Permanent Campaign Research Articles

Satellite Political Movements: How Grassroots Activists Bolster Trump and Bolsonaro in the United States and Brazil

We develop the concept of the satellite political movement (SPM), a form of movement-party interaction that emerges in support of a particular political leader. We theorize SPMs as grassroots movements that seek to empower a formal political figure by engaging in activism on that individual’s behalf. Examining the cases of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, we suggest that SPMs may serve as a valuable resource for insurgent political leaders by engaging in year-round campaigning, activating new supporters, and providing political cover for more controversial tactics. We analyze social media content, legal documents, and contemporaneous reporting to illustrate the actors within SPMs, their relationships to the formal political leader they support, and three theoretical mechanisms through which SPMs may bolster political leaders: permanent campaign, radicalism by proxy, and strategic separation.

MISSION 70/26 HAS SUCCESSFULLY STARTED IN CROATIA. DO YOU KNOW YOUR NUMBERS?

Objective: Approximatively 50% of Croatia's adult population suffers from arterial hypertension (AH). One-fifth of patients do not know that they have AH, and control has been achieved in less than 50% of treated patients. It is our aim to achieve controlled values of blood pressure (BP) in 70% of treated patients with AH by 2026. This mission is part of the permanent campaign of the Croatian Hypertension League called “The Hunt for the Silent Killer”. Design and method: The whole mission is devoted to increase health literacy in both health care workers and in general population (including patients with AH). Results: For the general population we will organize: 1) classical public-health activities; BP will be measured and educative materials will be distributed at the public places; 2) using Croatian Hypertensive League educative web platform (Hunting the Silent Killer) and social networks; and 3) via different media (Vecernji list, the biggest daily newspaper in Croatia is partner of the League). For health care workers 1) school for communication in hypertension; 2) monthly newsletters with information about therapeutic inertia, promotion of health literacy, and education on treatment persistence. For this purpose, we have developed special educative sub-portal 70/26. All healthcare workers will be invited to visit our scientific educative web portal Healthmed with plenty of recent information on cardio-kidney-metabolic syndrome where members of the editorial board are key opinion leaders in hypertension, nephrology, cardiology, neurology, diabetology and family physicians. In parallel with hypertension we will analyze success in treatment of dyslipidemia in our sister mission “Do you know your numbers?” Conclusions: At the end of this program, we are going to organize a nationwide study (EHUH 3) where a representative sample of random adult population will be enrolled. In this study we will use the same methodology as in recently ended nationwide EHUH 2 study where we obtained current information on hypertension and dyslipidemia prevalence, awareness, treatment and control. Using the same methods we will be able to make conclusion about our success following evidence-based medicine postulates. Acknowledgement: This program is supported by a grant from Servier.

Building Support Through the Personalization of Twitter Messages in a Permanent Campaign

Not all aspects of a campaign are issue-oriented, nor are many voters. A candidate builds mass support largely by appearing warm, friendly, and likable, not only by propagating their viewpoints on controversial issues. Based on a prominent candidate’s Twitter accounts and the associated analytics, our research analyzes the online content and reaction to every post across a four-year period, both before and after a major general election. Twitter’s analytic measures demonstrate how a campaign uses social media to accomplish very different outreach goals. Warm and non-politically oriented messages attract broad support in the form of audience likes but are not retweeted with as much frequency as messages that are less liked but more politically pointed. The undeniable popularity of personal, earnest messages underscores the power of the social media platform to present candidates in an approachable and convivial way, despite the necessity of taking positions on difficult issues.

Pandemic populism and permanent campaigning: How Central American presidents build political legitimacy on Facebook

This article examines how Carlos Alvarado and Nayib Bukele, presidents of Costa Rica and El Salvador, respectively, employed Facebook throughout 2020 to communicate about the COVID-19 pandemic. The study draws on content analysis of 1584 posts made by both presidents on Facebook throughout 2020. The article argues that Alvarado and Bukele turned the pandemic into a means to build political legitimacy in their specific political context through two main strategies: populist communication and permanent campaigning. Whereas Alvarado relied on these strategies to demonstrate that he was in control of the country amid mounting backlash, Bukele infused both strategies with a religious imaginary to attack political opponents and perform the role of El Salvador's messiah. This analysis broadens the understanding of the relationship between populist communication and permanent campaigning in two main ways. First, by employing a comparative approach to identify singularities and differences in the ways that presidents built political legitimacy during the pandemic in a largely under-examined region (Central America). Second, by situating findings within a wide temporal perspective that included posts in an entire calendar year and comparisons with Alvarado's and Bukele's presidential campaigns.

Is There a Permanent Campaign for Online Political Advertising? Investigating Partisan and Non-Party Campaign Activity in the UK between 2018–2021

Permanent campaigning has been widely examined in electoral scholarship. However, few studies have looked at paid online political advertising or compared the degree to which different types of actor engage in permanent campaigns. To fill these gaps, we present an in-depth study of online political advertising within the UK to provide new insight into the dynamics of the permanent campaign. Analyzing data from the Facebook advertising archive between 2018 and 2021, we reveal how Facebook advertising is utilized by parties, party leaders and nonparty campaign groups during electoral and non-electoral periods. We find that parties, political leaders and satellite campaign groups focus their activity primarily on general election periods and often invest little outside these periods. In contrast, nonpartizan campaign groups utilize advertising more evenly in electoral and non-electoral periods. Our findings raise questions about the extent to which online political advertising is used for permanent campaigning by different groups.

The Use of TikTok for Political Campaigning in Canada: The Case of Jagmeet Singh

TikTok is a critical platform for political campaigns seeking to engage with new publics through digital advocacy. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, has emerged as a TikTok celebrity since establishing his profile in 2019. At the time of writing, he is the only Canadian federal party leader using TikTok with his interactions greatly surpassing those on his other social media profiles. Strategically utilizing TikTok to promote his social justice-oriented political platform and to build momentum in preparation for a snap election, his digital campaign has received extensive attention from the Canadian press. Through qualitative content analysis of his videos and news media coverage of Singh’s activity on TikTok, this article questions how his TikTok profile thematically engages with social democratic politics within the context of the permanent campaign. Attention is directed toward how Singh employs TikTok’s features to establish his brand of left-wing populism and advocate against systematic social inequality to appeal to TikTok’s youthful demographic.

We Love the Bill of Rights. Can We Like a Bill of Structures?

The structural pillars of the U.S. electoral system are eroding and will require repair—i.e., constitutional amendment. Problems with voting, the Electoral College, term lengths, and term limits constitute a civic engineering challenge that calls for a Bill of Structures to complement the Bill of Rights, which becomes plausible to consider in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 2037. The set of amendments would advance: 1) the obligation as well as the right to vote; 2) the replacement of the Electoral College by a national popular vote governed by rules ensuring majority outcomes; 3) new term lengths for representatives (three years) and presidents (a six-year first term and three-year second term) to deliver a three-year election cycle, shrink the presidency's second-term curse, and counter the permanent campaign; and 4) congressional term limits, but at least two decades long. Amending the Constitution may seem a nonstarter today, even more so given the anti-democratic trends commanding our immediate attention; fifteen years hence, however, it becomes possible to picture amendments that would consequentially improve the performance of our elections and their winners.

Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda by John Maxwell Hamilton

Reviewed by: Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda by John Maxwell Hamilton Ben Wright Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda. By John Maxwell Hamilton. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Pp. 664. Illustrations, notes, sources, index.) Today, the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars paying people to communicate its activities to taxpayers in a positive light. In Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda, John Maxwell Hamilton traces this phenomenon to the First World War, specifically to the work of the Committee of Public Information (CPI). Created shortly after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, the CPI mixed creativity and chicanery to push Wilson’s messages and impede those of his opponents. Hamilton deftly documents how the CPI commissioned artists, poets, preachers, reformers, journalists, and others to advocate for the war effort across a wide array of forums. From official newspapers and press releases to a proverbial army of “four-minute men” who spoke on street corners, at churches and during theater intermissions, the CPI found ways to stand between the people and the news on behalf of government policy. Under the leadership of the abrasive and chaotic George Creel, the CPI brought murky industries such as advertising and cinema to the fore. Political communication in the United States has never been confined to elections, but the CPI represented, as Hamilton puts it “the evolution of the permanent campaign” (71) whereby voters are engaged by presidents (not presidential candidates) in a constant battle for their hearts, minds, and wallets. Wilson and Creel ultimately fell victim to the same temptations that ensnare all well-meaning propogandists, and Hamilton lays out a litany of sins—partisanship, spin (or “Creeling,” as it was then termed), the chilling of public opinion, noxious Germanophobia, and the wild hubris of public diplomacy abroad—in the run-up to Wilson’s abortive negotiations regarding the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war. While it is hard to find sympathy for Wilson given his odious racial views and obvious narcissism, he and other reformers truly believed in the power of muckraking rhetoric to inform voters and lure them away from the boss politics of the Gilded Age. Furthermore, Maxwell’s focus on the CPI’s political history neglects some of the social and cultural forces unleashed even before American entry into the war. To a large extent, Wilson, Creel, and their cohorts were always riding the tiger. [End Page 325] One of Hamilton’s major claims is that the contemporary information state can trace its roots to the CPI. Such a view neglects how the CPI represented the end of one age as much as the beginning of a new one. Creel relied on established technologies such as the telegraph, the printing press, and progressive ideas long baked into American political culture. Radio would soon revolutionize political communication in the 1920s, casting aside CPI hallmarks such as the four-minute men. Normalcy rather than Wilsonian idealism would dominate the ensuing decade of national politics. Censorship would be a longer-lasting legacy, particularly in relation to World War II; George Roeder’s The Censored War (Yale University Press, 1993) would pair well with Manipulating the Masses on any academic reading list. However, censorship was nothing new in 1917, whereas the failure of governments to control information and their success in manufacturing consent in later wars, whether Vietnam in the 1960s or Iraq in the 2000s, suggest more change than continuity since the Great War. Ultimately, this reader finds Creel to have more in common with Edwin Stanton than Karl Rove. Finally, the absence of Texas from Hamilton’s story is a shame. The Texas State Council of Defense worked with the CPI and other federal entities to mobilize speakers, organize liberty loan drives, and break opposition to the war. Wilson’s postmaster general, Albert Sidney Burleson, played a vital role in war-time censorship of the mails, while Edward House was Wilson’s right-hand man in both Washington and Paris. Both House and Burleson were Texans, and the whole state was deeply animated and divided by the war...

The Use of Podcasting in Political Marketing: The Case of the Czech Republic

Purpose: There is a call for more research on the interface between political relationship marketing and the use of digital technologies. To respond to such calls, this study provides a novel exploration of political podcasts as a means to enhance relationship building between politicians and the electorate. Our research draws on political relationship marketing theory to suggest that podcasts present new opportunities for relationship building and emotional engagement. Methods: We conducted a qualitative research based on focus groups with young people in the Czech Republic in order to explore their attitudes and perceptions about political podcasting. With most research focusing on the USA, our research offers an in-depth examination of the under-researched region of Central Europe. Findings and Contribution: Our findings inform and update existing political relationship marketing studies which seek to explore new forms of permanent campaigning and new ways for the engagement of diverse audiences. Podcasts present opportunities for relationship building between citizens and their political representatives. Authenticity, conversational dynamism, and a carefully curated personalization of the communication create a sense of attachment and belonging.

Pictures, Filters, and Politics: Instagram’s Role in Political Image Making and Storytelling in Canada

This article looks at how politicians can leverage the structural and functional properties of social media platforms with a strong visual component for political image making and storytelling in a context of permanent campaigning. Specifically, it focuses on Justin Trudeau’s uses of Instagram to build and strengthen his public image of leadership through the development of largely positive, theme-based visual political narratives. This research offers an analysis of the content of 145 posts that appeared on his personal Instagram feed during his first year as prime minister of Canada (between October 19, 2015, and October 19, 2016). It allows us to identify key narratives designed to reach out to, connect with, and engage members of the public and traditional media.

Politics of fear in Brazil: Far-right conspiracy theories on COVID-19

In this article, we present an analysis of narratives mobilised by extreme right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, from March to December 2020. Our research indicates that, throughout that year, despite changes in the categories used, fear was continuously mobilised by the Brazilian president connecting an alleged ‘communist conspiracy’ to the coronavirus pandemic by creating narratives around the terms ‘Chinese virus’ and ‘Chinese vaccine’. Mapping these conspiratorial discourses, we hope to better understand (1) how Bolsonaro converts conspiracy theories into official state discourse as well as public policy, and (2) how Bolsonaro and his mediatic representatives weaponise tensions between individual freedom and public healthcare and the scientific community. Taking this scenario into account, we analyse how Bolsonaro uses social fear during the pandemic as part of his permanent campaign in a process resulting in serious risks to both public health and democracy.

Las formas del acoso político del conservadurismo hacia la cuarta transformación en México

The design and implementation of the so-called Mexican Fourth Transformation(Cuarta Transformación, 4T), as an alternative form of government, faces daily the attack and violence of conservatism through a permanent campaign that seeks to instill fear in society, based on a web of lies that tries to create the image of a situation of political ungovernance in the public opinion. This work is a documentary analysis that accounts for the types of harassment of the conservative elite against the 4T; the objective is to show the forms of violence that threaten democracy. In conclusion, this study attempts to argue that the violence that conservative neoliberals caused against the 4T has its origin in that they feel threatened, because the reform policy of AMLO goes against their class interests.

Movement and countermovement and the configurations of the political field around the use of pesticides in Brazil

Na última década, o debate sobre o uso dos agrotóxicos tem se acirrado no Brasil em razão do retorno do Projeto de Lei 6.299/02 à pauta parlamentar. De iniciativa da “bancada ruralista”, o PL visa flexibilizar a legislação vigente, considerada um obstáculo ao desenvolvimento econômico do setor do agronegócio, permitindo a intensificação da utilização dos agrotóxicos. Em contraposição a esse movimento, diversas organizações sociais e de saúde se articularam na “Campanha Permanente Contra Agrotóxicos e Pela Vida” sendo uma de suas estratégias, a proposição do PL 6670/2016, cujo objetivo é limitar o uso dos referidos produtos. Essas disputas configuram um campo político importante, objeto de análise deste artigo. Partindo das concepções de movimento e contramovimento, oriundas da teoria dos movimentos sociais, procurou-se compreender as relações de enfrentamento entre esses grupos por meio dos repertórios discursivos mobilizados para conquistar a opinião pública e de suas estratégias políticas contra e a favor das Leis. Utilizou-se como fontes de pesquisa: entrevistas; depoimentos de representantes desses grupos, disponíveis em jornais, revistas, sites, audiências públicas; e o documento dos PLs. Identificou-se que a relação movimento/contramovimento trouxe impactos institucionais significativos. Acordos entre o Estado e os empresários do agronegócio favoreceram mudanças na legislação de agrotóxicos intensificando a liberação de novos produtos, rebaixando o sistema de classificação de toxicidade admitindo, inclusive, produtos banidos em outros países. Nesse processo, contribuíram os esforços para construir uma imagem positiva do setor por meio de coalizões políticas, com forte apelo midiático e grande lobby político. De modo similar, mas com menor incidência, o contramovimento estabeleceu alianças internacionais importantes mobilizando a opinião pública e conseguiu implementar políticas restritivas de uso em âmbito municipal e estadual.

Permanent Campaigning: A Meta-Analysis and Framework for Measurement

Permanent campaigning emerged as a concept in the 1970s in studies of US politics but is now recognized as a universal phenomenon. Despite its long history, there has been no attempt to build a holistic picture of the elements that constitute a permanent campaign. Generally, researchers focus on tactical elements, situating their use within an overall strategy, but there is a lack of a broader methodological framework for holistically measuring adherence to the permanent campaigning. This article presents results of a meta-analysis of relevant research to provide a framework to understand how permanent campaigning is practiced. Our study showed there were three reasonably discrete forms of campaigning activities that had been identified: those in which permanent campaign strategies are related to capacity building and strategy; a second, in which permanent campaigning relates to paid and owned media; and a third in which earned media is the main focus. In mapping these studies, we identify the common features of permanent campaigning, identifying strong and weak indicators and the extent these are employed by the government, parties, or elected representatives and within which political systems: parliamentarism or presidentialism. Our framework can be applied in future comparative research to understand trends in political communication.

Presidential Rhetoric and Power in a Historical Perspective

This article explores some of the developments of rhetorical leadership over the past century, focusing particularly on the modern presidency, commonly understood as beginning withFranklin D. Roosevelt. The first research question is whether Richard Neustadt’s (1960) seminal book Presidential Power is still valid as a thesis of presidential power in light of the concept of the rhetorical presidency, which became a dominant approach to presidential studies in the 1980s. Although the strategy of “going public” is used increasingly in presidential leadership, the conclusion of this article is that Neustadt’s bargaining theory, or the strategy of “going Washington”, is still valid when it comes to the relationship between the president and Congress, provided popular rhetoric is integrated into a bargaining perspective. The second research question is how the State of the Union Addresses have changed during the course of the modern presidency. This includes an analysis of selected State of the Union Addresses between 1934 and 2020. On the basis of some linguistic features and rhetorical techniques (the use of pronouns, the opening address and the acknowledgment of invited guests) they are considered to illustrate the change of presidential rhetoric into what may seem like a permanent campaign.

The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation, 1917–41 by Lara Douds James Harris Peter Whitewood (review)

REVIEWS 779 review), in which regular justice could be fair, impersonal and predictable, while political dissidents could expect extrajudicial repression. Kirmse goes too far, however, when he suggests that ‘[o]rdinary people including ethnic and religious minorities could take state officials to court’ (p. 250). This was not true in imperial Russia, although it would have been, thanks to a law on administrative justice scheduled to take effect in the summer of 1917. The author also misfires regarding the Security Law of 1881: its basic provisions affected the entire empire right down to 1917. Despite these criticisms, the book is an excellent introduction both to the most successful of the great reforms and to how ordinary people, and in particular ethnic and religious minorities, resorted to the new courts in the first decades of their functioning. Department of History Jonathan Daly University of Illinois at Chicago Douds, Lara; Harris, James and Whitewood, Peter (eds). The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation, 1917–41. Library of Modern Russia. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2020. x + 319 pp. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. £24.99: $34.94 (paperback). AlthoughthecentennialoftheBolshevikrevolutionhascomeandgone,debate about its aims and consequences continues. How did a regime that promised to secure full human liberation and raise the world on new foundations become a dictatorship that slaughtered millions? In the 100 years since ‘Great October’ various answers have been given, but most of them reflect what the editors of this volume consider to be the mentality of the Cold War era, setting American or Western liberal democracy against Soviet authoritarianism. In their introduction Professors Lara Douds, James Harris and Peter Whitewood state that the goal of their collection is to go beyond this Cold War paradigm. The aim of the Soviet experiment, they maintain, was indeed to emancipate the masses but to do so by means of an ‘illiberal liberation’, a form of class-based democracy that, its creators believed, was very different from and superior to that provided by rule-of-law states with their constitutions, freedom of speech and limited government. The editors believe that the revolution should not be viewed as a ‘journey from liberation to tyranny’. Rather it should be seen as an experiment that, from its inception, displayed both ‘emancipatory and authoritarian tendencies’ that waxed and waned in accordance with changing political, social and economic circumstances (p. 14). The sixteen essays in this volume are presented under six broad rubrics: Ideology and Practice; Workers’ Democracy and State Building; Internal Party SEER, 98, 4, OCTOBER 2020 780 Democracy; Repression and Moderation; National Tensions and International Threats; Culture and Society. The question of the founders’ original intent hangs over the collection and, not surprisingly, Lenin’s problematic and nevercompleted work, The State and Revolution, receives considerable attention as a blueprint for a future Communist society created by means of ‘illiberal liberation’. Most of the contributors to this volume accept the notion of Lenin’s liberationist goal, but the initial essay by Erik van Ree strikes a somewhat discordant note. To his way of thinking the radical utopian element of Lenin’s thought was ‘overshadowed by powerful dictatorial, even tyrannical instincts’ (p. 28). Admitting that he might be ‘(just a tiny bit) too harsh’, van Ree writes further that ‘no one else in the history of political thought ever formally stated the despotic principle in Lenin’s outrageous form of a state power limited by absolutely nothing and exclusively based on force’ (p. 29, italics in the original). Theseideashave‘auniquenihilistic qualityandasheerweirdnessthatisdifficult to fathom’ (p. 29). At this point some readers may decide to go no further, but those whose judgments are less ‘harsh’ will press on and be rewarded. While not refuting van Ree, Lars Lih shows that one of the features of Bolshevik rule, the permanent campaign, was not entirely an example of ‘sheer weirdness’ but was rooted in the practices of European, particularly German, Social Democracy. Ferdinand Lassalle had seized and expanded the ‘bourgeois’ notion of free speech to create a technique of constant unrelenting propaganda and agitation covering every facet of life. Lenin adopted this idea in the years before 1917, but after October he adapted it to new circumstances. Abandoning the SPD model...

Time allocation across the Senate election cycle

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates a long-standing question about how senators allocate their time to the task of governance across their lengthy, six-year term. I construct a new individual-level dataset that tracks a key component of a senator’s governance responsibilities, participation in committee hearings. With this dataset, I explain variation in a senator’s propensity to attend committee hearings with reference to the Senate election cycle, electoral competitiveness, cohort socialisation, and the permanent campaign. I find that senatorial policy activism surges in early non-election years – the first and third year of the senate term – but does not plummet until the sixth year, when a senator is up for re-election. In the domain of hearing attendance, I also show that the United States Senate’s workhorses are those who hold marginal seats and come from relatively recent legislative cohorts. Thus, my results suggest that electoral competition and political ambition help promote good governance in the United States.

From dirty oil to ethical oil: Petroturfing and the cultural politics of Canadian oil after social media1

This article examines print and screen media produced and circulated by groups and organizations that promote Canadian oil from self-described positions of distance from the oil and gas industry. Offering the term ‘petroturfing’ to describe their collective efforts, I argue that the media produced by these groups and organizations advance their aims to consciously shape our collective energy imaginaries by mirroring the new media strategies and structures of progressive environmental non-governmental organizations. I ultimately show how petroturfing is a ‘permanent campaign’ for Canadian oil that obscures the fundamentally uneven distribution of social and ecological costs and benefits of fossil fuel extraction, foreclosing the possibility of imagining and, in turn, working towards a future beyond the dominant fossil fuel energy regime.

Facebook as a ‘trusted space of everyday communication’: Parties, citizens and direct representation

Detailing processes related to direct representation in a longitudinal fashion, the study at hand gauges the degree to which Swedish political parties have utilized their Facebook pages during a four-year period covering two elections. Moreover, the study provides insights into citizen interaction by measuring the types of engagement preferred by Facebook users in relation to the party pages. Results indicate that while the bulk of parties appear as largely organizing their online activity in relation to election campaigns, the small, non-parliamentary Pirate Party emerges as taking an approach more in line with the permanent campaign aspect of direct representation. Moreover, while results indicate that citizens are indeed engaging with parties on Facebook, they do so mostly through ‘liking’ rather than commenting – arguably a tendency suggesting limited interest in online discussion and deliberation.

Political Communication: Redefining Contemporary Political Management Practices

Modern politics, particularly prevalent in the Western Democracies, is replete with instances wherein communication has come to play a pivotal role in the formation or dislodging a government. This is not to say that in traditional political scenario, the role of communication was any lesser. Far from it, communication has always characterized the build-up of events in politics. However, the significance of the same has increased manifold thanks to the advent of social media and complex nature of modern politics as well as due to rise of such concepts as political branding which has gained traction in the wake of proliferation of technology. The same holds true in the Indian political scenario as well. The last few years have redefined the role of communication and its tools in Indian politics, especially during a mega-political event like election. The last two general elections were testimonies to the same. The might of social media has been realized by even its staunchest critics. Along with it, the popular concept of permanent campaign has also characterized the phenomenon of political communication. This paper goes on to explore the underlying concept of political communication and how the same has come to influence the turn of events as well as the final outcome of an election.