Negative campaigning and the logic of retaliation in multi-party competition

Author(s)
Martin Dolezal, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, Wolfgang Claudius Müller
Abstract

The extant literature has demonstrated that the logic of retaliation is a core feature of negative campaigning. Attacks by one side induce counterattacks by the other. Yet most research on the interactive nature of negative campaigning is limited to two-party competition and provides little theoretical justification for why political actors should respond to attacks with counterattacks. The present paper addresses these research gaps. We argue that the negativity bias in human information processing and the zero-sum nature of elections make retaliation a rational strategy. Importantly, these arguments also imply that retaliation may not be the only plausible response to attacks in multiparty systems. Rather, parties may prefer to react to attacks from one competitor by attacking another. To grasp empirically how being attacked and attacking are related, we conduct a highly disaggregated time series analysis of such instances while controlling for other factors that may influence actor behavior. Our analyses draw on several thousand party press releases issued during three national election campaigns in Austria, a typical European multiparty system. They show that retaliation is an important strategy also in multiparty politics. Yet in such context, parties do not exclusively follow a tit-for-tat approach but rather display more complex patterns of attack behavior.

Organisation(s)
Department of Government
Journal
International Journal of Press/Politics
Volume
21
Pages
253-272
No. of pages
20
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161215626566
Publication date
04-2016
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
508007 Communication science, 506014 Comparative politics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Communication, Sociology and Political Science
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/negative-campaigning-and-the-logic-of-retaliation-in-multiparty-competition(158535ac-b6d3-40aa-8699-baa67a951b75).html