caa a22 4500 388028157 CHVBK 20180307124942.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199806 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/420241 doi S1049096500054160 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/420241 Thurber James A. American University The Study of Campaign Consultants: A Subfield in Search of Theory [Elektronische Daten] [James A. Thurber] The central theme of this PS symposium is that political consultants are important in politics, that they have an impact on campaigns and elections. This is not news to political consultants or candidates running for office. Candidates and consultants know they need each other and the rapid growth and diversification of the profession reveals that sense of interdependence (see Thurber 1995). Though professional political consulting outside of political party organizations has been around since the 1930s, it has only recently sparked interest among political scientists. Why have consultants been ignored by political scientists? Why have consultants ignored political scientists (see Thurber and Nelson 1995)? Why is there little or no theory related to political consultants? Why do we know so little about the profession of political consultants? What subfield houses the study of political consulting: elections and voting behavior, political parties, political communications, political advertising, campaign management? Political scientists have studied campaigns, elections, and political parties from a variety of views and methodologies, but few have focused on political consultants and their influence. Political campaigns are efforts to win elections to public office by informing the voters of a candidate's issue positions, by persuading the electorate to vote for a candidate, by activating partisans, and by mobilizing supporters. Election campaigns are combats over ideas and ways to persuade groups of voters to support those ideas. Studies have treated campaigns as symbolic events, as propaganda activities with the power to change voter preferences, and as a determinant variable in elections, but there is little consensus among political scientists about the role consultants play in campaigns. Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1998 PS: Political Science & Politics Cambridge University Press 31/2(1998-06), 145-149 1049-0965 31:2<145 1998 31 PSC https://doi.org/10.2307/420241 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/420241 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Thurber James A. American University NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- PS: Political Science & Politics Cambridge University Press 31/2(1998-06), 145-149 1049-0965 31:2<145 1998 31 PSC CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge