In recent decades, political actors of all sort--parties and candidates, governments and other political institutions, interest groups and social movements--have increasingly come to view political campaigning as an essential supplement to their engagement in the process of policy-making. By investing ever more efforts and resources into political campaigns, they seek to mobilize support among the mass public, to persuade citizens of their causses, and to inform the citizenry about public policies and political procedures.
This book, in brining together some of the leading international schoalrs on electoral behavior and communication studies, provides the first ever stock-take of hte state of this sub-discipline. The individual chapters present the most recent studeis on campaign effects in North American, Europe and Australia. As a whole, the book provides a cross-national assessment of the theme of political campaigns and their consequences.