Miloš Gregor and Otto Eibl – Professionalization and Democratic Backsliding? Political Campaigning in Central and Eastern Europe

Introduction

Over three decades have passed since the fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Alongside these events, as part of a third wave of global democratization (Huntington 1993), free elections appeared after decades under non-democratic regimes wherein elections were just a façade and did not constitute the free choice of political representation. Free elections brought the need to attract voters through election campaigns. While these campaigns and political marketing already had a long tradition in Western democracies and were both a developed political discipline and a lucrative business, the emerging or renewed democracies were inexperienced in this field. Nevertheless, races involving political marketing began, and this gap was soon closed as electoral campaigns in CEE began to resemble those of Western democracies.An eagerness for newly acquired freedom and a significant level of amateurism characterized the campaigns at the beginning of the 1990s. However, by the beginning of the twenty-first cen-tury, this was rather the opposite (Eibl and Gregor 2019). Most political parties operating in the region became quickly accustomed to the new approach to politics and a broad range of political marketing tools and techniques. Campaign materials are now predominantly professionally designed; parties organize media stunts to attract media attention; candidates are trained in rhet-oric and, generally, on appearing in public; and campaign strategies have become less intuitive and more data-based. In other words, over the last 15–20 years, we have witnessed relatively rapid campaign management and communication professionalization.