Kai Hildebrandt

Can the strategy of negative political advertising developed in the United States succeed in Canada, or does this kind of advertising do more harm than good? The year 1988 saw elections in both the United States and Canada. It also saw a turning point in the tenor of television campaign advertising. By the early 1990s there was a growing reliance upon negative political images and symbols. This book is about that growing reliance. While focusing on the use of “attack” ads, Television Advertising in Canadian Elections provides a historical overview of the growth of negative advertising. It includes a discussion of advertisers’ intentions and strategies, an analysis of the ads played on both English language and French television and their impact and the ethics of political advertising. This is the first book-length investigation of negative political advertising in Canada. Professional politicians, as well as anyone interested in election politics, journalism, communication studies or advertising, will find this an absorbing study.

The Attack Mode, 1993

Television Advertising in Canadian Elections

Russell J. Dalton

Research Professor of Political Science Russell J Dalton

Kendall L. Baker

A new Germany has come of age, as democratic, sophisticated, affluent, and modern as any other western nation. This remarkable transition in little more than a generation is the central theme of Germany Transformed. Here all the old stereotypes and conclusions are challenged and new research is marshalled to provide a model for an advanced democratic republic. Kendall Baker, Russell Dalton, and Kai Hildebrandt, working with massive national election returns from 1953 onward, explain the Old Politics of the postwar period, which was based on the "economic miracle" and the security needs of West Germany, and the shift in the past decade to the New Politics, which emphasizes affluence, leisure, the quality of life, and international accommodation. But more than elections are examined. Rather, the authors delineate the transvaluation of the German civic culture as democracy became embedded in the nation's institutions, political ways, party structures, and citizen interest in governance. By the 1970s the quiescent German of Prussia, the Empire, and the 1930s had become the active and aware democratic westerner. This is among the most important books about West Germany written since the late 1950s, when the nation, devastated by war and rebuilding its economy and political life, was still struggling with the possibilities of democracy. It is a political history, recounted in enormous detail and with methodological precision, that will change perceptions about Germany and align them with realities. Germany is now an integrated part of a democratic western community of nations, and an understanding of its true condition not only illuminates better the staunch European identity but also is bound to have an impact on American policy.

Kai Hildebrandt

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