The electoral campaign

di Serge Noiret
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 8 (2001), p. 7

This project was started in 1995 with the idea to define an ideal type, a model of a possible way to study historically electoral campaigns in different eras and geographical contexts. The instruments used in electoral campaigns are also presented in relation with the Italian case to describe better how to use the model. Each three section of the model are described. The electoral practices and instruments are made of four elements: propaganda materials; the oral activity; the financial needs of the campaign and the pressures and/or corruption on voters. Campaigns are made of four, sometimes five, different activities: the making of the electors? lists, the proclamation of candidates, the political activity during the campaign, the vote and after the vote, the legal recourses against the results of the polls. Finally, four factors are influencing the campaigns: the political system and his changes; the electoral system and all the practical rules used to express the vote; the constituencies and their geography and, finally, the understanding of the political culture defining the sense of the vote itself.