On Producing Politics by Daniel Laurison

Political campaigns are often described as battles — high-stakes competitions where strategy, execution, and sheer endurance determine victory. Yet, as Daniel Laurison’s Producing Politics (2022) reveals, political campaigns are not just about winning elections; they are about producing political knowledge, shaping voter engagement, and reproducing elite dominance in the political sphere. By applying Philip Deloria and Alexander Olson’s methodological framework — which structures research into Text, Archive, Genre, Formation, and Power — this essay examines Laurison’s research as an inquiry into the cultural production of politics (Deloria and Olson 2017). Campaigns do not simply respond to voter preferences; they are shaped by the insular world of campaign professionals who construct and reinforce partisan, racial, and class-based hierarchies within American political life.

In his study of political campaigns, Daniel Laurison examines a range of sources that shape how political work is structured, understood, and legitimized. These sources serve as evidence for how campaigns function as sites of cultural production. Laurison’s goal is not just to analyze campaign strategies but to uncover the social hierarchies, professional norms, and exclusionary structures that define the campaign industry.

1. Interviews with campaign professionals
Laurison conducted 70 interviews with campaign staffers, consultants, and strategists from both Democratic and Republican campaigns. These interviews provide firsthand accounts of career trajectories, decision-making processes, and the internal culture of political work. Through these narratives, Laurison reveals how success in campaign work is often determined by social networks, gut instincts, and elite connections rather than formal qualifications or voter engagement.

2. Database of Campaign Staffers
Laurison analyzes a dataset of over 2,000 political staffers who worked on political campaigns between 2004 and 2020. This data allows him to track career mobility, demographic representation, and patterns of exclusion within the campaign industry. By mapping these networks, he demonstrates that campaign professionals are overwhelmingly white, highly educated, and financially privileged, reinforcing systemic barriers to entry for outsiders.

3. Historical and Media Analysis
Beyond interviews and data, Laurison examines historical records of campaign practices and media portrayals of political work. He traces how campaign strategies, staffing patterns, and voter outreach tactics have evolved over time. Additionally, he looks at how campaign professionals are represented in political journalism and insider publications like Campaigns & Elections magazine, which reinforces the perception of campaigns as elite-driven, high-stakes competitions.

Across these different sources, Laurison constructs a layered analysis of how campaign work is structured, who is allowed to participate in it, and how political messaging is created. By analyzing these texts, he reveals that the production of politics is not a neutral, democratic process but a professionalized industry shaped by elite interests and exclusionary practices.

Deloria and Olson’s concept of archive refers to the ways knowledge is structured and the guiding questions that shape research. Laurison builds his study around a central inquiry: Who produces politics, and how do their social and professional backgrounds influence political outcomes? To answer this, he organizes his research into multiple archives that reveal how campaign work is structured as an elite, network-based industry rather than an open, meritocratic system.

One key archive focuses on the career pipeline of campaign professionals, showing that access to political work depends heavily on social capital and informal hiring practices. Rather than an open application process, campaign jobs are filled through insider connections, which systematically exclude those without elite backgrounds. Within this structure, women and people of color are disproportionately assigned to outreach roles rather than high-level strategic positions, reinforcing racial and gendered divisions in political work.

Another key archive examines campaign messaging and strategic communication, demonstrating that strategy is shaped more by industry norms and internal competition than by data or empirical voter insights. Rather than rational, scientific enterprises, campaigns function as insular workplaces where decisions are driven by gut instinct, repetition, and precedent. Campaign consultants prioritize negative ads, emotional appeals, and simplistic messaging because these tactics align with their professional incentives and industry expectations, even if they do not meaningfully engage voters. This means that campaign messaging is produced with an internal audience in mind — other politicos, donors, and media figures — rather than being crafted to broaden political participation or reflect the needs of voters.

The final archive addresses the hierarchy of campaign labor, revealing that the work of political campaigns is divided into low-status, temporary fieldwork and high-status, elite decision-making roles. Field staff, often young, transient, and underpaid, conduct direct voter outreach but remain far removed from campaign strategy and leadership. In contrast, communications, data analysis, and strategy roles are tightly controlled by a small, elite group of professionals with longstanding industry ties. The intense, fast-paced nature of campaign work discourages institutional knowledge-building and long-term professional diversity, ensuring that power remains concentrated among a self-replicating elite. Together, these archives show that political campaigns are not public institutions designed to serve voters, but exclusive industries shaped by professional cultures and career incentives that prioritize insider interests over democratic engagement.

Applying Deloria and Olson’s concept of genre, we can recognize how Laurison categorization of how political work is structured and understood within campaign culture, revealing a system that prioritizes insider status, financial capital, and hierarchical control. One dominant genre is the political professional as an insider, where success requires complete personal sacrifice and an ability to demonstrate aggressive, intuitive decision-making, traits that disproportionately benefit privileged white men and reinforce a self-replicating elite culture. Another key genre is campaigns as competitive startups, where national campaigns rapidly expand from small teams to multimillion-dollar enterprises, favoring those with existing financial and social capital while excluding working-class entrants. Laurison also categorizes the voter as terrain, rather than an active political agent, illustrating how campaign professionals focus on persuadable voters rather than engaging nonvoters, who are disproportionately low-income and people of color. Through these genres, Laurison reveals that campaigns are not democratic institutions responsive to public needs, but elite-driven operations designed to sustain professional hierarchies and reinforce existing power structures.

Laurison shows that political campaigns are built on hierarchies that exclude outsiders and reinforce elite control. Campaign jobs go to those with the right connections, education, and financial stability, making it hard for working-class people to enter the field. Campaign strategy is also shaped by intuition and industry norms rather than data, with professionals following what has worked before instead of adapting to real voter concerns. The biggest divide, however, is between campaigning and governing; winning is the goal, and policy is an afterthought.

Conclusion

By applying the Deloria-Olson framework, Laurison’s Producing Politics can be understood as a study of how political narratives are created, who controls them, and what social consequences they produce. His research exposes political campaigns as elite-driven, self-reinforcing industries that prioritize professional advancement over voter engagement. Campaigns are not neutral reflections of democracy — they are structured workplaces that shape who participates in politics, whose voices are heard, and how political power is maintained.

Deloria, Philip J., and Alexander I. Olson. 2017. American Studies: A User’s Guide. 1st ed. University of California Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1xxw8h.

Laurison, Daniel. 2022. Producing Politics: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Privileged Few Shape Politics for All of Us. Beacon Press.