| Abstract [eng] |
Negative campaigning is a long-known strategy in democratic elections that can be found even in the times of Roman Republic. As it often appears in modern politics, it came to interest of political scientists. The effectiveness of negative information and negative campaigning, its potential threats to democracy and why candidates decide to “go negative”. Those are some of the most important questions in this field. Polls generally show negative campaigning disliked by voters. Also, its advantages blur in multiparty systems (in comparison to two-party systems where zero-sum game principle can be applied). Despite all this, negative campaigning is used in Lithuanian election. It raises a question: what are the factors that even under these circumstances drive candidate decide to “go negative”. 2019 municipal election in Lithuania is a great case to study this question. It is an example of multiparty competition. And it is an opportunity to investigate less studied aspects of negative campaigning: the runoff stage as a potential factor, general theory’s applicability to the municipal level, Lithuania potential differences from other Western democracies. These research niches are approached by this work. The goal was to evaluate the level of negative tone in Lithuania’s municipal election and to identify the factors that drive candidates to use negative ads. Tasks were to define negative advertisement; overview main research on negative campaigning; identify factors in theoretical framework that could influence candidate to use negative ads in Lithuanian election and propose hypotheses; gather a dataset of political ads of 2019 Lithuania’s municipal election; apply quantitative analysis. These factors were hypothesized: H1: Candidates in the 2nd round should be more negative than in 1st round; H2: Opposition candidates should be more negative than those from the local ruling coalition; H3: Trailing candidates after the 1st round should be more negative than leading candidates; H4: Candidates should be more negative in higher than in lower competitiveness election; H5: Candidates should become more negative as it gets closer to the election; H6: Candidates with more financial resources should be more negative than those with less financial resources. Analysis shows Lithuania’s municipal elections to be generally positive. 23 percent of ad spots in print media contained at least 20 percent of negativity. 4 percent of ad spots were very negative. Therefore, Lithuania is another example of a multiparty system with low level of negative advertising. Similarly low level of negative ads founded in study in Denmark. In both cases the level is much lower than in the USA. Analysis clarified which factors influence the candidates on rare occasions of “going negative”. H2, H6 were confirmed. H4, H5 were rejected as those factors worked in the opposite way so alternative theory-based explanations were presented. H3 could not be confirmed, but this factor has potential for future research. H1 was rejected as highly inconclusive. The findings contribute by 1) showing a case of multiparty system with low level of negative advertising while identifying relevant factors driving negativity; 2) revealing that in municipal election decision to “go negative” can influenced slightly differently; 3) finding the level of negative tone in Lithuania’s municipal election, which can be primary evidence of negative tone level in national election. Future research could better 1) explain why candidates are not more negative in 2nd round; 2) reveal if opposition candidates “going negative” earlier is driven by incumbency advantage in Lithuanian municipal elections; 3) test if trailing is a driving factor of negativity with higher quality runoff dataset; 4) clarify the levels of negative tone and test other potential factors (that could not be tested) in national elections of Lithuania. |
