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by Alessandro Nai (Editor), Annemarie Walter (Editor)
Have you ever seen a politician fiercely attacking his opponent? Sure you have. Election campaigns without attacks on the rival candidate's performance, policy propositions and traits simply do not exist. Negative campaigning makes up a substantial part of election campaigns around the world. Though heavily covered in election news, the practice is strongly disliked by political pundits, journalists and voters. Some are even concerned that negative campaigning damages democracy itself. Negative campaigning has inspired numerous scholars in recent decades. But much of the existing research examines the phenomenon only in the United States, and scholars disagree on how the practice should be defined and measured, which has resulted in open-ended conclusions about its causes and effects. This unique volume presents for the first time work examining negative campaigning in the US, Europe and beyond. It presents systematic literature overviews and new work that touches upon three fundamental questions: What is negative campaigning and can we measure it? What causes negative campaigning? And what are its effects?
Author Biography
Alessandro Nai is Lecturer in empirical methods at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). His work deals with citizens' behaviour in referenda and elections, political psychology, and campaigning effects. He is currently co-directing a three-year SNSF research project (2012-2015) on negative campaigning in Switzerland, with a special focus on its causes and effects. He has been a visiting fellow at the Rutgers University, USA (2008-2009) and at the University of Sydney, Australia (2014). Recent journal articles include 'What really matters is which camp goes dirty: differential effects of negative campaigning on turnout during Swiss federal ballots' (European Journal of Political Research, 2013) and 'The Cadillac, the mother-in-law, and the ballot: individual and contextual roots of ambivalence in Swiss direct democracy' (Electoral Studies, 2014). Annemarie Walter is a Marie Curie Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. She received her PhD in 2012 from the University of Amsterdam. Prior to that she was an Assistant Professor in the Communication Science Department at VU Amsterdam. Dr Walter is currently working on a three-year Marie Curie/ NRF research project (2014-2017) entitled CSNCC: Comparative Study of Negative Campaigning and its Consequences. She has published numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Political Studies, Party Politics, Acta Politica and the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics.
