Politics from the Backstage

Reviewed: Daniel Laurison, Producing Politics: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Priviledged Few Shape Politics for All of Us, Beacon Press

How are presidential campaigns run in the United States? In an era of rapidly changing modes of communication and incessant campaigning of all kinds, one might be curious to know more about the ways in which U.S. presidential races have been run by the politicos who set the stage for the rest of the electorate. Daniel Laurison, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Swarthmore College who studies political engagement and inequality, has entered the room where it all happens. In a compelling book targeting a general (non-academic) audience, Laurison provides a very detailed and engaging description of the ways in which politicos work as cultural entrepreneurs and intermediaries between the candidate and the electorate during U.S. presidential races. In the span of six well-crafted chapters, he shows that political campaigns at the presidential level might not be what we think they are: instead of connecting voters to the political sphere, they tend to have the opposite effect of turning them away from politics. More specifically, Laurison argues,

Today’s campaigns, with few exceptions…, are not in the business of organizing people nor of otherwise connecting disengaged voters to politics. Their focus on one-way messages, prioritization of existing voters over new or occasional ones, and negative advertising—combined with their practitioners’ distance from everyday people—actually turn many people off from politics (p. 142).

Given the substantial effects that political campaigns can have, and the critical role that political operatives play in them, this systematic study of politicos is a most welcome addition to the study of political actors and their associated behaviors. Not just academics but the general public as well ought to know more about this long-overlooked category of political agents. In Laurison’s view, they should do so by going beyond the framework of rational choice theory. Political operatives are not necessarily the utility-maximizing masterminds crafting political strategies like political machines would. They, too, are human who are subject to the social expectations of their fields and the conventional wisdom that dominate the ground.

What Happens Inside?

Introducing the way that he himself entered the world of politics and political campaigns, Laurison starts by delineating the demographics and trajectories political operatives take. Looking at the race, gender, education, and social class of the politicos he interacted with, he tells us in great depth who desires and gets to work in politics at the national level (p. 39). He then carefully describes what it takes to get in and how politicos navigate the political arena. Overcoming the issues of data accessibility that scholars had to face when studying presidential elections, Laurison successfully unveils what he refers to as “the hidden world of campaigns” (p. 54).

Along with an elaborate description of campaign departments and more formal structures of political campaigns, he describes what he has found to be conventional wisdom for politicos working in presidential races (p.121), what is considered to be “cookie-cutter” campaigning (p. 118), or what it takes to do microtargeting or predictive analytics (p. 121). He interviewed a total of seventy-two people (some of them twice), who respectively took on different roles in presidential campaigns including campaign managers, field directors, etc. Collectively, they have acted as the producers of U.S. politics.

One particularly interesting aspect of the inner workings of political campaigns that Laurison points out (and one that could potentially spark a much longer scholarly debate) is a seeming lack of fundamental shift in the ways that campaigns work—despite the rise of new media and technological advancements we have witnessed in recent years: “Why hasn’t the new media and technological landscape transformed politics into an entirely new beast?” he asks (p. 101). “[T]he people who produce politics haven’t changed much” is the answer he provides (p.101).

While agreeing to the basic premise that the overall structure of presidential campaigns have remained more or less the same, the more widespread adoption of algorithm-based practices in recent years seems to have now triggered a generational shift of their respective operatives—even in the political arena. Indeed, the inner workings of presidential campaigns might not have changed much back then; they are much more drastically changing now (see the section “What Happens Next?” below for more details).

What Happens Elsewhere?

Prior to discussion how the time variable is bending some of Laurison’s findings, however, it would be important to consider the spatial variations of the patterns he finds at the time of his study. In the scope of this first systematic analysis of the work of politicos, Laurison has effectively zoomed into the inner working of political elections in the United States. However, the portability and/or applicability of Laurison’s findings across different contexts needs to be further investigated. For instance, the French readers, or their European neighbors, might find asking themselves to what extent this can be applicable, or even relevant, across the pond. Do politicos in other countries like France play the same type of roles that their American counterparts get to serve? Do their effects on campaigns and elections resemble one another? To what extent to their network with one another cross-nationally? [1] Are political operatives around the world adopting the same type of strategies—given that social media and the digital space is not bound by national boundaries? If so, are algorithm-based practices leading to the convergence of organizational and cultural practices? [2]

In light of these lingering questions, a cross-Atlantic comparison of the ways in which American and French cases differ or resemble one another might be intellectual stimulating and enriching. It would be reasonable to expect that similar patterns of shying away from politics as a result of the ways in which political campaigns are run are found in other countries. (Voting patterns and levels of abstention could also speak to these trends.) Nonetheless, the country-level variations that we see in terms of political campaigning and political culture, as a function of the work performed by political operatives among other factors, need to be further examined.

What Happens Next?

Laurison concludes his book by asking some fundamental questions about the representativeness of the democratic system. It also offers some important insights on the overall health and well-being of American democracy, especially in light of the high levels of inequality we face today. Yet, it remains quite shy in its theoretical and empirical engagements with the spread of misinformation, the crisis of expertise, and the more widespread use of algorithm-based practices. Some of the observations the he makes about the transformations—or lack thereof—brought by technological advancements do not seem to reflect the most recent trends in campaign data analytics. Most of the interviews used for this book were collected in 2009-10 and 2017, with some phone and Zoom interviews conducted in 2021 (p. xviii). While they are able to insightfully capture the rise of social media and the early stages of social media use in political campaigns, the data used by Laurison in this volume is rather limited in analyzing the more widespread and recent uses of digital tools, especially during the 2020 U.S. electoral cycle or even the upcoming 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. Expanding on Laurison’s groundbreaking work on political campaigns in the 2010s, one ought to ask not just how presidential campaigns are run, but how they are run in today’s digital age.

The 2024 U.S. Presidential Election will be the first electoral cycle in which generative AI, such as ChatGPT, is widely available (see https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-impact-of-generative-ai-in-a-global-election-year/ for additional information about generative AI). Given the fast-paced changes of social media and digital platforms, we are already left with the crucial question: what is happing now and what happens next? As such, it would be historically important to document and examine the changes that algorithm-based practices have brought to the political sphere in more recent years. How are the ways in which political campaigns are run evolving with the widespread adoption of AI and algorithm-based practices around the world? How are they affecting the expectations that we have for our political leaders? How do they transform the collective imaginaries have been used to thus far? Given the transformative nature of algorithm-based practices, the changes to campaign practices brought by AI and the ways we all collective engage in politics ought to be analyzed from both the supply-side (politicians, political operatives, etc.) and the demand-side (voters’ expectations, demands, etc.) of electoral politics. Micro- (individual), meso- (group), and macro- (state) level analyses of these critical shifts are more needed than ever.