Going Dirty: Negative Campaigning in Elections and Referenda and its Effects on Citizens’ Attitudes and Behaviour

Negative campaigning has recently been granted special attention in the literature. First of all, studies describing and explaining parties’ use of negative campaigning, both in U.S. and in other countries. Nevertheless, comparative work is still needed for a less U.S. oriented theory on the use and characteristics of negative campaigning. Second, studies examining the effects of negative campaigning on vote choice, turnout, quality of information and political trust; this second strand fails to find a consensual position on the overall effects of negativism. More specifically, two distinct theoretical traditions appear in the literature, the first defending a negative effect both on individual behavior and the political system, the second highlighting a globally positive effect of negativism where, through a "stimulation effect", offensive discourse enhances the saliency of the issue. The aim of the workshop is hence to provide new insights on 1) the use of negative campaigning in comparative perspective, and 2) how negative campaigning affects political behavior. In this sense, the workshop welcomes papers that theoretically or empirically contribute to a more general theory on negative campaigning and works that provide empirical evidences on negativism's effects on individual behavior, and especially innovative insights on the underlying causality supporting those effects.