Professionalization of political campaigning receives recently a lot of attention; however the research still lacks the comparative perspective. We propose a paper based on in-depth interviews conducted with strategists responsible for communication tactic within 68 political parties representing different political ideological positions, different sizes and importance within twelve European countries. Interviewees were asked about their understanding of professional campaigning. First we conclude that the theoretical assumptions of our research find confirmation within the empirical results; there is a visible division of indicators for those connected to organizational issue of political party and those concentrating on the external strategies used by parties to attract voters (strategic dimension). Secondly we try to determine the factors – on macro, meso level – that differentiate diverse communication approaches. Preliminary findings show that differences are rather bound to specificities of the country’s campaigning restrictions than to party, ideology or size differences.
