Introduction to the special issue: informality matters. Perspectives for studies on political communication.

Kamps, Klaus

1 Introduction

Social sciences describing modern (western) democracies often refer to "media democracy" (e.g., Baugut and Grundler 2009; Blumler and Gurevitch 1995; Marcinkowski and Pfetsch 2009; Sarcinelli 2013) or "mediatization" (e.g., Marcinkowski 2005; Meyen 2009; Reinemann 2010; Schrott and Spranger 2007), accentuating a possible impact of a mass media 'logic' and mass media communication on political processes, on actors, organizations and institutions. After a period of theoretical discussions which were focused on the macro-level and the question whether 'the' media 'dominate' the political system or vice versa (e.g. Schatz, Rossler, Nieland 2002), today a growing number of analyses concentrate on empirical findings regarding the concrete influence mass media might exert e.g. on strategic actors, voting behavior, the political culture or political participation, attitudes and more (cf. Koch-Baumgarten and Voltmer 2009: 299; Marcinkowski and Pfetsch 2009). Relatively speaking, such studies frequently arise in communication sciences while political science appears to be far more interested in the media's impact on political structure, the transformation of political organizations and institutions (e.g., Habermas 2006; Benz 1998; Schrott and Spranger 2007; Winter and Willems 2007).

Particularly in analyses of policies and the political decision-making process, approaches dominate which concentrate on associations and the influence of political structures and institutions (Blum and Schubert 2009; Schneider and Janning 2006; Schubert 1991; Sebaldt and StraBner 2004). 'The Media' often serve as a basic condition, a fundamental--and normatively postulated (e.g., Habermas 2006)--reference for a generalized 'public' (cf. Kamps, Horn and Wicke 2013: 276; Kamps et al. in this issue). On the one side, communication per se is treated as a conditio sine qua non and only rarely and marginally seen as an influential factor of variance within the policy process (cf. Schneider and Janning 2006: 187-194). On the other side, political settings such as 'informal government' or 'informal governance'--involving public and private actors beyond constitutional boundaries such as the parliamentarian 'sphere' (Benz 2004; Sarcinelli and Tenscher 2000)--may be regarded as specific challenges and chances for strategic modes of communication of political actors beyond 'permanent campaigning' and the communicative appeal to voters or other target audiences (see Baugut and Reinemann in this issue; Jentges et al. 2012). Thus, in recent years scholars have devoted more effort to communicative and medial influences on political actors (e.g. Kepplinger 2007) and in policy-finding and decision-making processes (Baugut and Grundler 2009; Isenberg 2007; Jarren, Lachenmeister and Steiner 2007; Kamps 2012; Kamps, Horn and Wicke 2013; Koch-Baumgarten 2010; Koch-Baumgarten and Mez 2007a; Koch-Baumgarten and Voltmer 2009, 2010; Lesmeister 2006; Vowe 2007).

This introductory paper aims to relate a) informality grounded in political science, especially governance and neo-institutionalism (e.g. Benz 1998; Brie and Stolting 2012; Dose 2013; North 1990; March and Olson 1989), with b) informal communication in policy analysis (e.g. Koch-Baumgarten and Voltmer 2009, Voltmer and Koch-Baumgarten 2010). It will--briefly--discuss perspectives by introducing the studies of this issue. Section 2 will outline the main approaches, assumptions and dimensions of informality in governmental and governance studies. Section 3, then, addresses approaches towards communication in policy studies. Finally, section 4 introduces the contributions to this issue via a heuristic of analytical dimensions of informal political communication.

2 Informality, government and governance

'Informality' as a basic concept in jurisprudence primarily differentiates between such norms that are fixed in a written law or constitution and non-fixed rules as vital parts of the legal practice (cf. Gorlitz and Burth 1998), e.g. because the wording of a law (especially constitutional law) is overly general and recquires clarification (cf. Mayntz 1998: 55). Social sciences use the term in a similar way, but 'formal' is not solely restricted to written norms but also to norms formulated by an actor, instance or organization explicitly empowered to do so. Basically two categories contextualize formality/informality: 1) relationships such as networks (framework) and 2) action and behavior (process) (cf. Mayntz 1998: 56; Grunden 2013: 223). Christiansen and Neuhold (2012b: 4) point to a third category: the classification of an outcome of such processes as 'informal'. As a working definition, then, we refer to an often cited suggestion of Helmke and Levitsky (2004), based on institutionalism, who in a broad sense propose to understand "informal institutions as socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated and enforced outside the officially sanctioned channel" (ibid.: 727; for a detailed discussion see Isenberg 2007: 22-30).

Political science, subsequently, refers to informality when a) in decision-finding and decision-making processes such configurations of actions dominate that are not based on formal norms and b) formal patterns and hierarchical regulations or relationships are replaced by, for example, coordination, cooperation and negotiation (e.g., Stuwe 2006: 546; Mayntz 1998: 59). Three--overlapping--sectors may be differentiated in this respect: in-formal government, informal governance, and informality in policy fields, including lobbying of interest groups and other collective actors e.g. social movements and NGOs.

From a political science perspective, concepts of informality are repeatedly allotted to specific forms of governmental action that complement formal decisions making processes in specific sectors (cf. Manow 1996; Christiansen and Neuhold 2012b: 5). Of course, government is primarily structured by constitutional norms, but in all political systems informal rules play an important role regarding the 'real' configuration of power and influence (Kropp 2003: 23). The new institutionalism (e.g. North 1990; March and Olson 1989; Marcinkowski 2005: 345) explains informal practice as a reaction of strategic actors to complex systems: institutions are 'safe harbors', they reduce uncertainty and give scope for action in sectors where formal norms (constitution, common law) do not regulate such parts of the political process, which have transpired to be vital. Informal rules connect and 'bond' regulated with unregulated corridors for action (Kropp 2003: 23). Political institutions in that sense are a set of permanent rules (formal and informal) organizing a framework of behavior that determines the "range of action available to those actors" (Schrott and Spranger 2007: 5).

Informal government, then, has been proposed as a category for normative and functional analyses of government (Grunden 2013: 220). Normative refers to the question whether and to what extend informality effects democracy and the legitimation of politics and power (e.g. Reh 2012; Sarcinelli 2013). For example, in recent years the increase of commissions, committees, boards and informal 'circles' complementing governmental leadership has been questioned from a constitutional perspective (cf. Blumenthal 2003; Rudzio 2005, 2008; Strunck 2013). Functional analyses refer to the performance and accomplishments of informality in a given context. Scholars like Manow (1996) or Czada (1995), e.g., studied informality under the perspective of effectiveness of governmental decision finding and implementation of regulations in a situation of complex political 'throughput'.

In effect, informality plays a substantial role in policy analyses--besides, of course, structural analyses of 'formal' power and influence. Especially functional analyses (e.g. Czada 1995; Konig 2008) are in the range of governance studies: referring to the inclusion of non-governmental actors in the regulation of collective problems. The governance concept is related to informal government, but focuses on mechanisms of regulation and coordination that are not hierarchically ('power') given (e.g. by constitution), but on a logic of a collective action of constitutional actors and actors of affected parts of the society (cf. Benz 2004: 20; Christiansen and Neuhold 2012b: 1; Dose 2013; Konig 2009: 25). Governance particularly addresses the institutionalization of corporate regulation structures (co- and self-regulation). Politics and political decisions, the implementation of norms and rules in a specific policy field, therefore, are not 'left' to the state but also to intermediate 'agents' (cf. Raupp 2010). Again, effectiveness and legitimacy are core categories for respective analyses (Mayntz 1998: 61). Therefore, governance studies often stress the effectiveness of co-operative behavior (negotiation, information) of more or less permanent "policy communities" and loose "issue networks" (Marsh and Rhodes 1992; Pannes 2011: 42). From the normative perspective, "participation by representatives of organized groups of 'stakeholders' in sector-specific decision processes is an alternative to formally democratic procedures closely related to deliberation" (Mayntz 2011: 143).

Nonetheless, informality, informal government and informal governance often trigger criticism.

 The informal is simultaneously the unwanted stepchild of the
 social sciences and something that continues to enthrall them.
 Accessible only in a limited fashion to qualitative empirical
 research, rarely able to be grasped in elegant formal models,
 and still morally suspect, the informal sphere has the aura of
 the irrational and the irregular. (Brie and Stolting 2012: 19)

Especially with regard to interest groups and their influence in structures of informal government and informal governance, scholars point to illegitimacy and dysfunctional behavior such as corruption, patronage and clientele effects (cf. Stuwe 2006: 546; Mayntz 1998: 57). While--generally speaking--policy studies focusing on informality only seldom refer to communication as a factor of variance ('the media' for example as a stage for symbolic politics and public legitimization for political output; Baugut and Grundler 2009: 56; Pannes 2011: 48), research explicitly on interest groups and associations has, at least in recent years, greatly varied. Obviously, communication is a basic function for such actors: They mobilize support and articulate their interest to the state and other political organizations like parties (e.g., Steiner and Jarren 2009: 251; Vowe 2007: 466-467). As the collective action of associations leading to informality and lobbyism used to dominate studies on intermediate agents for a long time (e.g., von Alemann 1994, 2000; Raupp 2010, Strunck 2013), in recent years and under the catchphrase 'professionalization' several analyses have turned to an communicative orientation of interest groups (cf. Jarren, Lachenmeister and Steiner 2007; Jentges et al. 2012), their public relations efforts and strategic public communication (Vowe 2007) as well as their conjunction of--interdependent--internal and external communication (Jar-ren and Steiner 2009: 258-265; Roose 2009; Vowe 2007: 468; Willems 2000). "Interest groups reach out into the external environment via political communication, addressing policy processes directly or indirectly via the media." (Jentges et al. 2012: 407) In this discussion, a central argument for the rising impact of communication and public campaigning efforts as a factor of political interest is the mediatization of the political process as such (e.g. Koch-Baumgarten 2010: 239; Marcinkowski 2005: 353) and the decline of traditional corporate arrangements (cf. Steiner and Jarren 2009: 253; Hackenbroch 1998: 484-485; Winter and Willems 2009). With reference to the effectiveness of the strategic public communication of actors primarily operating on the 'back-stage' of politics, Marcinkowski (2005: 353) for example points out that thereby institutionalized structures of policy areas might be disturbed and at the same time a normatively postulated idea of negotiation and deliberation will be harmed (cf. Habermas 2006; Reh 2012).

3 Informality in political communication studies

As mentioned earlier, communication studies seldom refer to informal communication but clearly focus on public communication and media communication (cf. Kamps 2012: 6; Nieland 2013; Sarcinelli and Tenscher 2008: 8). Consequently, the so far mentioned analyses of communication in policy fields refer to public strategies of political actors or the mediatization of politics in general. Baugut and Reinemann (2013) in this issue state three reasons for the lack of research on informal communication. Firstly, informal political communication is hard to define. Secondly, for researchers it is difficult to approach as interests may collide. Thirdly, the relevance of informal communication is relatively unexplored and concrete effects still remain an open question.

The difficulty in defining informal political communication is based upon the term's multidimensionality. As Baugut and Reinemann discuss this point in this issue extensively, here a short outline should suffice (see also Wewer 1998: 324-325). The first dimension is publicity: as the interaction itself is mostly nonpublic, the content of informal communication may later be published. A second dimension is institutionalization: informal communication may appear spontaneously among political actors, formal meetings may carry (expected) room for informal interaction and informal meetings may be planned as such ('circles'). The third dimension refers to legality: informal communication might be illegal, e.g. the dissemination of classified documents. Fourthly, informal communication might be considered in terms of its legitimacy in two ways: a) the public may or may not perceive forms of informal communication as legitimate or not; b) the involved actors may understand the output of informal communication as illegitimate, e.g. if a journalist publishes information that has--by the 'rule' of circles--been given confidentially. The latter point also highlights that 'informal' does not mean 'without rules'. In addition, informal political communication appears in different modes such as arguing, negotiating or bargaining and information. Close to Lesemeister (2008: 71), therefore, we define informal political communication as a set of orientations of political actors, manifested in communicative action(s), that evolves among the dimensions publicity, institutionalization, legality, and legitimacy and that serves for the perpetuation of the actors' respective systems.

Specifically concerning policy fields only a small number of case studies refer to communication, mostly with respect to direct or indirect media influences on the policy process (cf. e.g. Brown 2010; Koch-Baumgarten and Mez 2007; Voltmer and Koch-Baumgarten 2010; Hoffjann and Stahl 2010; Kamps, Horn and Wicke 2013). These studies provide us with a multi-facet picture: Political decision in policy fields may be made without observable media influence so that politics follows its own inner logic. Situational circumstances might change this: fragmented actor constellations, missing consensus, the exclusion of public actors and the compatibility of issues and media determine whether or not media develop a discursive power (Koch-Baumgarten and Voltmer 2009: 304-305, 313)._These analyses show that informal political communication appears in different settings and in a variety of forms, depending on the actor's motives, intention and institutional background as well as on (non-written) rules and norms, trust and experience within a given policy field (cf. Kamps 2012: 38). Their findings indicate that it is not adequate to give a global answer to the question of the medias' influence on the political 'backstage'. They also contradict the notion of a 'medialization' or 'mediatization' of political actors and organizations (for further discussion cf. Reinemann 2010).

Thus, the medias' influence on political decisions seems to be widely affected by the specific circumstances of the political question and the policy field involved. Core affiliations in policy sectors are the relationships between politicians and journalists. Consequently, these relationships have predominated the interest of communication studies in policy analyses so far (see especially Baugut and Reinemann in this issue): Kepplinger and Fritsch (1981) in a pioneer study for Germany described role taking and role expectations in the Bonn republic (cf. Nieland 2013: 404). Baugut and Grundler (2009: 297) show that politicians mainly use the 'backstage' of policy fields to inform and transfer interpretations and spins, especially during negotiations on complex issues, when they assume a lack of specific knowledge and feel the chance to 'frame' journalists.

In recent years, a number of studies have included PR actors and spokespersons in such approaches. Jarren et al. (1993) interviewed politicians, journalists and PR actors with a focus on political parties. Other studies (Rinke et al. 2006; Tenscher 2003) point to a 'professionalization' and the 'interpenetration' of experts in political communication focusing in a functional perspective on the change of a working habitus in this area. Pfetsch in a series of studies (Pfetsch 2003, 2004; Pfetsch Mayerhoffer 2011) developed a concept of "political communication cultures". Her elaborative approach also takes these actors into account and integrates structural variables (media system, political system) as well as specific 'logics' (media, politics, strategic actors), motives and conflict dimensions. The design results in differentiated assumptions: For example, the groups of actors show diverse reactions in conflict situations; politicians tend to harmonize, journalists seem to manage problems by retreating on a professional level.

These studies all rest upon are based on qualitative research. Quantitative surveys are rare. Most recently, a broadly designed survey on addressees, instruments, and logics of the communication of political interest groups in Germany, Jentges et al. (2012: 408) points to "issue publics" and their relevance for interest group research--publics beyond a generalized 'political public' in a country and characterized by a specialized media and a specific interest in policy fields or even single policies. Studies explicitly focusing on informal communication are equally less frequent (Baugut and Grundler 2009; Hoffmann 2003; Kamps 2012; Lesmeister 2008). They describe, again, a multi-facet picture: a concrete influence of media or communication on political decisions in policy fields seems to depend on contextual and situational factors.

4 The contributions to this issue

Informal political communication remains a widely unexplored object of policy analyses. Nonetheless, research so far indicates a potential of integrating communication as a variable in studies of the political process prior to the implementation of specific policies. As there is a lack of sophisticated theoretical assumptions on informal political communication and the empirical results are diverse, the three contributions to this issue of German Policy Studies will now be introduced by using a heuristic as an analytical tool (see table 1). We suppose that this heuristic (based on Pannis 2011: 37) may contribute to a systematic approach to informal political communication in policy analyses. Four dimensions will be distinguished:

Baugut and Reinemann see informal political communication between political actors and journalists as essential and contextual ('conditions of formation'). With a view to Pfetsch (2004) and Blumler and Gurevtich (1995) they develop a sophisticated model of 'informal political communication culture', concentrating on the relationship of politicians and journalists, and systemize potential factors influencing the characteristics of informal political communication by differentiating between macro-, meso-, and micro level of both, the political and the media system ('strength of forming mechanisms'). The relation of formal and informal political communication is marginally perceived: the study clearly focuses on the 'backstage of politics' and seldom refers to strategies of mass media influence as well as formal political communication such as parliamentarian communication ('relation to formality'). Apart from that, the study focuses on the 'legitimacy-efficiency' dilemma and discusses the impact of 'informal political communication cultures' on that dilemma ('function / output').

Walter in this issue turns in her case study to the local level of politics and discusses specific 'local' conditions of informal political communication ('contextual conditions'). It aims to analyze the extent to which specific elements of local informal communication contribute to policy making at that level and which variables support these elements ('strength of forming mechanisms'). Her findings show that informal political communication mainly serves as a proscenium in formal processes of policy making at the local level ('relation to formality'), informal elements do not determine an outsourcing of the process of political decision making in a backstage area ('function / output'). Concurrently, the wide spectrum of opportunities for participation enables e.g. actors of civil society to shape local politics at an early stage: an interesting result for actors who are not involved in the actual process of decision finding.

Kamps et al. focus in their case study on the linkage of public and non-public strategies of negotiations with a multi-method design that integrates a qualitative analysis (interviews) with a quantitative approach (content analysis). The central aspect of their study is the question of whether the specific context of the policy in hand determined a specific role of informal communication in the policy process ('contextual conditions'). Findings show ('strength of forming mechanisms'): a) the political structure, the political intention and the political option in the form of formal structures ('relation to formality') overruled informal communication routines; b) strategic communication via public or non-public communication depended upon a timely dimension and upon c) the issue itself respectively a missing or disrupting fundamental consensus within the field ('function / output').

Insofar, these studies underline the assumptions of research on informal political communication indicating that concrete influences are diverse and obviously dependent to a great extent on contextual variables. Theoretically, this emerging field lacks comparative perspectives and models. But these studies also underline that the analysis of informal communication may provide a wider understanding of policy studies. Obviously, informal communication plays an important role in and for the structural arrangement of the policy process; to what extent it actually may determine political output is unclear and leaves room for future research--both theoretical and empirical.

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Klaus Kamps

University of Erfurt (Germany)

Table 1: Theoretical dimensions of informal political
communication

Dimension Problem

Contextual Why and under which conditions does informal
conditions of political communication materialize as a
formation variable of influence on political decisions?

Strength of Which mechanisms and context variables
forming concretely form informal political
mechanisms communication?

Relation to How has the relationship to formal political
formality communication been described in specific
 cases?

Function / Which functions may be related to informal
output political communication and under which
 conditions are specific outputs likely or less
 likely to emerge?

Source: Based on Pannes 2011: 37