Call for Special Issue

The United States Presidential Election 2012
Perspectives from Election Studies, Political and Communication Sciences

Edited by Christoph Bieber & Klaus Kamps

With Barack Obama and Mitt Romney engaged in a tight race for the White House, the 2012 US Presidential Election will offer a broad range of starting-points for academic scrutiny. Especially, the use of media (old and new) will be crucial for the candidates, as well as for the public perception of the political system as a whole. The role of the US in international politics, an enduring global economic crisis, a struggling European Union, and the emergence of a set of new players on the global political stage provide the context for various analyses from different perspectives in the Social Sciences. In the US, the polarized party system with some new undercurrents (Tea Party Patriots, Occupy Movement), the advent of the SuperPACs, and the rise of social media have significantly changed the foundations for political campaigning.
The book will examine the complex aspects of the US presidential election, reflecting it as a multi-faceted communication process in the context of current societal conditions. Within the German-speaking social sciences, some monographs are concerned with e.g. the electoral system or electoral demographics in the US, but there is no integrated approach combining the resources and methods from different disciplines. This collection promises a comprehensive approach and provides additional perspectives for further (e.g. comparative) research.
The book will be published by Springer VS in the summer of 2013, editors are Christoph Bieber (University of Duisburg-Essen / Germany) & Klaus Kamps (University of Erfurt / Germany); papers may be written (and will be published) in English or German.
To give a few examples of what individual chapters might include:

Basics, for example:
- Recent Trends in Presidential Elections
- Recent Trends in US-political Culture
- Role and Function of Midterm Elections
- Lobbying and Campaign Financing
- Reform of Campaign Finance: “Citizens United” and the Rise of SuperPACs
- Third parties? Tea Party, Organizing for America, #Occupy
- Early Voting, Electronic Voting and Other Ways of Modernizing the Electoral Process

Election studies, for example:
- Election Outcome and Electoral Behavior
- Sociology of Electoral Behavior from a Historical Perspective
- Dynamics of Electoral Agendas

Studies on the protagonists and communicative strategies, for example
- Campaign Strategies, Dynamics of Campaign Communication
- Campaign Events (e.g. Conventions, Debates)
- Perception of Campaigns
- Innovations in Campaigning
- Elections and Transparency (e.g. OpenSecrets, Sunlight Foundation)
- Campaign Coverage

Governmental studies, for example:
- Transition: From Election Day to Inauguration
- The Rhetoric Presidency / The Presidential Party

Contributions may address one or more of these aspects and may be delivered in German as well as in English (APA6 style).
Subject to funding, a symposium of authors will be held in Duisburg in February 2013, where authors will be invited to discuss their chapters.

Deadlines:
Deadline for EXTENDED ABSTRACTS (max. 1,500 words) is October 15th, 2012.
Deadline for contributions to the symposium of authors (about 5,000 words) is January 31st, 2013.
Deadline for the first version of the FINAL MANUSCRIPT is April 15th, 2013.
Deadline for the last version of the FINAL MANUSCRIPT is May 15th, 2013.

Please send your proposals to:
christoph.bieber@uni-due.de
klaus.kamps@uni-erfurt.de