parties, election campaigning, and the internet

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5Parties, election campaigning, and the Internet

Toward a comparative institutional approach

Nick Anstead and Andrew Chadwick

This chapter argues that a comparative approach to analyzing the relationship between technologyand political institutions has the potential to offer renewed understanding of the development of theInternet in election campaigning. Taking the different characteristics of political parties and the normsand rules of the electoral environment in the United States and the United Kingdom as an illus-tration, it suggests that the relationship between technology and political institutions is dialectical.Technologies can reshape institutions, but institutions will mediate eventual outcomes. The chapteroutlines five key variables: degree of systemic institutional pluralism; organization of membership;candidate recruitment and selection; campaign finance; and the “old” campaign communicationenvironment. This approach has the potential to generate a theoretical framework for explainingdifferences in the impact of the Internet on election campaigning across liberal democracies.

Since the mid 1990s, it has been widelypredicted that the Internet will have adecisive influence on election campaign-ing. This prophecy has, in part at least,been fulfilled in the United States, espe-cially since Howard Dean’s blog-fuelledcampaign for the Democratic presidentialnomination in the 2003–4 primaryseason, the widespread impact of onlinevideo during the 2006 midterm elections,and the proliferation of Web 2.0 socialmedia during the 2007–8 contest.It is tempting to think that this “success

story” has been driven by the diffusion ofthe Internet. By 2005, 76 percent ofAmericans were recorded as being online(International Telecommunication Union,2005). And, despite ongoing divisions inpatterns of use, the overwhelming major-ity of people have integrated informationand communication technologies into

their everyday lives (Horrigan, 2007).Since the public get their news, do theirshopping, and communicate with friendsonline, it is hardly surprising that they arealso being citizens.However, technology diffusion expla-

nations of changes in election campaign-ing only tell part of the story. There areother countries with high levels ofInternet diffusion, in which it has yet tohave such a significant impact. In theUnited Kingdom, while more than 60percent of the population are now online(International Telecommunication Union,2005), there is consensus that the Internethas had only a marginal influence onelections, a fact noted on numerousoccasions during both the 2001 and 2005national polls (Coleman and Hall, 2001;Ward, 2005). It seems perverse, therefore,to suggest that once Internet penetration

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Andy & Sam

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In Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (Routledge, 2008).


reaches some kind of critical mass (what-ever that may be) a decisive politicalimpact somehow becomes inevitable.Given the unevenness of the role playedby the net in electoral contests across eventhe liberal democratic world, we mustlook for additional explanations fornational differences.One element of such an explanation

may be found by considering how theInternet interacts with the relevant poli-tical institutions that pre-date its exis-tence: in particular, the organization ofpolitical parties and the norms and rulesof the electoral environment. These varygreatly across political systems. Differenttypes of party organization and electoralenvironment have the potential to cata-lyze or to retard the development ofInternet campaigning because they rendernew communication technologies moreor less useful to candidates and partiesseeking office. When viewed in com-parative context, American parties areunusual political organizations, and quitedissimilar to those found in other, notablyEuropean, liberal democracies. Such dif-ferences may help explain the quantitativeand qualitative differences in Internetcampaigning across countries.This is not to suggest that research on

Internet campaigning has lacked an inter-national orientation. Rigorous individualcountry studies are growing in number.But, to echo the opening comments ofFoot et al.’s chapter in this volume, with afew exceptions (for example, the editors’conclusion in Gibson et al. (eds), 2003c;Newell, 2001; Tkach-Kawasaki, 2003),very little of the research on parties andInternet campaigning is grounded incross-national comparison of relevant poli-tical institutions. Gibson et al. (2003)conducted a comparative survey of can-didate websites in the United States andthe United Kingdom, but excluded vari-ables related to parties and the electoralenvironment. Zittel (2004) focused, not

on campaign dynamics, but on individuallegislators’ adoption of the Internet.Again, this involved a survey of legislatorwebsites in three countries, correlatedwith independent variables: age of legislator,constituency demographics, the electoralsystem, and type of government. Thelatter was not disaggregated but defined inbasic terms as “presidential” versus “par-liamentary”. Foot et al.’s highly illumi-nating chapter in this volume, whilefocusing on a wide range of politicalactors and featuring sophisticated depen-dent variables that signal the growth ofonline campaign “web spheres”— never-theless downgrades political institutions inthe overall analysis. The closest of severalindependent variables, termed “politicalculture” is, understandably given the scaleand ambition of the Internet and ElectionsProject from which it is drawn, definedand measured solely in terms of individualcitizen attitudes and self-reported behavior.Institutions proximate to election cam-

paigns can have a direct impact on themobilization of resources, acting as cata-lysts and anti-catalysts. At their mostextreme, institutional structures may act ascomplete barriers. Examples include theban on the purchase of television adver-tising in the United Kingdom, or onpodcasting in Singapore. Most of the timeinstitutions may simply make the processof deploying resources unattractive, aswould be the case if stringent regulatoryhurdles had to be overcome to set up apolitical website, for instance. Opportunitycosts are also entailed in choosing todeploy a particular resource. A large bill-board purchase may cut the number ofmailings a party can send; dedicatingcampaign staff to a blogging campaignmay remove them from face-to-faceroles. The Internet may reconfigure orreduce opportunity costs but it does notdestroy them. The benefits political actorsare able to derive are thus strongly

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influenced by the institutional environ-ment (March and Olsen, 1989).This chapter argues that a comparative

approach to analyzing the relationshipbetween technology and political institu-tions has the potential to offer renewedunderstanding of the development of theInternet in election campaigning. Takingthe different characteristics of politicalparties and the norms and rules of theelectoral environment in the UnitedStates and the United Kingdom as anillustration, it aims to show that the rela-tionship between technology and politicalinstitutions is best perceived as dialectical.Technologies can reshape institutions, butinstitutions will mediate eventual out-comes. This approach has the potential togenerate a theoretical framework forexplaining differences in the impact of theInternet on election campaigning acrossliberal democracies.

Normalizers, optimists, andinstitutions

The lack of comparative institutionalresearch on Internet campaigning is per-haps best explained by the terms of refer-ence that have dominated discussion ofInternet politics more generally. Since thenet’s early days, analysis of its politicalimpact has been dominated by two dis-tinct schools of thought: the normalizers,who claim that current political relation-ships and power distributions will ulti-mately be replicated online, and theoptimists, who claim that the Internet willreform politics and radically redistributepolitical power. These two camps aredescendants of an older debate betweensociological and technological determin-isms: between those who claim that theimpact of technology is shaped by socialand political institutions and those whobelieve technology has the power toshape society and politics. While the

debate between normalizers and optimistshas been useful in creating much of thesignificant early analysis of the Internet, ithas also proved limiting. Both sides havegenerally paid insufficient attention to thecomplex interaction between technologyand political institutions.While institutions have often been

neglected by the normalizers and theoptimists, they have at least had animplied significance. Normalizationtheory argues that the broader resourcesavailable to political actors, such asmoney, bureaucracy, supporter networks,or an interested mainstream media, willheavily condition their ability to makeeffective use of the Internet for cam-paigning (see, for example, Davis, 1999;Margolis and Resnick, 2000). Onlineadvantage accrues to the strongest offlineactors. In their influential book, Politics asUsual, Michael Margolis and DavidResnick (2000: 2) argue that cyberspace“will be molded by the everyday strugglefor wealth and power.”The relationship between normal-

ization and political institutions can becritically understood in two ways. First,the theory is socially determinist. Itassumes that pre-Internet power brokerswill come to define the online world,autonomously of technological change. Ittherefore neglects important differencesbetween old media of political commu-nication, particularly the paper press andtelevision, and new, low-cost, low-threshold interactive and participatorymedia. Second, in normalization theory,existing institutions offer a framework forthe explanation that political behaviorwill remain normal. The problem is that,when situated in a cross-national com-parative context, it is best seen not as auniversal truth but as a matter for investi-gation. The question we must ask is: whatkinds of institutional features are morelikely to have affinities with the particulartechnological affordances of Internet

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communication? A comparative approachallows us to hypothesize what may, ormay not, gain traction in different poli-tical systems.The relationship between institutions

and the case made by Internet optimists ismore difficult to disentangle, largelybecause they do not form a single schoolbut can be divided into two broad cate-gories according to their attitudes torepresentative democracy. Most applicableto the American experience is what canbe termed representative democracy optimism.This approach does not argue that theInternet will destroy all representativeinstitutions, but instead claims that it hasthe potential to reform and rehabilitateindirect vehicles of democratic participa-tion, most notably political parties andelections (for example, Trippi, 2004).This approach has been accompanied by asecond: the view that the Internet willactually undermine representative politicalinstitutions (Morris, 1999).This distinction between representative

democracy optimists and direct democ-racy optimists is significant. However,both posit a monocausal relationshipbetween technology and politics: existingpolitical institutions will either bereformed or entirely replaced under theweight of technological change. This isgrounded in how the characteristics of theInternet differ from previously dominantmedia of political communication, mostnotably television. The necessities of thetelevision age political campaign are saidto have made parties centralized andsteeply hierarchical, and grass-roots acti-vism and civic life are said to havebecome emaciated (Trippi, 2004: 37–40,214–15). The televisual form is one-to-many; the Internet offers rapid, dis-tributed, multidirectional, interactive,many-to-many communication.Criticisms of technological determinism

are of course manifold, and cannot detainus here (see Roe Smith, 1994). But from

our perspective, devaluing the role ofnon- or pre-Internet organizational struc-tures, norms, and rules, in mediatingtechnological forces, and how these pro-cesses may vary across political systems,renders such an approach problematic as aframework for the explanation of thedevelopment of Internet campaigning.In summary, normalization and

Internet optimism approaches do notadequately consider the possibility thatsome political institutions, as currentlyarranged, are likely to act as a catalyst forthe integration of the Internet into elec-tion campaigning, while others may not.

America’s online successstory

While the chronicles of headline-grabbingexamples of Internet campaigning nowfeature several countries, it is on theUnited States that most interest, bothpopular and academic, has focused. This isunsurprising: the country can claim to bethe birthplace of the Internet; it is theonly global hyperpower; its elections arefollowed throughout the world; andinterest in its politics is strongly linked tothe idea of Americanization, which sug-gests convergence in electoral politics,especially in styles of campaign commu-nication (see, for example, Farrell et al.,2001; Kavanagh, 1995, Negrine andPapathanassopoulos, 1996).The Internet’s potential has long been

apparent. In the 1998 Minnesota guber-national contest, Independent candidateJesse Ventura, running against well-estab-lished Democratic and Republican candi-dates, used the net to organize andpublicize campaign rallies in the hoursbefore polls closed (Greer and LaPointe,2004: 117; Klotz, 2004: 71). In theRepublican presidential primary contestin 2000, following his unexpected win inNew Hampshire, John McCain was able


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to raise $3 million in donations in tendays (Klotz, 2004: 77), an unprecedentedfeat at the time. During the presidentialcontest that year, Al Gore organized aninnovative series of online “town hall”style discussion forums.However, it was Howard Dean’s can-

didacy for the Democratic nomination forthe presidency in 2004 that really seemedto fulfill the early promise of the Internetas a campaigning tool. Dean was littleknown nationally, though his continuedopposition to the war in Iraq did give hima platform distinct from the other candi-dates in the Democratic field. During theearly phase of the primaries, Dean strug-gled to get his campaign off the ground:his opinion poll ratings were within themargin of error of zero and he was woe-fully short of cash and known supporters.At the end of 2002, Dean’s campaignteam restructured its online presence, inorder to test the networking and fund-raising potential of the Internet. By theend of 2003, Dean had gone from beingan unknown candidate with very fewfinancial resources to the leader in therace and the most successful primaryfund-raiser in the history of theDemocratic Party (Chadwick, 2007;Hindman, 2005; Trippi, 2004).Following on from Dean’s success, the

eventual winner of the Democraticnomination, John Kerry, while relyingmainly on large donors to get himthrough the primaries (defined byHindman, 2005 as those who give thefederal maximum of $2000), neverthelessused the Internet to raise a large numberof small donations during the main cam-paign. This allowed Kerry, in a situationunprecedented for a Democrat, to achievenear financial parity with his Republicanopponent, George W. Bush, by the closeof the 2004 campaign (Dwyer et al.,2004).The 2006 midterms continued to offer

effective demonstrations of the power of

the Internet. During the Democratic pri-mary for the Senate seat in Connecticut,three-term Senator and former candidatefor the vice presidency, Joe Lieberman,was defeated by journeyman candidateNed Lamont, who had only previouslyheld local office. Lieberman was an out-spoken defender of the Iraq war, a stancethat put him at odds with many grass-roots Democrats, while Lamont workedto portray himself as an anti-war candi-date. Lamont’s attempt to defeatLieberman was embraced by high-profileDemocratic bloggers, the so-called “net-roots,” who promoted his candidacy,raised money, and even starred in celeb-rity-style campaign commercials. TheInternet was important in creatingmomentum for Lamont: he convincinglydefeated Lieberman in the primary(Murray, 2006; Ned Lamont for Senate,2006).The main midterm election period of

2006 continued to feature extensive useof the net. The most notorious episodecame during the race for the VirginiaSenate seat. Republican incumbentGeorge Allen was expected to comfor-tably retain his position, as the precursorto a possible presidential run in 2008.However, some months before the elec-tion, Allen was filmed referring toDemocratic opponent Jim Webb’s cam-paign worker as a “macaca”, a racist term.The DIY video of this event was imme-diately uploaded onto media-sharing siteYouTube, and soon became a viral sen-sation, leading to Allen’s views on racebeing questioned both online and, cru-cially, in mainstream newsprint and tele-vision media. From being 20 points aheadin the polls at the end of April, Allenwent on to lose (CNN, 2006; NOI,2006; YouTube, 2006). By the time ofthe close of the 2006 elections, it was alsoclear that the netroots movementMoveOn, by campaigning in support ofseveral successful Senate and House


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candidates, had exerted influence on theDemocratic takeover of Congress. Soonafter the election, MoveOn’s website dis-played a table of statistics for the pivotaldistricts, including margin of victory,financial contributions, and number ofphone calls to voters. It mobilized volun-teers to make seven million calls and host7,500 house parties (MoveOn, 2007).Although hard data are lacking, it seemsfair to suggest that Allen’s defeat inVirginia was caused by the viral effect ofthe YouTube video. Certainly aRepublican online campaigning guide-book for the 2008 elections suggested thatthis was the case (National RepublicanSenatorial Committee, 2007). And, asDavis et al. reveal in their chapter in thisvolume, the 2006 midterms and the earlystages of the 2007–8 primary season wit-nessed the growing use of online socialnetworking sites such as MySpace andFacebook, with Hillary Clinton andBarack Obama amassing hundreds ofthousands of members in supporter net-works.From this very brief depiction of high-

profile cases it is evident that the Internetplays a great many roles in the Americancampaign environment, whether it becreating political networks, promotingdiscussion of politics, raising funds, orstoring, retrieving, and automating infor-mation (Howard, 2006).

Britain’s online non-events?

Observers of British elections have longbeen wondering if the Internet campaignphenomena witnessed in the UnitedStates will make their way across theAtlantic. United Kingdom campaignmanagers eagerly followed the 2000 pre-sidential contest in an effort to “learn les-sons” (Gibson et al., 2003a: 51). Overall,however, the net had little impact on the2001 general election. Only seven percent

of citizens claimed to have used it to lookfor election information, compared with74 percent for newspapers and 89 percentfor television (MORI, 2001). It appears tohave played only a marginal role ininfluencing how individuals decided tovote, and candidates’ online presences,though improving, were not as developedas those of their American counterparts.By the 2005 British general election,

evidence was emerging that Internetcampaigning was shaping political beha-vior. Some British MPs were using thenet to reach out to supporters outside thetraditional structures of party, via e-maildistribution lists, for example, which per-formed some of the functions performedby blogs (Jackson, 2004). Around 50 par-liamentary candidates blogged during the2005 campaign (Kimber, 2005). Whilethe Internet presence of candidates was animprovement over 2001, it was clear thatthe Internet did not play the role it did inthe 2004 U.S. campaign. Bloggingremains very much a minority sportamong British parliamentarians (Ward andFrancoli, 2007).In the period following the 2005 elec-

tion, as social media and social network-ing trends reached Britain, politiciansbegan to experiment with YouTube,MySpace, and Facebook. A handful ofprominent politicians, including govern-ment minister David Miliband, beganhigh-profile blogs. In the spring of 2006,Labour Party leader Tony Blair ordered arethink of the party’s approach to webcampaigning. This led to the creation ofthe Labor Supporters Network, an e-maillist designed to appeal to those who werenot willing or able to become fully paid-up party members, and MpURLMembersnet, a social network site thatprovides each party member with a blog,each local constituency Labour Partyorganization with an online discussionforum, and a number of general policy-related forums. Meanwhile, the


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Conservative Party’s new leader, DavidCameron, pioneered the use of viralonline video in mainstream British poli-tics, with his Webcameron video blog.Labour’s deputy leadership contest in thespring of 2007 saw all candidates engagewith Web 2.0 platforms such as Facebookand MySpace. Thus there are some ten-tative signs that British parties are inte-grating the net. But does this mean thatthey will converge on the Americanmodel? And, if so, to what extent? Thenext section seeks to provide a frameworkfor answering such questions through aconsideration of the differences betweenthe United States and United Kingdomparty and electoral environments.

Party organization andelectoral environment:catalysts and anti-catalystsfor Internet electioncampaigning

The British and American party organi-zations and electoral environments havemuch in common. When it comes tonational elections, both are historicallyembedded two-party systems: only twoparties have a realistic chance of securingexecutive power; single-party executivesare the norm at the national level (not atthe devolved level in the UnitedKingdom); and parties “take turns” incontrolling the executive. Both countrieshave simple plurality electoral systemsbased on geographical constituencies, andthis reinforces the two-party system.But there are highly significant differ-

ences between the two countries. For thepurposes of this chapter, these may bemapped along five distinct, though inter-related, dimensions: the degree of sys-temic institutional pluralism; theorganization of membership; candidaterecruitment and selection; campaignfinance; and the “old” campaign

communication environment. The aimhere is to show how differences betweenthe United States and the UnitedKingdom in each of these areas may beused to hypothesize the distinct char-acteristics of online election campaigningin each political system.

Degree of systemic institutionalpluralism

Federalism and the separation of powers,both key constitutional values in theUnited States, guarantee substantial insti-tutional pluralism. This weakens nationalparty integration (Epstein, 1980; Harmeland Janda, 1982; Key, 1964). The sepa-rate electoral bases of the presidency andCongress provide few incentives for partycohesion. Parties have state and localcommittees but their influence and levelof organization differs significantly fromstate to state. Many state committees areflimsy, and where there are traditions ofstrong party organization, such as in NewYork state or Pennsylvania, these are stillonly weakly integrated with the nationalcommittees in Washington. Parties areimportant for government formation andaffiliation remains a very strong predictorof congressional behavior, but away fromthe capitol, state and local party structureshave few direct policy-making roles.National party committees are institu-tionally separate from the party organiza-tions inside Congress, and while there aredifferences between the states, much thesame can be said of the relationshipbetween state legislatures and state-levelparty committees. The national commit-tees have grown in influence since the1970s, yet they are still of less importanceduring presidential races than the staff andinfrastructure built up by candidatesthemselves during both the primaryseason and the main campaign. Even themost nationally-oriented electoral con-test—for the presidency—necessarily


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becomes a matter of localized campaign-ing in targeted key states, due to theelectoral college system. In the lexicon ofSamuel Eldersveld (1982), the Americanparty system is stratarchical rather thanhierarchical. Layers of party organization,driven by factionalism along severaldimensions, are only loosely joined.Contrast this with the United

Kingdom, where the separation of powersis strictly circumscribed by the near-fusionof the legislature and the executive(Lijphart, 1984) and where, despite recentdevolution reforms, the state is unitary.The prime minister and Parliament sharean electoral base, incentivizing partycohesion in the interests of policy successfor the government and re-election forMPs. British parties are characterized bygreater levels of national coordination andintegration, and while there are differentpolitical traditions associated with partyactivism in localities, the party structuresare internally uniform. Local constituencyorganizations enjoy policy-making influ-ence but despite recent trends towardinternal democratization, national head-quarters exert close control over thewhole party. While some local associa-tions can and do deviate from the leader-ship’s script, national party organizationsnevertheless have a major influence onthe election campaign by channelingresources, coordinating activity, andapplying sanctions (Ware, 1996). Britishparties are comparatively integrated andhierarchical rather than stratarchical.How do these characteristics interact

with the technological affordances of theInternet? The pluralistic environment inthe United States necessitates buildingcampaign networks composed of hor-izontal and vertical connections that meshwith the fundamentally stratarchical basisof the system. Integration can be achievedin a way that leaves intact the operativenorms of federalism and the separation ofpowers, but which provides lines of

communication between levels of partyorganization and activists. The Internetprovides for granular communication thatallows party staff to quickly switch fromlocal to state to national focus and viceversa. It also reinforces the trend, sincethe 1970s, towards a more active coordi-nating role for the national party com-mittees. Yet, in a system where state partyorganizations often jealously guard theirautonomy, the open, looser networksafforded by Internet communication fitwell.Compare this with the United

Kingdom, where, as we have noted, theseparation of powers is weak, federalismabsent, and parties comparatively inte-grated and hierarchical. There, thoughconstituency-level organizations can berebellious, the lines of communication aremore vertically oriented, more firmlydrawn, and are based in long-establishedformal structures with accompanyingbureaucracies. The Internet’s technologi-cal affordances for creating loose hor-izontal networks have fewer affinitieswith this set of arrangements. We canhypothesize that it is more likely thatBritish parties will deploy the Internet inways that jell with internal routinizedinstitutional traits. This is evidenced, forexample, by the MpURL Membersnet,which is a members-only layer of webapplications that map onto long-standinginternal party structures.

Organization of membership

In his classic work on party systems,Duverger (1954) suggested that British(and other European) parties were orga-nizationally “superior” because theydeveloped durable mass membership andparticipation infrastructures. Revisionistssuch as Epstein (1980) have suggested thatthe weaker American party model isbetter suited to the age of leader-focused,televisual politics. Either way, American


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parties do not have a system of individualmembership, though there is a chance forordinary party supporters to play a role inthe selection of candidates through theprimary system (see below). Nor do theyhave a leader embedded in their structure,but instead rely on a successful pre-sidential candidate to lead the party onceelected. Parties in Congress are oftendescribed as “headless”: there is no con-cept of permanent opposition (Janda,1993: 164). The once decisive role of theparty convention in policy discussion andnomination has, since the 1970s, beenhollowed out. And, as we have seen, thedifficulty of coordinating solidary resour-ces in American parties is affected by fed-eralism and the separation of powers.The lack of a permanent membership

necessarily makes American parties heav-ily campaign focused. Candidates seekingoffice are required to develop their owncampaign infrastructure, based aroundpersonal support for their platform. This isreinforced by the primary system, whichfeatures a large-scale campaign fromwhich elements of the party’s organiza-tion, such as national and state commit-tees, are sometimes marginalized. UnitedStates politics is candidate centered.In the United Kingdom, parties have

an organic existence outside of electioncampaigns; they are organs of policy andparticipation and have (currently declin-ing) memberships. National party con-ferences differ in terms of policy influencefrom party to party, but conferences doretain a residual policy-making role.Local, regional, and national policyforums provide opportunities for rank-and-file activists to participate. Whilecampaign machinery does tend to dete-riorate during the periods between elec-tions, greater institutional presence andcontinuous membership do not createpressures to continually rebuild fromscratch. There is a strong tradition oforganized opposition in British politics,

spearheaded by the permanent partyleader of the second largest party inParliament and his or her shadow cabinet.In Britain, parties have pre-formed struc-tures containing activists inherited bysuccessive leaders. United Kingdom poli-tics is party centered.The often temporary and short-lived

associations that constitute the Americancampaign offer strong incentives for usingthe Internet. The most successful andpublicized examples, for example HowardDean’s use of Meetup or Barack Obama’screation of Facebook groups (Goldfarb,2007) in the earliest possible stages of thecampaign are attempts to construct anonline network of supporters and activistsat the lowest possible cost and often wellin advance of organization on the ground.We may also consider this from the per-spective of activists themselves, who seekpolicy influence and expressive benefitsfrom political participation. For suchindividuals, the Internet provides theseearlier and, for some it seems, withgreater intensity than in the “old” cam-paign environment.In the United Kingdom, while volun-

teer activists are hardly in abundantsupply, the party membership is at least apre-existing resource that can be tappedin more routinized and predictable waysby party elites, candidates, and membersalike. Party elites often engage in admin-istrative reform of internal structures torealize political or bureaucratic goals(Webb, 2000), but the sense of fast-moving organizational fluidity, evenchaos, that often characterizes Americancandidates’ attempts to mobilize support isnot evident.Recent developments in Britain do,

however, suggest that the Internet may becatalyzing some aspects of party member-ship organization. The permanent mem-bership base of British parties has beeneroding for several decades. This incenti-vizes parties to seek alternative models. As


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mentioned in our brief description ofelection campaigning, the Labour Party’snew “supporters network” and its internalsocial networking model, MpURLMembersnet, deliberately seek to attractthose who do not commit to old-styleparty membership, or those who do notengage with traditional face-to-face parti-cipatory structures. This is not to suggestthat British parties are converging on theU.S. model. Significant differences willpersist, as British parties mold the tech-nology in their own ways. Hence,Labour’s Chair Hazel Blears’ view that“We don’t want a U.S.-style party with aloose coalition of supporters, rather thanan active membership” (Blears, 2007).Our assumption is that technology canshape institutions but institutions willmediate eventual outcomes.

Candidate recruitment andselection

In the United States, mechanisms for therecruitment and selection of candidatesoffer an institutional framework for sanc-tioned dissent (Bogdanor, 1984: x).Distrust of the corruption and patronageof urban party machines led to the earlytwentieth century reforms specificallydesigned to weaken party bosses andincrease citizen influence via devices suchas the initiative, the referendum, and therecall, but most significantly, primaryelections. While practices have differedacross the states, since the 1970s, primarieshave become fundamental to U.S. poli-tics. Uncertainty and risk are muchgreater for both party elites and candidatesthan their equivalents in Britain.Participation in primaries is restricted, butthe thresholds are low. One must simplyregister as a Democrat or Republican, insome cases only a few weeks before theballot. While caucus selection has notentirely disappeared, many caucus votesare in any case characterized by the same

degree of fluidity and openness as wit-nessed during primaries (McKay, 2005:93).Primaries are absent from the British

party system. Internal competitionbetween contenders takes place in arenassealed off from direct participation by thegeneral public. United Kingdom partiesdo have internal procedures, which, tovarying extents, involve mass member-ships in the selection of national leader-ship positions, and permanent localconstituency associations select their localparty candidates, subject to the finalapproval of central staff. But electoralrules guarantee party elites a significantpower bloc in national leadership con-tests, parliamentary candidates are heavilyvetted by central party elites, and thecommittees of local constituency activistsare usually small and exclusive. Theenvironment for candidate selection ismuch less open and fluid, much moretightly managed, and more nationally-oriented than is the case in the UnitedStates.It is notable that in the United States,

most of the Internet campaigning inno-vations (McCain during 1999–2000;Dean during 2003–4; Lamont during2006; Obama during 2007–8) haveoccurred during primaries. Primary elec-tions may be influenced but cannot becontrolled by the parties themselves.Resources permitting, any individual mayrun for the nomination and those without“establishment” party backing have foundthe Internet particularly attractive for gar-nering support. In Dean’s case, an out-sider candidate found that he could usethe net to quickly ratchet up a campaignin the early primary stages in an attemptto reduce the costs of overcoming sheergeographical scale and the complexity ofthe different state-level contests. Theuncertainty of the primary environmentforces candidates to cast around foropportunities to build what are often


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fragile and fleeting coalitions of support.In some respects, candidates can use theInternet to try to reduce this uncertaintyand risk. When the risks are high but thecosts of organizational innovation are low,candidates are more likely to experiment,for example by trying to tap into multipleonline networks. During the 2007–8 pri-mary campaign, John Edwards’ campaignwas notorious for spreading its bets acrosspractically all of the important Web 2.0sites and applications, including 43Things,Del.icio.us, Essembly, Facebook, Flickr,Gather, MySpace, Partybuilder, YouTube,Ning, Metacafe, Revver, Yahoo! 360°,Blip.tv, CHBN, vSocial, Tagworld,Collectivex, Bebo, Care2, Hi5, Xanga,and LiveJournal (Edwards, 2007).This conjuncture of institutions and

technological affordances may be espe-cially applicable to the Democratic Party,for whom the institution of the primarywas created, in its modern form, with thegoal of empowering activists. The dis-agreement between much of the partyelite and its base over the Iraq war hasfueled the most prominent web cam-paigns, most notably those of Dean, PaulHackett, and Lamont. Institutions (theprimary) and technology came togetherto form a mutually reinforcing environ-ment for grass-roots dissent. At the sametime, however, it still needs to be recog-nized that factors such as the lack of afully “national” campaign domain, thecomplexities of different state-level con-texts, and the command of territorial scalerequired of a successful U.S. primarycandidacy are important institutionalconstraints. These may be softened butcannot totally be overcome by theInternet. Dean found this to his costwhen it actually came to the ballots.Lacking primaries and having much

greater control over candidate recruit-ment and selection, British parties operatewithin a radically different environment.Factionalism, dissent, and risk are

important factors in British party selectionprocesses (Webb, 2000), but they aredeliberately managed, or are not per-mitted such blatant institutional expres-sion (Ware, 1996). The “selectorate” is acombination of party elites and members,but those members are fully paid up. Itwould be unusual to see large numbers ofcitizens join a British party just to partici-pate in an internal election campaign: thethreshold is too high. And while candi-dates must be seen to be impressive in theface of broader public opinion, theynevertheless know that the internal elec-toral rules and timetable are fixed andnationally uniform, and that there will(literally) be no outsider candidates. Inthis environment, there are fewer incen-tives to take advantage of the Internet forlowering costs and reducing uncertaintyand risk by spreading a campaign across awide range of networks.

Campaign finance

The campaign finance environment dif-fers significantly across the two politicalsystems. We focus here on three factors,all of which mediate the Internet as an aidto fund-raising.First, there is the matter of scale and

significance. American politics, by thestandards of anywhere else in the world, isexpensive. Indeed, there is much talk of2008 being the first $1 billion election(Malbin and Cain, 2007: 4). In contrast,in the 12 months preceding the 2005British general election, the combinedspending of the Labour and ConservativeParties was just £90 million ($185 mil-lion) (Phillips, 2007: 13). Furthermore,the acquisition of money is central tosuccess in American politics. Electoralprimaries, for example, are preceded bywhat is termed “the money primary”,where candidates’ electoral viability isassessed by their ability to raise funds fromdonors (Adkins and Dowdle, 2002). This


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process received a great deal of coveragein anticipation of the 2008 presidentialprimary season, with much commentbeing made on Barack Obama’s success asa fund-raiser and the relative failure ofJohn McCain to gather the funds con-sidered necessary for a successful nomina-tion bid (Heileman, 2007; MacAskill,2007). There is no comparable institutionin British politics. The importance offinancial resources to American politicsensures that political actors are quick toexploit the potential of new revenuestreams. This has certainly been the caseonline, where candidates, most notablyDemocrats, have proved to be adept atraising vast sums of money (Dwyer et al.,2004). Through the institution of themoney primary, it is possible for Americancitizens to have quite a direct impact onpolitical outcomes. For this reason, it is afar more rational course of action forAmericans to make political donations.The Internet has made this more appar-ent, by lowering the barrier to participa-tion and making it easier for citizens tocontribute to their preferred candidate.Second, the American political system

exhibits a diverse range of donationopportunities. This is a direct con-sequence of the pluralistic nature ofAmerican parties. Even the national par-ties each contain three committees towhich donations can be sent: the nationalcommittee, the house party, and thesenate party. Then there are party orga-nizations at state and regional level.Money can also be given directly to can-didates for office, both during the primaryseason (when givers will have a choicebetween many candidates), and then inthe main electoral contest. In contrast, thecentralized nature of British parties offersfar fewer opportunities for individuals todonate. The vast majority of politicaldonations in Britain are given to thenational headquarters of a party. In 2005,nearly 85 percent of the £38 million of

cash contributions given to theConservative and Labor Parties and item-ized by the U.K. Electoral Commissionwent straight to the central party organi-zation, with only the remaining 15 per-cent going to sub-national bodies (U.K.Electoral Commission, 2005).Third, the two countries employ vastly

different regulatory systems, based ondiametrically opposed principles. This hashistorically been the case, but has beenfurther reinforced by recent legal deci-sions and legislation. In America, attemptsto regulate political finance have focusedon declaring and capping donations. The1971 Federal Election Campaign Actrequired disclosure of donations to candi-dates, while a 1974 amendment to theact, passed in the aftermath of theWatergate scandal, imposed a donationcap of $1000. This law was upheld by theSupreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo(1976).However, the same hearing also ruled

two significant provisos, both of whichwere to have huge implications for cam-paign finance in the United States. Whilecaps on donations were deemed legal, anycaps on spending were deemed uncon-stitutional, on the grounds they wouldbreach the first amendment right to freespeech. The Supreme Court also ruledthat only donations made directly for thepurpose of election campaigning wouldfall under the auspices of donation limits.In reality the distinction between electoralcampaigning and issue advertising provedto be very fine, and it was this element ofthe ruling that led to the distinctionbetween hard and soft money inAmerican politics. Hard money donationsto candidates fell under the remit of theFederal Election Commission and werelimited by the Federal Election CampaignAct. In contrast, soft money existed out-side this regulatory framework and, pro-vided it was not used to directly endorse acandidate, could be gathered in unlimited


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quantities, either by issue advocacy groupsor by central committees within politicalparties (Sorauf, 1992).The most recent attempt to close this

loophole in the law was the 2002Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act(often referred to by the names of itsSenate sponsors, McCain and Feingold).At the same time as raising the hardmoney donation limit to $2000 per can-didate, this legislation also prohibitedpolitical parties or committees withinparties from gathering soft money dona-tions. However, in-keeping with theBuckley v. Valeo ruling, the act allowedorganizations campaigning on issues toreceive unlimited donations. Many of the527 groups (so-called because their statuswas defined under clause 527 of the U.S.tax code) that were created after the pas-sing of McCain–Feingold are highly par-tisan and only quasi-autonomous fromelectoral campaigns, although barred fromhaving direct contact with candidatesseeking office. The Internet lends itself tothis type of loose political association. Forexample, Moveon.org is a 527 group, andthus legally defined as non-partisan.However, through its base of Internetsupporters, it is able to organize large-scale campaigns to aid Democratic causesand candidates. Through the networkstructures of online organizations, itbecomes possible for “separate” organiza-tions to coordinate their actions moreeffectively, to become virtually if notactually interlocking, and, in some cases,to have a significant impact on elections(MoveOn, 2007).In contrast, in Britain, there are no caps

on donations to political parties.Individuals and organizations are legallyable to give any sums they wish. As aresult, a significant proportion of dona-tions to British political parties come froma small number of large donors. It hasbeen estimated that a donations cap of£5000 (approximately five times the cap

imposed by McCain–Feingold in the U.S.) would deny British parties nearly 90percent of their current income (Grant,2005: 390). Instead, British legislation oncampaign finance has sought to curbspending. The Corrupt and IllegalPractices Act 1883 imposed constituencyspending caps on candidates, in an effortto prevent the purchase of office. Theadvent of organized and wealthy politicalparties with mass memberships during thetwentieth century led to calls for a similarnational spending cap. Such a cap wasonly introduced by The Political Parties,Elections and Referendum Act 2000(PPERA), which limited a party’s nationalspending based on the number of con-stituencies it was contesting (Kelly, 2005).In the U.K. then, unhindered by

donation caps, politicians are able to relyon fewer, large contributions to fundtheir electioneering (as well as stillreceiving significant sums from partymembers). They have fewer incentives todevelop support from large numbers ofsmall donors. In contrast, in the U.S.,candidates necessarily need to solicit con-tributions from a large number of sup-porters. The Internet has proved to be theperfect environment for this element ofelectoral campaigning. Indeed, there issome evidence that the Internet is chan-ging the types of donations being receivedby candidates. In particular, the 2004presidential election saw an increase in thenumber of small donations (usuallydefined as less than $200, the level atwhich they must be reported individuallyto the Federal Election Commission), achange for which the Internet was seen aspartially responsible (Graf et al., 2006). Intotal, 61 percent of Dean’s funds camefrom donations of less than $200(Hindman, 2005: 124). Some have evengone as far as to argue that the Internet, asa mechanism for giving, is creating a newera of “small dollar democracy” (Schmitt,2007).


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“Old” campaign communicationenvironment

Our final dimension concerns how theolder campaign communication environ-ment, particularly the roles of televisionand targeted marketing, shapes incentivesfor political actors when it comes to theInternet.Internet campaigning does not exist in

a media vacuum. Since the 1970s in theUnited States, paid-for television adver-tising has been one of the most importantand most expensive aspects of the cam-paign. Advertising is largely unregulated.Candidates may buy as many slots as theyare able to afford or calculate the publicwill bear. In addition, quasi-independentorganizations affiliated with a candidatemay also purchase airtime. As is wellknown, the United States was in thevanguard of the so-called professionaliza-tion of political campaigning. The cam-paign industry, with its pollsters,consultants, speechwriters, and directmarketers was, long before the arrival ofthe Internet, strongly attuned to the roleplayed by television in shaping electoralopinion and has ruthlessly packaged poli-tical campaigns for indirect disseminationvia mainstream news media. It has equallyruthlessly developed strategies for directmarketing via old technologies (phoneand mail) especially in key swing statesduring presidential campaigns.Party-controlled television content is a

mere sideshow in the United Kingdom,where such political advertising is out-lawed. British parties are allotted a hand-ful of regulated “party electionbroadcasts” during a campaign and whilethe audiences for these are reasonablylarge, they are of short duration.However, the rise of the professionalcampaign in Britain during the 1980s and1990s has led to the U.S.-style “packa-ging” of candidates for the mainstreamnews media, which is of greater

importance for citizens’ political informa-tion in the United Kingdom (Farrell et al.,2001; Franklin, 2004). Similarly, directmarketing strategies have grown inimportance.Theorizing differences across our two

countries in this area is more complex. Ingeneral, the Internet seems to be lesseffective than television in reachingundecided voters (Klotz, 2004: 64). Suchvoters are less likely to be motivated toseek out political information using apurposive medium (Bimber and Davis,2003). Winning elections is about raisingcandidate visibility among undecidedvoters in key marginal constituencies.Television and direct marketing haveobvious benefits when compared withonline campaigning in this regard,because they can be targeted to specificsets of voters. Internet phenomenonMoveOn used TV advertisements andphone canvassing to great effect in the2006 midterms, as its website proudlyproclaims (MoveOn, 2007).A further disincentive to devoting pro-

fessional campaign resources to theInternet is its unpredictability and riskwhen compared with older methods, asthe Virginia “macaca” incident revealed.Equally, though, these things are notdown to pure chance. Jessica VandenBerg, the campaign manager of JimWebb, George Allen’s Democratic oppo-nent, revealed a detailed account of thecarefully managed campaign that laun-ched the video, involving leaks to themainstream media and to favored bloggers(NOI, 2006). Such events require dedi-cated, skilled, and well-connected cam-paign teams. The Internet campaign alsoproduces opportunity costs that must bepaid for by comparative neglect of otheraspects of campaign communication. Acharacteristic response in the UnitedStates has in part been to try to mold theuse of information and communicationtechnologies to reflect the norms of the


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old communication environment.Political actors have looked for ways tohave the Internet do the old jobs, onlysmarter. Howard (2006) has demonstratedthe centrality to the online campaign ofthe storage, retrieval, and automation ofvast quantities of information, the target-ing of individual voters, and geodemo-graphic data mining.Similar factors are shaping British

developments. The Labour SupportersNetwork and MpURL Membersnet areunobtrusive means of gathering data onparty members. Targeted e-mail andmobile text messaging are now familiarfeatures of the campaign landscape.However, the British experience alsoreveals a growing exuberance amongpoliticians who see the potential of theInternet to bypass the constraints of main-stream media and the heavily regulatedtelevision environment. This was pre-cisely the reasoning behind the creationof the Conservative Party leader DavidCameron’s video blog, Webcameron,according to campaign staff. Thus we seea mix of potentialities in this field. Thepredominance of television and old-styledirect marketing, and its benefits for tar-geting undecided voters in key marginals,are shaping the adoption of Internet cam-paigning in both countries. Interestingly,however, the weaker role of candidate-controlled television exposure in theUnited Kingdom may act as more of acatalyst there.

Conclusion

This article aimed to suggest how wemight move beyond some of theassumptions that have hitherto dominateddiscussions of online campaigning. Theoptimists’ belief that the Internet wouldremodel every existing institution hasclearly not occurred as predicted. Thenormalizers’ prediction that power

arrangements within existing institutionswould simply be exported to the onlineenvironment is only partially accurate.Both focus on power and resources, butboth do not take into account those ele-ments of the institutional environmentthat influence the utility of new technol-ogy. Existing institutions can act as cata-lysts or anti-catalysts.High levels of systemic institutional

pluralism in the U.S., created by theseparation of powers and federalism,ensure that American political partiesremain much looser affiliations than theirBritish counterparts. The lack of a per-manent membership in American partiesmakes them more heavily electionfocused than those in Britain, and candi-dates do not find a ready-made campaignorganization when they seek office. TheInternet is emerging as a powerful tool forundertaking these tasks. These tendenciesare even more acutely demonstrated inthe primary system, which, with its lowthresholds for entry and potential for massparticipation, allows for internal partydebate and dispute. The primary and theInternet are mutually reinforcing. Indeed,it could be argued that the reforms insti-gated within the Democratic Party in the1970s have now taken on a whole newsignificance.Campaign finance is another area

where pre-existing institutions have animpact on Internet-based campaign stra-tegies. In the United States, the primarysystem, particularly the money primary,give donations a greater influence onpolitical outcomes. The Internet has madethis process easier, and may, if the claimsof the advocates of small-dollar democ-racy are accepted, be democratizing theprocess.This article is only the starting point of

a discussion of the relationship betweeninstitutions and the Internet. There ismore work to be done in examining dif-ferences within political systems. Why, for


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example, do the Democrats seem to be“better” at using the net than theRepublicans? There are also questionsabout institutional development anddesign. In the U.K., for example, there iscurrently some unease about the waypolitical parties are funded and a discus-sion of a range of options, includingdonation caps and state funding. Likewise,the Conservative Party is experimentingwith primary contests for the LondonMayoral elections in 2008. Clearly theseand other relevant institutional changeswould have ramifications for online poli-tics that will need to be considered andunderstood.The approach suggested here has the

potential to help us better understand thecomplex interaction between institutionsand new technology. The differencesbetween British and American campaign-ing provide a compelling crucible, thoughthe approach could be used to frame thecomparison of other political systems. Thefive dimensions outlined—the level ofsystemic institutional pluralism, the orga-nization of membership and supporters,the processes through which candidatesare recruited and selected, the financialdemands and regulations surroundingcampaigns, and existing campaign com-munication structures—will play a role inexplaining differences in Internet cam-paigning across a wide variety of politicalsystems.

Guide to further reading

The growing importance of comparativeapproaches to online election campaign-ing can be gleaned from Foot et al.’schapter in this volume, as well as thelarger Internet and Elections Project(Kluver et al. (eds.), 2007).Good representatives of the normal-

ization approach include Davis (1999) andMargolis and Resnick (2000). The dis-tilled essence of Internet optimism can befound in Morris (1999) and Trippi (2004).Janda’s (1993) is an excellent overview

of the literature on comparative partysystems, while Eldersveld (1982) is theclassic statement of stratarchy in theUnited States. Ware (1996) is strong oncomparing party organization acrosscountries, from a British perspective.For an overview of online campaigning

in the United States and the UnitedKingdom see chapter seven in Chadwick(2006). Bimber and Davis (2003), Footand Schneider (2006), and Howard(2006) provide excellent detail and inter-estingly divergent perspectives on the U.S. case. Chadwick (2007) attempts totheorize the significance of the Deancampaign and put it in a wider context.For the U.K., which awaits a comparablebook-length study, see Ward (2005).


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