‘Dirty campaigning and political trust’

Jun 24, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor

In an open competitive liberal democratic environment, the struggle for national political office is usually fierce but is also considered an essential good and requirement. Internal democratic party elections are also considered a necessary good, but the battles tend to be less contentious since after the internal dust has settled the party will have to confront their opponents at the national level and a united front is necessary if it is to be optimally effective.

Indeed, dirty campaigning can lead to repercussions far beyond the intentions of those who have initiated it, usually for immediate political rewards. Therefore, from wherever they emanate, one needs to guard against extremes that would make it difficult for one to later make the strongest national representation. This is the case even where ethnic division is as strong as it is in Guyana and internal party quarrels are unlikely to have significant negative electoral effect at the national level.

Not too long ago, the leaderships of Guyana’s two largest national parties, the People’s National Congress (PNC) and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), claimed to be Marxist/Leninist and followed the democratic centralist tradition set by the Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, who banned the creation of factions and thus strong internal competitive democratic elections. But the fall of Soviet Marxism brought demands for greater intraparty democracy and the realisation that even where such parties are said to exist, they are usually captured by small groups of activists who perpetuate themselves in office. This so-called ‘iron law of oligarchy’ was first recognised by Robert Michels in 1911, and internal electoral primaries that are in essence factions struggling for office within organisations are one way of countering this oligarchic tendency.

The PPP has remained in the democratic centralist mold that requires what Lenin called ‘iron discipline’ on the part of its membership and in which a handful of oligarchs determine the fate of the general membership. However, since about 2011, the PNC has been experimenting with primary type ideology and arrangements in which campaigning for the important offices can become extremely questionable. This is precisely what is taking place as we count down to the biennial congress of the PNC that is due at the end of this month.

The present leader of the PNC, Mr. Aubrey Norton, who won the leadership contest at the end of 2021, has for some time been a controversial figure in the party and since his election to the leadership factional animosity has increased significantly. I am not concerned here with the wrongs and rights of the internal wranglings, personal and institutional accusations, most– not all – of which, in my view, go with the territory and should be applauded. Yet being relatively new to this kind of process, to prevent one from transgressing the limits of sensible behaviour, one should also try to appreciate a few of the appropriate characterisations and consequential dimensions of the campaign process.

A year or so ago, I came upon a paper by Franz Reiter and Jörg Matthes that considered national political campaigning in Austria, and if I interpret them correctly, it appears to me that although their focus was national elections, what they had to say could be useful if for no other reason than because the politicians impacted at the internal level are more likely to have already been national personalities. (https://www.tandfonline.com/).

Reiter and Matthes argue that campaigning for political office can be positive, negative or dirty and negative campaigning has wrongly been treated as a blanket term covering both positive and dirty campaigning, i.e. substantive criticism, character assassinations, pejorative language, spreading of false information, etc. They have conceptually separated dirty from negative and positive campaigning.

Negative campaign statements are said to be civil because criticisms are made in a constructive manner. On the other hand, dirty campaigning includes uncivil criticism, impoliteness, disrespect, defamation or unfair political methods. Dirty campaigning is usually socially rejected and perceived as unacceptable political behaviour, while negative campaigning is socially accepted and perceived as positive action. Positive campaigning involves statements in which political actors emphasise their own achievements, whereas negative campaigning encompasses civil criticisms. Positive and negative forms of campaign communication are perceived as acceptable social behaviour.

Reiter and Matthes further argue that substantial criticism as well as the stress on positive achievements are perceived as normal and to-be-expected behaviours during political campaigns. Also, in interpersonal communications, negative communication patterns are not automatically perceived as a violation of democratic norms. In other words, during times of elections, negative communication fits well with the nature of democratic campaigning in which parties usually praise themselves and criticise their opponents.

Importantly, they observed that political trust legitimizes representative politics in a democratic system and that dirty political campaigns cause people to lose their trust in politicians. Thus, dirty campaigning has the potential to undermine the legitimacy of democratic governance. This, they argue, can have important consequences: for instance, in times of crisis, citizens may be unwilling to support the proposed crisis handling methods because they consider political actions generally ineffective. Political trust is a fragile good that can be impaired by dirty campaigning.

Reiter and Matthes’ ‘key theoretical argument [is] that negative and dirty campaigning are two distinct concepts. Negative campaigning cannot serve as an umbrella term that subsumes dirty campaigning. … dirty campaigning is multi-faceted because it goes beyond the civility concept and encompasses the use of unfair campaign methods, such as techno-distortions, deepfakes, or voter suppression tactics. Thus, our findings show that dirty campaigning as a broader and multi-faceted concept has the potential to undermine trust in politicians.’

Particularly in our contentious ethnic/political environment where an autocratic government, multinationals, an aggressive neighbour, numerous carpetbaggers, etc. are taking advantage of the opportunities afforded them by our disassociation, one needs to guard against opportunistically using any small democratic opening to further undermine the liberal democratic process.

Regards
Dr. Henry Jeffrey

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• behaviour, Jörg Matthes, Leninis, Marxist, realisation, Robert Michels

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