Campaigns on the Cutting Edge / Edition 3

by Richard J. Semiatin

Overview

Campaigns on the Edge evaluates the current trends of today's campaigns and assesses the innovative changes that these well-tuned organizations are making on the presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial levels. This thoroughly updated Third Edition looks at the 2016 election and focuses on the growth of super PACs, the role of big data in campaigns, voter identification laws and their impact, and the ways in which technology increases the volume of information that campaigns use.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506316451
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Richard J. Semiatin, American University, Academic Director and Assistant Professor of Government, is a current faculty member of the Washington Semester Program where he has served for over 20 years. Semiatin specializes in campaigns and elections. He is also the author of Campaigns in the 21st Century (2005), five monographs on elections, one monograph on impeachment and trial, book chapters, and articles. He was selected by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to participate in its Political Engagement Project (PEP). He received his BA from Connecticut College and Ph D from American University.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

About the Editor xi

About the Contributors xiii

Part I The New Political Campaign

1 Introduction-Campaigns on the Cutting Edge Richard J. Semiatin 3

2 Fundraising-The New Rules Robert G. Boatright 11

3 Paid Media in Campaigns-Now and in the Future Tad Devine 27

4 Social and New Media-The Digital Present and Future Michael Turk 43

5 Survey Research and Campaigns-Getting to the Future Candice J. Nelson 61

6 Voter Mobilization-The Future Is Now Richard J. Semiatin 73

Part II The Evolving Campaign-Adaptation by Political Institutions and Groups

7 Political Parties-Reinvigorated Tari Renner 93

8 Interest Groups, Super PACs and Independent Expenditures Nina Therese Kasniunas Mark J. Rozell Charles N. W. Keckler 111

9 Campaign Press Coverage-Changed Forever Jeremy D. Mayer Richard I. Semiatin Joseph Graf 127

10 Campaign Finance-New Realities Beyond Citizens United Peter L. Francia Wesley Joe Clyde Wilcox 145

11 Voter Identification Laws-Necessary, Nefarious, or Neither? Jeffrey Crouch 165

12 Women and Campaigns-Generational-Based Microtargeting and Tackling Stereotypes Susan A. MacManus With The Assistance Of Ashley Intartaglia 177

13 Minority Candidates and the New Landscape of Campaigns in the Twenty-First Century Atiya Kai Stokes-Brown 195

14 Political Campaigns and Democracy Dick Simpson 213

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

The topics covered and the authors involved in Campaigns on the Cutting Edge are impressive. Semiatin has identified strong scholars to share their analyses of contemporary campaign strategy and the result is engaging and resonates with my students.”

Christopher P. Gilbert

Campaigns on the Cutting Edge is very engaging. Its chapters pose real and current questions that students can see unfolding around them in political news every day. It discusses those questions succinctly, with current examples, and avoids pretensions while making good use of the substance of available scholarship. Above all, the book’s voice is accessible, clear and punchy, with a healthy mix of respect and skepticism about the American political system.”

Ralph Begleiter

Most books about Congo's war focus, understandably, on the victims…Yet on their own, they do not allow us to make sense of this most confusing of wars. Enter Jason Stearns. One of Congo's most intrepid observers, he describes the war from the point of view of its perpetrators. He has tracked down and interviewed a rogue's gallery of them. The resulting book, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, is a tour de force, though not for the squeamish.
—The Washington Post

Robert Guest

…the best account so far: more serious than several recent macho-war-correspondent travelogues, and more lucid and accessible than its nearest competitor, Gérard Prunier's dense and overwhelming Africa's World War…The task facing anyone who tries to tell this whole story is formidable, but Stearns by and large rises to it. He has lived in the country, and has done a raft of interviews with people who witnessed what happened before he got there…on the whole his picture is clear, made painfully real by a series of close-up portraits.
—The New York Times

Adam Hochschild

I think that the contemporary nature of the book is definitely one of its major strengths. It picks up on modern issues and is sure to try and utilize relevant examples to illustrate it’s points. Unfortunately, the weakness is the brevity with which some of these issues are examined. New media, the internet, and the paid media really could use more depth and examples, as well as references to internet sources that illustrate points or are examples of the subjects examined. ONE of the major criticisms is that there is a lack of reference to websites that could provide additional data or even the campaign commercials that are discussed (opensecrets, youtube, votesmart, etc.)

Reviewer 2

Impressively controlled account of the devastating Congo war, which has caused more than 5 million deaths.

Stearns, who in 2008 led a special UN investigation regarding the region's violence, argues that the war "had no one cause, no clear conceptual essence that can be easily distilled in a couple of paragraphs." While he agrees that the 1994 Rwandan genocide provided the war's genesis, he argues that a less-understood factor was the experience of the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi group that emigrated to the Congo long before and suffered persecution ever since. The Congo was first invaded in 1996, when Laurent Kabila deposed Mobutu, but the wider war began in 1998, between disparate coalitions: Kabila's army and Hutu militias on one side, and the Rwandan military and their allies on another. "The war scuttled all plans for long-term reform and prompted quick fixes that only further debilitated the state," writes Stearns. The author illuminates the tangled relationships between Kabila, Rwandan Tutsi leader Paul Kagame and many other players as few journalists have. The book's greatest strength is the eyewitness dialogue; Stearns discusses his encounters with everyone from major military figures to residents of remote villages (he was occasionally suspected of being a CIA spy). He reveals the bravery and suffering of ordinary Africans, while underscoring "how deeply entrenched in society the Congolese crisis had become." As the chronology moves into the previous decade, his tale becomes increasingly complex and disturbing. Regional proxy wars involving rebel offshoots and tribal militia groups spun out of control, intensifying violence against civilians. Kabila was assassinated in 2001, possibly due to grudges held by angry child soldiers backed by Rwanda, and replaced by his son, who pursued a tenuous peace marred by continued economic stagnation and chaos. By that time, the belligerent nations "had over a dozen rebel proxies or allies battling each other."

An important examination of a social disaster that seems both politically complex and cruelly senseless.

Kirkus Reviews