Images and Issues: The Queensland State Elections of 1963 and 1966

Abstract

In the preface to Images and Issues, Professor Hughes acknowledges the debt he owes to his wife for objecting to a midden of newspaper clippings, punched cards, and manuscript deposited in her house for an inordinately long time. It would be less than fair to agree with the author that his long and detailed research constituted a mere dunghill, although to continue the pollution metaphor, one might argue that the treatment of his material has not gone beyond the primary stage. The book holds out the promise of making a valuable contribution to the study of Australian politics by examining both the images of parties, party leaders and candidates and issues in two Queensland State elections, those of 1963 and 1966, using a combination of methodologies?the traditional art of the political scientist supplemented by survey research. One hopes, therefore, not only to learn about the distinctive features of Queensland State politics, but also to gain an indication of the relative weight of party, candidate and issues in determining electoral outcome. However the work disappoints on both counts, mainly for reasons associated with the methodology of the study and as a result of a certain structural and conceptual looseness. The concept of image, as Hughes points out, has been taken up as a basic analytic tool in studies of electoral behaviour; indeed Kenneth Boulding has even argued for the creation of an interdisciplinary science of eiconics based upon this concept. Yet it seems that many political scientists have attached no more precision to the term than certain creative directors of advertising agencies. As quickly becomes apparent from a glance at Herbert Kelman's social-psychological analysis of international relations, the traditional distinction among cogni tive, affective and behavioural aspects of an image is by no means universally accepted. Does an image represent merely individual aspects of an object abstracted to act as symbols for the object as a whole? Does it necessarily include an attitude towards an object? Is it inevitably based upon partial information? Hughes opts for the view that an image results from selective perception