Is all politics local? Determinants of local and national election campaigns

• Main Author: FOX, Colm A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: Thailand; political parties; electoral systems; election campaigns; election posters; Asian Studies; International Relations; Political Theory; Social Influence and Political Communication
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2707; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3964/viewcontent/is_all_politics_local.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In recent decades election campaigns have shifted their focus from the local to the national level, increasingly featuring party leaders, labels, and national platforms. Despite this trend, there remains significant variation in the local/national orientation of campaigns across countries and parties. This article tests several propositions on why campaigns adopt a local or national orientation by analyzing a unique collection of more than 12,000 geocoded Thai election posters. Specialized software was used to measure the spatial proportions of visual and textual content on each poster. Using Thailand’s mixed electoral system to enable a controlled comparison of electoral rules, I demonstrate that proportional rules were associated with national campaign strategies whereas majoritarian rules fostered local strategies. In addition, large parties ran party-centered, policy-focused campaigns whereas small parties relied more on their leader’s image. This contrasts with Western countries, where large parties increasingly promote their leader’s image and small parties emphasize narrower policy objectives.