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Producing Politics: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Privileged Few Shape Politics for All of Us
The first book to uncover the hidden and powerful role campaign professionals play in shaping American democracy by delving into the exclusive world of politicos through off-the-record interviews
We may think we know our politicians, but we know very little about the people who create them. Producing Politics will change the way we think about our country's political candidates, the campaigns that bolster them, and the people who craft them.
Political campaigns are designed to influence voter behavior and determine elections. They are supposed to serve as a conduit between candidates and voters: politicos get to know communities, communicate their concerns to candidates, and encourage individuals to vote. However, sociologist Daniel Laurison reveals a much different reality: campaigns are riddled with outdated strategies, unquestioned conventional wisdom, and preconceived notions about voters that are more reflective of campaign professionals' implicit bias than the real lives and motivations of Americans.
Through over 70 off-the-record interviews with key campaign staff and consultants, Laurison uncovers how the industry creates a political environment that is confusing, polarizing, and alienating to voters. Campaigns are often an echo chamber of staffers with replicate backgrounds and ideologies; most political operatives are white men from middle- to upper-class backgrounds who are driven more by their desire to climb the political ladder than the desire to create an open conversation between voter and candidate.
Producing Politics highlights the impact of national campaign professionals in the US through a sociological lens. It explores the role political operatives play in shaping the way that voters understand political candidates, participate in elections, and perceive our democratic process--and is an essential guide to understanding the current American political system.
We may think we know our politicians, but we know very little about the people who create them. Producing Politics will change the way we think about our country's political candidates, the campaigns that bolster them, and the people who craft them.
Political campaigns are designed to influence voter behavior and determine elections. They are supposed to serve as a conduit between candidates and voters: politicos get to know communities, communicate their concerns to candidates, and encourage individuals to vote. However, sociologist Daniel Laurison reveals a much different reality: campaigns are riddled with outdated strategies, unquestioned conventional wisdom, and preconceived notions about voters that are more reflective of campaign professionals' implicit bias than the real lives and motivations of Americans.
Through over 70 off-the-record interviews with key campaign staff and consultants, Laurison uncovers how the industry creates a political environment that is confusing, polarizing, and alienating to voters. Campaigns are often an echo chamber of staffers with replicate backgrounds and ideologies; most political operatives are white men from middle- to upper-class backgrounds who are driven more by their desire to climb the political ladder than the desire to create an open conversation between voter and candidate.
Producing Politics highlights the impact of national campaign professionals in the US through a sociological lens. It explores the role political operatives play in shaping the way that voters understand political candidates, participate in elections, and perceive our democratic process--and is an essential guide to understanding the current American political system.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
224 pages, Hardcover
Published June 14, 2022
5 people are currently reading
1375 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 2, 2022
Delightfully damning of political campaign professionals, using their own testimony about a business that mostly operates by gut decision and tradition and is actually shaped by a desire for status, ie, "to be in the room where it happens." Read my full review here: https://theconnector.substack.com/p/w...
July 17, 2022
Like Joe said in his review, this book confirms my instinct that the hidden part of electoral politics hasn’t been modernized to represent US demographics. Laurison is smart but highly accessible, good-natured, and concise. Reminds me of Eli Pariser’s 2012 book The Filter Bubble, which established with research-based arguments that search engines and resulting targeted info lead us to consume and validate our own thoughts. Laurison’s research and analysis establish that our party political systems replicate and validate themselves outside public view. Not surprisingly, this results in electoral politics being handled by elite-educated white men out of proportion from their presence in the population. At this point in history, race/class/gender diversity should be an obvious step one in democratizing democracy, but party campaigns are behind — and this costs us the votes that would democratize elections themselves.
Want to read
July 3, 2022Something that my friends and I suspected but didn't know for sure. Truly informative and easy to read. Highly recommended. When done we I will donate it to a lending library for the needy. Thank you - a great prize!
September 6, 2022
Slow start. Inexperienced in politics. Not insightful. As someone who finds campaigns regularly accessible at the state level, and sometimes federal, perhaps I am not his target audience.
Disappointed that — tho this is an up to the minute book in date (2022) — author’s observations on minority involvement in GOP is increasingly out of date. We will see how the shifts continue.
But essentially the majority minority theory of the Democrat party seems wrong, and unlikely to pay off as Dems expected. The forsaking of traditional American liberalism for far left progressivism (progressing away from trad liberalism, and toward more radical leftist goals) is a turn off for many traditional factions of the Dem party. The Republican Party is welcoming working class folks of all parties. There are many more demographic developments — some of them surprising — worth considering. But the author never lets anything get in the way of his narrative.
Unfortunate. Now a conservative, tho raised in a family of generational Democrats, I look forward to reading thoughtful insightful books with diverse points of view, well supported by the evidence. This book did not hit that mark.
The book does invite individuals like-minded with the author to get involved in politics. And I suppose that may be its strength.
Disappointed that — tho this is an up to the minute book in date (2022) — author’s observations on minority involvement in GOP is increasingly out of date. We will see how the shifts continue.
But essentially the majority minority theory of the Democrat party seems wrong, and unlikely to pay off as Dems expected. The forsaking of traditional American liberalism for far left progressivism (progressing away from trad liberalism, and toward more radical leftist goals) is a turn off for many traditional factions of the Dem party. The Republican Party is welcoming working class folks of all parties. There are many more demographic developments — some of them surprising — worth considering. But the author never lets anything get in the way of his narrative.
Unfortunate. Now a conservative, tho raised in a family of generational Democrats, I look forward to reading thoughtful insightful books with diverse points of view, well supported by the evidence. This book did not hit that mark.
The book does invite individuals like-minded with the author to get involved in politics. And I suppose that may be its strength.
September 21, 2023
"The less people vote, the happier I am, right? ' Cause the smaller the voter pool, the less votes you need, the easier it is to figure out the math."
Having rated Laurison's previous co-authored book (The Class Ceiling) very highly, I enjoyed reading this well-researched examination of the work of professional politics campaigning in the US.
It's another exclusive world open largely to a well-connected few, and once people are inside of it there's a lot of credit being taken when an electoral tide comes is, with little accountability or reflection when it inevitably goes back out. As the author says, "the most important audience for a campaign's output may be other politicos rather than voters" in order to secure future work in an inherently conservative industry which seeks largely to use "activation" rather than "mobilization" strategies in order to turn out just enough of the "right people" to secure a victory.
Electoral politics is a game played by elites, and the author has great academic expertise on this topic as he opines that "how and whether politics solves or exacerbates problems has a lot to do with how politics is produced". And if you're wondering about that, then (as Bill Hicks used to say) I recommend you taking a look around the world we're living in.
July 4, 2022
Why can’t this book be neutral? Why can’t you give honest examples? Are you not part of the issue then?
Here’s the problem with this book you lie on the first page!!!!! On page 1 (yes that early) you state quotes to Trump that have turned out to be untrue. Instead of saying ‘see we manipulated the media to say this instead of that.’ Nope. Instead, the false quote is taken as being true. Again we get an anti-Trump book.
Here’s the thing. If you already push falsehoods on page 1 then how can I take the rest of this book seriously?
https://theworldisabookandiamitsreade...
Here’s the problem with this book you lie on the first page!!!!! On page 1 (yes that early) you state quotes to Trump that have turned out to be untrue. Instead of saying ‘see we manipulated the media to say this instead of that.’ Nope. Instead, the false quote is taken as being true. Again we get an anti-Trump book.
Here’s the thing. If you already push falsehoods on page 1 then how can I take the rest of this book seriously?
https://theworldisabookandiamitsreade...
September 30, 2024
Read for Political Sociology...nothing groundbreaking and a lot of repetition but he gets the point across
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews