Communication politique et séduction à travers la Déclaration de politique générale du Premier ministre Idrissa Seck à l'Assemblée nationale le 03 février 2003

2. POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

A first design reduced the political communication to the propaganda or the electoral communication of the political parties. From this point of view, the political communication is perceived more in term of messages and attitudes which the policies deploy in direction of the citizens.

However, with the going beyond of the theory of « hypodermic syringe », the development of the means of communication of mass, of measurement techniques of the opinion, a greater part is granted, not only with the delivered messages, but more especially their reception, in term of appropriation, indifference or rejection. Consequently, beside the political actor, affirm themselves more and more, other actors, like the media and the citizen, through the concept of public opinion, but also the specialists in various disciplines whose role is, either to measure the opinion, through surveys, or to direct the public opinion in a well defined direction (specialists in the communication and political marketing).

We will try, on the basis D `a summary analysis of the concept D `public space to which the political communication is indebted, of elements D `explanation of the terms « communication » and « policy », to define the political communication.

2.1 Public space

The concept D `public space was formalized in the Sixties by Jurgen Habermas (1978). Public space would be the framework in which and the concepts of State-social interact coexist , of principle of publicity, public opinion  etc We will be based primarily on the two last, namely the principle of publicity and the public opinion.

2.1.1 The principle of publicity

Being based on work of Habermas, Alain Girod defines the principle of publicity like

to have that has the State to make public, to make known to the public, its acts, its decisions, its projects, its deliberations, etc, either directly, or via the press, so that the citizens, duly informed, can organize a public discussion in which they can make use of their Reason publicly, so that can constitute one « public opinion » lit, the Law and the action of the State being « supposed to reflect » the aforementioned public opinion. (Girod 2000 : 305)

In Senegal, as in any democracy, the right, for the citizens, D `to reach information is a reality. It is guaranteed by the Constitution.^6(*) Moreover, all the elected assemblies (national Parliament, Town council, the rural Council, the regional Council) guarantee the public character of the majority of their meetings. Moreover, the lawful acts are published in the Official Journal. Consequently, the conditions of an appropriation of the public decisions by the citizens are met. The public character of the decisions and notes taken by the official authorities reinforces the will of those to confer on their actions the maximum of attractivity and relevance near the public opinion.

* ⁶ In particular in its article 8.