Global electioneering; campaign consulting, communications, and corporate financing

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2005

JK2281

2004-026495

0-7425-2692-5

Global electioneering; campaign consulting, communications, and corporate financing.

Sussman, Gerald. (Critical media studies; institutions, politics, and culture)

Rowman & Littlefield, [c]2005

263 p.

$27.95 (pa)

Focusing on political campaign consultants as the "stewards" of US and electoral politics--consultants doing the bidding of "the transnational corporate sector, their political action committees, lobbyists, and various allies in political life, and very wealthy individuals, who materially and politically have the most to gain and to lose from the electoral outcomes--Sussman (politics and communication, Portland State U.) analyzes the impact of transnational capitalism and hyperindustrialism (the extension of industrial principles and practices into more and more spaces of life) on American elections and the impact of that on other countries' electoral politics. Rejecting the idea that the "professionalization of elections" is a normal outgrowth of modernization that serves the interests of a democratic republic, he argues along the lines of an "investment theory" of politics, contending that today's political campaigns, with corporations financially investing in the campaign process, are intended to manufacture public consent within a narrow range of options, resulting in a "low-intensity democracy."