COMMUNICATION

Australian governments have made considerable efforts to align their policy priorities with the messages that they communicate to the public. This has been aided by very strong discipline across all the major political parties (perhaps the strongest among the Westminster democracies) and a tradition of suppressing dissent within the parties (often by the threat of de-selection at the next election); strong adherence to the Westminster doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility; and an activist mass media and political opposition which will seek to exploit any apparent policy divisions within government.

The current government has centralized its communications function in the Prime Minister’s Office. All departmental policy communications must be approved by the PMO. This process effectively coordinates the communications (or lack of communications) of ministries, and aligns any departmental message with the government’s overall communications strategy. In practice, however, there have been instances when there has been an obvious lack of coordination in managing communications with the media. Media leaks – deliberate or not – are still part of the Ottawa process at both the political and bureaucratic levels.

The need for strong discipline is imposed on the French government as there is nothing like a coalition government. Coordination of government action and communication is assured in a hierarchical manner. The president is the effective chief of government; both the prime minister and all other ministers are nominated by the president and are dependent on him. In practice, the presidential office monitors the action of the government regularly (and under President Sarkozy, very closely). The prime minister and the president impose tight controls and ministers are expected to be in line with their guidance. The main rationale is to avoid divisions or confusion that can be exploited by the media. But leaks by ministers themselves can bring to the fore internal contradictions between ministers or their bureaucracies. President Sarkozy has called off several ministers whose public communication on planned projects did not suit him. When a president is less directing, coordination is assured by the prime minister who is able to manage possible conflicts between ministers.

The government generally speaks with one voice. However, in the so-called West Nordic administrative tradition, in which every minister is responsible for the state institutions subordinate to his or her ministry, every minister has the power to make decisions without consulting other ministers. Nonetheless, ministers do not often contradict each other, and try to reach decisions by consensus. The grand coalition government in power during the 2007 – 2009 period appeared to be particularly harmonious, even after the collapse in the autumn of 2008, until the Social Democrats finally withdrew in early 2009. The new coalition government, in office since 2009, has also seemed to maintain an environment in which every minister’s independence and authority to make decisions in his or her area is respected. Nevertheless, some members of the Left Green Movement parliamentary group have frequently opposed measures brought by the government to parliament, essentially depriving the government of its parliamentary majority and turning it into a minority government forced to negotiate with members of the opposition.

Weekly press briefings held by the prime minister after cabinet meetings constitute the government’s main information channel. It is generally the prime minister who presents the major issues and responds to journalists’ questions. Revealing any dissent in the government or between coalition parties would go against the deeply rooted consensus tradition and is rare. Thus the government “speaks with one voice.” This unanimity is currently threatened, however, by the policy of austerity adopted in response to the financial crisis.

In Sweden as in most other advanced democracies, there has been a noticeable tendency over the past several years to centralize communication on policy matters, particularly through the media. Civil servants in the ministries are extremely reluctant to speak to the media, as they might not convey the correct and approved version of a particular policy. Controlling the flow of communication has become a matter of importance to the political elite of the system; handling communication and speaking to the media has clearly become a political dimension of the CGO’s work.
The center-right coalition contains four parties. Surpisingly, such a broad coalition does produce incoherent policy communications in contested policy fields. During the period of review, some communicative frictions became obvious (for example, the different policy positions regarding the use of nuclear power plants in Sweden or the goals and fiscal endowment of the Swedish army). Nevertheless, the center-right coalition could effectively coordinate policy communication between different ministries.

Ever since the more fractured administrations of the 1970s, a coherent communication strategy within an administration that is based on presidential goals has become the norm. This is particularly true with reference to communicating the administration’s goals to the public. The Bush administration excelled in managing its public communication strategy in a coordinated and cohesive manner (“staying on message”). To a degree, however, this also reflects an administration that does not tolerate dissent from the core White House position. The Bush administration demonstrated a strong tendency towards “narrow-casting” in an attempt to target and expand his base of conservative voters. This tendency lessened in the final year of the administration, when the financial crisis hit. Here the communications strategy was less coherent as events and reactions became unpredictable.
The Obama administration’s communication strategy has also displayed a remarkable amount of discipline and focus, and has been much less polarizing. The attempt at bipartisanship produced a more conciliatory rhetoric. It can be questioned, though, whether the Obama administration managed to explain health care reform effectively to the electorate, particularly how extension of coverage would coincide with cost savings.

Each new government designs its own communication policy. As a result, strategic communication often tends to be rather haphazard at the beginning of a presidential term, but improves as the administration gains experience. This pattern applies to the governments of the last two years.

It is important for a government to effectively communicate its policies to its citizens. Communication strategy, and media attention, has become important aspects of politics, and political survival depends on efficient communication. Good communicators are more likely to get ministerial posts than poor communicators. The PMO plays an important role in communication, and in recent years prime ministers have employed media advisers.
There are only a few examples of ministers speaking out on issues that were not in accordance with the government’s policy. In such cases the prime minister will act swiftly and a corrective statement will follow from the minister in question – or he or she will most likely lose their job.

Since the position of the prime minister is one of primus inter pares rather than one of absolute leadership, it is natural that the government’s attempts at speaking with one voice are advanced through discussion and consultation rather than through directives and commands. Furthermore, as directives and commands would easily come into conflict with the principle of freedom of speech, such communication would probably be regarded as illegitimate and foster opposition. In practice, therefore, contradictory statements are rare. Interestingly enough, such dissenting voices have lately tended to be heard in regards to foreign policy, a sector that earlier in post-war Finland was marked by unanimous anxiety and servility.

Ireland’s constitution has an explicit clause (Article 28.4.2) that requires the government to act in a collective fashion, and requires all ministers to be collectively responsible for government decisions. This doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility is normally adhered to and is a clear incentive to produce a closely coordinated communications strategy.
The communication of policy decisions certainly receives careful attention. The government is very conscious of the importance of public relations and considerable sums of money are spent on consultants who try to ensure the best possible spin is put on decisions. Contradictory statements do not appear to have been a problem in recent years.

Norway has had coalition governments in recent years. These coalitions have worked effectively but there will unavoidably be disagreements within any coalition, including in the current center-left coalition, sometimes on important matters, and these disagreements must, by the dynamics of party politics, find some expression, leading to occasional lacks of clarity in government communications. On the other hand, Norwegian coalitions have been remarkably cooperative and cabinet members well-behaved, often going to great lengths to avoid airing disagreements in public.

Two phases may be identified. The first, lasting until late 2009, is marked by the continuation of the previous pattern of very effective coordination of communication, as highlighted in the SGI 2009 report. Since that time, however, the government’s communication has been less cohesive and coordinated. An example of this is the public disagreement in April 2010 between the minister of finance and the minister of public works, highlighted above (see Line Ministries). It seems that the communication system has not yet fully adjusted to the government’s minority status (and consequent need to negotiate legislation with opposition parties), or to the need to generate substantial cuts in the budget deficit.

The government acts as a collegial body. All members of the government have to defend the government’s decisions, irrespective of their own opinion. However, in the 2003 – 2007 period, when the SVP’s Christoph Blocher participated in government, communication was less coherent than before and afterward. The politics of Switzerland moved in a more populist, aggressive and confrontational direction. Although the current government’s communication is much more coherent than in 2003 – 2007, it is questionable whether this coherence has returned to the level reached in the 1970s through the 1990s. This decline in the coherent communication of government policies can be attributed to the following factors:
• the structure of the collegiate body itself, which makes it difficult to speak with one voice in the age of the all-present mass media;
• the Federal Council’s poor crisis management in issues of international affairs;
• political polarization, even among the members of the all-party government;
• systematic distortion of the Federal Council’s indiscretions on the part of some aggressive media outlets; and
• the Federal Council’s lack of authority or capacity to sanction indiscretions or to manage its communication policy effectively.

Central control of government communication has been one of the defining characteristics of the New Labour government. Tony Blair’s first director of communications, Alastair Campbell, was a controversial press officer with a high political profile who controlled government communication centrally and tightly. In 2001, a Strategic Communications Unit was created to deal with longer-term media and presentation issues.

The dominance of a centrally controlled government “message,” and the preparedness to take on even institutions such as the BBC in defense of the government’s communications position, became unpopular over time, and was decried by critics as “spinning.” Prime Minister Brown actively sought to distance himself from this approach, but suffered the opposite problem of failing to connect successfully with the British electorate. This communications failure is often attributed to personal characteristics of the prime minister. Collective responsibility in the cabinet underpins the coherence of messages, though leaks can undermine this, and the mere fact that ministries have their own press offices, sometimes operating under pressure, can lead to contradictory statements. A recent television comedy series, “The Thick of It” has parodied the government’s approach to communication and was adjudged by many to be viciously accurate – replicating the success of the, “Yes Minister” series from the 1980s.

There has been marked enhancement in the general quality of official communication under President Calderón. Under former President Fox, contradictions such as the president and the finance ministry providing conflicting economic forecasts occasionally took place. While Calderón has run a much tighter ship, with a clearer government line, there are sometimes communication problems with regard to the security sectors, as different agencies – the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Defense and the Attorney General – have been competing with each other to take the lead in the war on drug cartels.

In the age of “mediacracy,” the Balkenende IV government has sought to make policy communication more coherent. In doing so, it has relied on the older instrument of the National Information Service (Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst, RVD), whose director general is present at cabinet meetings and responsible for communicating policy and the prime minister’s affairs to print and other media. The RVD’s director general is also mandated with communicating all affairs concerning the royal family, including its relations with the media.
In a context of unstoppable ministerial compartmentalization, combined with the increasing importance of information service staffs (as opposed to policy officials) in managing the media, the government tries to streamline and coordinate its external communication. The “1Logo” project, for example, aims to impose a single “brand” and editorial policy on all websites run by the national government. Another government communication project is targeting the creation of a single pool of government communication and information officials to be used by all departments. The project also includes establishing a shared intranet (rijksportaal.nl) and joint digital news service for all officials working for the national government. Another effort toward centralized, coherent communication involves replacing departmentally run televised information campaigns through a unified, thematic approach (e.g. “safety’). It is too early to tell to what extent such efforts will be successful.

The coherence of government communication strongly depends on the topic. All recent governments have been of the coalition-minority type, which has increased the potential for contradictory statements. Labour-led minority governments as well as the National-led government in power during the period under review have accepted that there will be some tensions on sensitive issues which can lead to policy whereby coalition partners “agree to disagree” to maintain their parliamentary power base.

The government has sought to coordinate the communication of ministries through the Government Information Centre, a department of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister . Ministers have occasionally voiced different positions, for instance on energy policy or pension reform. Compared to previous governments, however, contradictory statements from ministers have been rare.

The government tries to speak with one voice. A communication office (Secretaría de Estado de Comunicación) exists within the government office, led by First Deputy Primer Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, who also serves as the government’s primary spokesperson. The communication office is responsible for coordinating all the government’s information policy both internally (through a consultation procedure with the ministries, and by providing a press service for the entire public administration) and also externally (by informing the mass media of the government’s activities). The communication office and the spokesperson try to conduct coherent communication planning (and ministries tend to align their statements and press releases with government strategy). In addition, in August 2007 the government unified its institutional image under a single logo that must be used in the communication campaigns of all ministries.
Nevertheless, contradictions do occur from time to time. Two of the most important examples include the absolute lack of coordination between the ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs with respect to the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Kosovo (announced in March 2009 as a consequence of Spain’s opposition to Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia), and several declarations by the minister of employment and immigration on the possible contents of the labor market reform, which were subsequently denied by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Elena Salgado. In addition, Deputy Prime Minister for Political Affairs Fernández de la Vega, who has performed the double role of governmental communication coordinator and spokesperson since 2004, has somewhat diminished her political profile within the executive in the last two years.

The unquestioned authority and leadership of the prime minister by and large ensures that the government speaks with one voice, despite the different or even opposing interests of one or another ministry on any particular occasion.
There is a spokesman for the Council of Ministers who makes public declarations on behalf of the council. However, it has been evident that some important ministers make contradictory private statements to other members of the government. A spokesperson’s office was also established for the prime minister, which caused further complications for the coordination of government communication.

The Greek government is organizationally fragmented, meaning that individual ministers are not closely monitored by the PMO (which is rather small and weak in resources) nor by any other central executive organ. This is true both for ministry policy content and priorities and for the patterns of political communication between the government and the citizens. While the government has a spokesperson who briefs media representatives on government priorities and decisions on a daily basis, individual ministers develop their own linkages to the media. They aspire to win the public’s attention, and also cater to local interests in their own electoral district, where individual channels of communication help them win reelection.
As a consequence, cabinet members sometimes made contradictory statements during the period under review. The occasional lack of coherence was also due to the fact that under the Karamanlis government (September 2007 – September 2009), the cabinet rarely met, and did not really discuss prospective policy measures. This situation has been different under Papandreou, who after winning the elections of 2009, created an administrative level tasked with supervision and monitoring of ministry activities, consisting of a minister without portfolio and a government vice president. Papandreou has made it a point to convene the cabinet regularly, and have ministers announce and discuss their plans in front of their colleagues.

Italian governments have been in general rather weak in the field of communication. Ministers and even undersecretaries have been continuously able and willing to express their personal positions without coordinating their comments with the PMO. Under the current Berlusconi government, communication is to a more significant extent dominated by the prime minister and his office. However, ministers maintain some degree of autonomy, and some elements of incoherence still emerge.
At the beginning of the period under review, it was always Berlusconi himself that communicated the government’s projects, policies and successes. But at a certain point, an increase in comments and criticisms by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, PDL cofounder Gianfranco Fini, began weakening the coherent communication of the government’s policy. In addition, new political constellations have emerged. In the autonomous region of Sicily and other parts of southern Italy, there has been an informal split in the governing PDL, between a kind of southern party group and Berlusconi loyalists. Political cooperation on the regional level between local or regional PDL forces and the PD (the national opposition party) gives some idea as to the fragility of the coalition in Rome. In addition, PDL leaders Berlusconi and Fini and Northern League leader Bossi often contradict one another, as do line ministers such as Minister of Economy and Finance Giulio Tremonti.

Policy communication has always been a priority for Japanese governments. Ministries and other governmental agencies have been very active in publishing regular reports, often called “white papers,” as well as other materials on their work. These materials are full of rich details, though observers have sometimes found the sheer quantity of brochures, data and other material bewildering. Ministries and other agencies have sometimes used public communication to stake their claims on specific policy areas. Another critique has been that policy statements have become rather vague. Particularly with respect to visions of the future economy, recent statements have been filled with terms such as “economic individualism” or “people´s power,” for which practical definitions have been difficult to ascertain.

A major departure by the DPJ from earlier communications policy is that politicians with ministry responsibility, particularly the ministers themselves, are now in charge of representing their issue area in the Diet and in press conferences. Ministers and other politicians have used various means to hold press conferences and communicate with the public, including the solicitation of direct feedback over the Internet. There have been cases in which the ministerial civil servants were not even aware that their minister was speaking to the public. While this may seem a refreshing departure from the previous regime’s somewhat stiff communication patterns, the new practices have not yet stabilized. Communication may actually have lost transparency as a result, although this could be seen as a typical transition-period problem.

The government seeks to coordinate communication between ministries, but contradictions between government agency statements happen frequently. The communication policies following the sinking of Korean Navy corvette Cheonan in March 2010 were particularly criticized in Korea. The Coast Guard and the Ministry of National Defense gave conflicting versions of events, and contradictions were evident even within the ministry itself. The government was criticized by many observers, civil society activists and the opposition parties for holding back information from the public.

The Chancellery is formally responsible for government communication. However, since Austrian cabinets are usually coalition governments, coordination within the cabinet is shaped on two levels. Coordination is first and foremost organized within each of the coalition partners. In a second step, the two parties, represented by the chancellor or the vice chancellor (or their staff), have to coordinate their positions.
Communication policy offers a good example. Once a week, after the formal meeting of the cabinet, the chancellor and the vice chancellor – acting as equals – hold a press conference, which often leads to the articulation of differences within the government.
The high degree of autonomy each minister enjoys implies a specific communication policy of each minister, in many cases not coordinated with other ministers, especially with ministers from the other coalition party.

The Gyurcsány government tried to achieve a coherent, centralized communication policy, but failed to cover the substantial differences among the coalition partners as well as among the various platforms within the Hungarian Socialist Party. The Bajnai government had an unambiguous general message – the need for painful reforms – and presented itself as a government of experts. However, it lacked a centralized communication policy, which resulted in contradictory statements being issued. The poor public image of both governments contributed to the electoral defeat of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP) and the Free Democrats (SzDSz) in 2010.

Both the Topolánek and Fischer governments were composed of multiple parties. On a number of occasions, the coalition partners expressed different priorities and preferences regarding fiscal policy, environmental affairs and economic crisis measures. Establishing a coherent communication system was given a high priority during preparations for the Czech EU presidency. In April 2009, the government created the Government Information Center as a response to increasing demands for interactive communication within the state administration and with the public.

There are two separate sets of issues to consider. First, if a decision was collegially made by the government, for instance if a law proposal was submitted to parliament which then approves the proposal, communication will typically be coordinated. Second, there are other issues that fall under the umbrella of a given minister. In this case, each minister may develop a different communication strategy and it is not rare to see open disagreement among coalition partners. Another difficulty is that even federal ministers will occasionally communicate in different ways on the two sides of the country’s linguistic border, depending on whether they are addressing their constituency or the ”other side.”
Disagreements among government officials were particularly acute during the global economic crisis, during bankruptcy proceedings surrounding Fortis and during high-level negotiations with electricity and gas producers. Like a school director in a courtyard, it happens that the prime minister has to call for a stop of such public debates (often arguments). The government’s communication troubles came to a head during Belgium’s major political crisis (2008-2009). Tensions among members of government were high and the government’s communication policy fell apart. Prime Minister Yves Leterme had to step down after being accused of illegally trying to influence judicial action in the bankruptcy of Fortis. He was replaced by Herman Van Rompuy who managed to improve political cohesion within the majority. Yves Leterme, since cleared of the accusations, returned to his post when Herman Van Rompuy became European Council president in January 2010.

In a formal sense, the federal government’s Press and Information Office is the center where information from all the ministries comes together. However, this does not guarantee a coherent communication policy, which is a difficult task for any coalition government. The constant tendency of coalition partners to sharpen their own profile versus the other government party explains a sometimes very dissonant communication policy. Government decisions are regularly explained to the public as compromises that do not perfectly satisfy either side in the coalition.
The grand coalition’s response to the financial crisis can be used as an example. While in the early stages of the crisis, the Christian Democratic chancellor and the Social Democratic minister of finance worked together closely and apparently in consensus, this changed substantially after the end of 2008. The governing parties publicly disputed the need for and the prospective size of stimulus packages, and the minister of economic affairs even publicly opposed his own government’s rescue plans for car manufacturer Opel, suggesting that the company should file for bankruptcy. Similarly, the partners in the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition have been unable to present their program in a coherent way. Instead, the governing parties have quarreled with one another in public on a large number of issues.

The Fico government did little to streamline its communication policy. Contradictory statements by ministries were frequent, since ministers followed party strategies rather than government guidelines and Prime Minister Fico did not impose much discipline on his coalition partners.