Elite Perspectives on the Normativity of Election Campaigns: Empirical Political Theory and Adversarial Ethics

Elections are widely regarded as the central legitimising instrument of democratic authority. Yet election “campaigns” are often derided by theorists and the public at large as unsavoury affairs where normative standards are lowered relative to both politics more generally and conventional normative standards. We refer to this as the “reduced account” on the normativity of election campaigns. The reduced account sees campaigns as the political contest par excellence, where certain norms of behaviour become weakened compared to more institutionalised and cooperative political contexts. Tellingly, it is commonplace to hear campaigns analogised to a form of war, the most extreme form of adversarial context. Core democratic values like truth, civility and pluralism – essential to achieving democratic functions like political autonomy, accountability and peaceful conflict resolution – appear to be especially susceptible to violation amid the high stakes intensity of election campaigns. As politics becomes more polarised, and the stakes of losing thereby become higher, there is an increasing risk of tension between the conduct of electoral actors responsible for strategic campaign communications and the capacity of elections to legitimate political authority. However, the precise nature of the democratic risks that election campaigns may pose to democratic legitimacy remains under-theorised. In this paper, we approach the question from a bottom-up perspective, rooting ourselves in the tradition of empirical political theory. Specifically, we attempt to understand how key actors in the electoral process (candidates, campaign professionals and journalists) perceive the normativity of their electoral environment. Based on 250 interviews conducted in four countries – Germany, Italy, the UK and the US – we explore which democratic norms may be supported or undermined by campaign activities and in what ways this might take place. We aim to use this data for both diagnostic theory development (concerning the normative challenges that arise in campaigns) and prescriptive theorising (identifying the regulatory and non-regulatory ways in which threats to democratic norms can be softened in the electoral context).