia and Herzegovina they target ethnic communities composing the country, thereby reinforcing the links of in-group trust while discouraging bridging links between different groups. In the end, this study reveals that election campaigns shape the narratives of national and ethnic identities. They do so by 1. framing the present political and social context, retelling the past, and suggesting a vision for the future; 2. reimagining the borders of the political community, and 3. promoting cultural values of these political communities.

For many years now commentators have been predicting the UK’s first ‘Internet Election’. This thesis seeks to cut through the hype by measuring the precise extent of online campaigning by electoral candidates during the 2010 general election campaign. It does so by using an original and extensive dataset that captured personal website adoption and the use and content of social media and email. Data was collected directly from the websites and Web 2.0 tools used by candidates during the campaign and from a quasi-experimental email study involving contacting candidates. By assessing online campaigning from an elite perspective the thesis can engage with key debates prominent in the literature on online campaigning. The thesis poses three questions. The first question asks whether the Internet has become a mainstream campaigning tool for electoral candidates in the UK. The second question focuses on whether the Internet is allowing minor parties to compete on a more equal footing campaign-wise with their major counterparts, which feeds into the debates concerning normalisation or equalisation between competing political parties and candidates. The third question relates to the content of the online campaigns of candidates, and whether the Internet may be changing campaign styles in terms of moving them from a top-down ‘broadcast’ mass mobilisation model towards a more interactive and engaged form of campaign communication. The findings suggest that although social media was not used widely, personal websites and email use were relatively common. In assessing inter-party competition in online campaigns the thesis finds that although candidates standing for larger parties were more likely to have personal campaign websites, the other online campaign tools assessed here, social media and email, were found to be more equalised on some measures between candidates from major and minor parties. Finally, when assessing the content of social media and email use by candidates, the evidence suggests that online tools may be facilitating a move towards more open and engaged campaign communication. Broadcast mode social media campaigning, where candidates did not accept or respond to comments, was relatively rare. Moreover, candidates who did reply to the hypothetical voters email tended to provide personalised and engaged content rather than solely electioneering. Overall, the findings suggest that although online campaign tools have not thus far led to a huge change in campaign communications, it is leading to a small shift towards more equalised and engaged campaigning.

This thesis is concerned with the influence of campaign finance on the interplay between political power and electoral competition in the United States and the United Kingdom. The thesis considers both the donation and expenditure sides of campaign finance: In the context of U.S. state and federal legislative elections (1980-2014), I study how political power affects the allocation of campaign contributions, and in the context of U.K. House of Commons elections (1885-2010), I examine how campaign spending restrictions affect political power via electoral behavior. The three papers which make up the construct of the thesis answer the following questions: (i) What is the financial value of incumbency status, and who generates it? (ii) Who values legislative agenda setters, and why do they do so? (iii) What are the electoral consequences of statutory limits on campaign expenditure? I argue that campaign donors make their contributions to powerful politicians in exchange for access to the policy-making process, and that the power of these politicians is sustained, at least in part, due to these contributions. In the first paper, I document that U.S. incumbent legislators enjoy sizeable financial advantages compared to challengers, and I demonstrate that this advantage is the result of donations from access-seeking industries. In the second paper, I show that U.S. legislators who are institutionally endowed with agenda-setting powers are given special treatment by campaign donors. I document that donors with vested economic interests in regulatory policy place great value on agenda-setting legislators – in particular when institutions provide these legislators with the authority to block new legislation. In the final paper, I study the consequences of campaign spending limits in the context of U.K. House of Commons elections. I show that unrestrained spending reduces electoral competition, promotes professionalized campaigns, and benefits incumbents and centerright parties.