Professionalization

During the past 10 to 15 years, professionalization has become a catchword for characterizing recent developments in electoral campaigning. The term, however, refers to a concept that was originally developed in the sociology of labor and professions. Professionalization stands for the process through which occupations become professionalized. This process passes through certain stages from specialization, academization, the founding of professional organizations, the introduction of licensing or some other kind of certification, and the development of professional standards. Wilensky emphasizes the relevance of autonomous expertise and the service ideal. Among the classical professions are doctors and lawyers.

When the term was introduced to characterize modern election campaigning, not much was retained from the sociological concept. Instead, professionalization was often used to describe U.S. campaigns and to declare them the model for modern electioneering. However, when Maggie Scammell studied U.S. campaigning at the end of the 1990s, she applied the sociological professionalization criteria (control over entry, self-regulating code of conduct, definable bodies of knowledge, training and certification by recognizable standards, full-time employment, formal organization). She found that while professionalization was often treated as the hallmark of Americanstyle modern campaigning, professionalization is problematic even in the United States. She discovered only some emerging signs of professionalization (as the growth of a common identity, specialist knowledge, the development of a specialist education, and the establishment of a code of conduct) but nevertheless ascertained that the campaign business was predominantly influenced by folk wisdom. She finally [Page 657]concluded that political consultancy in the United States was characterized more by commercialism than professionalism.

More often, the term has been used in a simple, one-dimensional sense, where professionalization became equated with the trend of giving the organization of election campaigns into the hands of consultants. In this sense, professionalization mostly stands for the alleged worldwide adaptation of campaigns to the U.S. model of electioneering, and thus was also used as a synonym for Americanization.

However, this shift of campaign organization from parties and candidates to experts in the marketing business implies the application of certain strategies and techniques and thus a new perspective on politics and how it is “sold” to citizens and the media. In this broader sense, professionalization can be understood as an adaptation to recent changes in society, in the political system, and in the media system. These changes have been influenced by the modernization of society. In short, this describes an individualization process that has brought about a decreasing influence of once-powerful social structure variables. These no longer prescribe individual behavior in a binding way. Without these guidelines, individuals have gained new liberties that often come along with new uncertainties.

The changes in society also had consequences for the political system and for political communication. The traditional models of voter behavior were more or less built on social structure variables and were conceived of as being rather stable. Parties and politicians knew who their voters were and how they should be addressed. During the past decades, these ties between parties and their voters have been weakening in most Western democracies, a process that has also been called “dealignment.” At the same time, the mass media, and television in particular, have gained importance for the communication process between political actors and the electorate. The increasing relevance of economic factors in television markets led to commercialization, which has had consequences for the way politics is presented to the audience.

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