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Personality politics in Croatia: An inquiry into election campaigns, media coverage and public perception in the 2003 and 2007 parliamentary elections

ABSTRACT Drawing on the notion that politics has generally become more personalized in the last few decades with the trend being especially pronounced within - but not restricted to - established democracies, this study looked at the phenomenon of personality politics in the specific context of one new parliamentary democracy. The theoretical part of the study unfolded the concept of personalisation in order to stave off the usual misconceptions that stem from diverse interpretations of the term. Using two different methodologies - content analysis and public opinion survey – - the empirical part investigated personalisation in the parliamentary elections in Croatia in 2003 and 2007. The research conceptualised personalisation on three different levels embraced here by the term personality politics – as a party’ s electoral strategy, as the attention media devote to leaders and their personality traits in the election coverage and finally, as leaders’ ability to influence voters’ impressions and electoral choices. Investigation of the parties’ campaign ads and the newspaper reports revealed that the visibility of the leaders significantly increased from 2003 to 2007 hence substantiating the assumption that leaders increasingly represent the public face of the party. On the other hand, the findings only partly support the personalisation thesis in the sense of the increased attention media and party campaigns devoted to specific features of candidates’ personalities. In other words, parliamentary campaigns in Croatia in 2003 and 2007 were leader-centred without necessarily being personality-centred. Yet, individual traits that did come to the forefront of the newspaper reports and party campaigns remained mostly within the realm of the leaders’ political profiles while both the parties and the media remained all in all quite discreet about politicians’ private features. Investigation of voters’ perceptions revealed that voters are in principle increasingly inclined to cast a leader-based vote and that evaluation of the leaders in 2007 were not entirely conditioned by partisan preferences. Both these findings depart from conventional understanding of parliamentary elections. This study finally suggests that in the last two parliamentary elections in Croatia personalization had two faces. The first one is HDZ’ s personalization which is generally closer to the notion of “ presidentialization” . The second one refers to leaders’ attempts to familiarize with voters by appearing close to people, commonly by appearing in informal, every-day situations and only on very rare occasions, disclosing or emphasising some of their private traits. While the first face was heavily deployed by Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, the second face, truly introduced by SDP’ s Ivica Račan in 2003 was never fully exploited.

personality politics; personalisation; parliamentary elections; election campaigns; Croatia; Zoran Milanović; Ivica Račan; Ivo Sanader

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