Dolezal Martin, Ennser-Jedenastik Laurenz, Müller Wolfgang C
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Int J Press Polit. 2016 Apr;21(2):253-272. doi: 10.1177/1940161215626566. Epub 2016 Jan 29.
The extant literature has demonstrated that the is a core feature of negative campaigning. Attacks by one side induce counterattacks by the other. Yet most research on the interactive nature of negative campaigning is limited to two-party competition and provides little theoretical justification for why political actors should respond to attacks with counterattacks. The present paper addresses these research gaps. We argue that the negativity bias in human information processing and the zero-sum nature of elections make retaliation a rational strategy. Importantly, these arguments also imply that retaliation may not be the only plausible response to attacks in multiparty systems. Rather, parties may prefer to react to attacks from one competitor by attacking another. To grasp empirically how being attacked and attacking are related, we conduct a highly disaggregated time series analysis of such instances while controlling for other factors that may influence actor behavior. Our analyses draw on several thousand party press releases issued during three national election campaigns in Austria, a typical European multiparty system. They show that retaliation is an important strategy also in multiparty politics. Yet in such context, parties do not exclusively follow a tit-for-tat approach but rather display more complex patterns of attack behavior.
现有文献表明， 是负面竞选的一个核心特征。一方的攻击会引发另一方的反击。然而，大多数关于负面竞选互动性质的研究仅限于两党竞争，几乎没有从理论上解释为什么政治行为体应该以反击来回应攻击。本文弥补了这些研究空白。我们认为，人类信息处理中的负面偏见以及选举的零和性质使报复成为一种理性策略。重要的是，这些观点还意味着在多党制中，报复可能不是对攻击的唯一合理回应。相反，政党可能更倾向于通过攻击另一个竞争对手来回应来自一个竞争对手的攻击。为了从实证角度理解被攻击与攻击之间的关系，我们在控制可能影响行为体行为的其他因素的同时，对这些情况进行了高度细分的时间序列分析。我们的分析借鉴了奥地利三次全国选举活动期间发布的数千份政党新闻稿，奥地利是典型的欧洲多党制国家。分析表明，报复在多党政治中也是一项重要策略。然而，在这种背景下，政党并非完全采取针锋相对的方式，而是表现出更复杂的攻击行为模式。
