This paper intends to contribute to the literature on negative campaigning and its effects on citizens' political engagement by suggesting, and attempting to address, the need for renewed theoretical and methodological foundations on which to base discussions of these issues. It is argued more specifically that the insufficient attention of the literature to issues of theory and methodology has led to a proliferation of studies with fragmented and contradictory results as to the impact of negative campaign strategies on individual behaviour and attitudes. This paper will argue for using post-deliberative theories of democracy as a foundation for the study of negative campaigning, theories that namely allow to locate such tactics in a wider understanding of political elites' strategies of representation and mobilization, and their effects on citizen political engagement. From a theoretical perspective, this paper also argues for a context-sensitive understanding of negative strategies of political communication, with a special attention to existing standards of political debate and pre-existing relations between citizens and elites. In line with this theoretical framework, this paper suggests using interpretative methods, and namely textual analysis, focus groups and participant observation, to compare the political uses of negativism in different national contexts. The possibilities offered by such a framework are exemplified through a comparative analysis of negative campaigning in France and Hungary, focusing specifically on the strategic uses made of political scandals in political discourse, and their possible effects on citizen engagement in these countries.
