This Handbook is the first major work to comprehensively map state-of-the-art scholarship on electoral debates in comparative perspective. Leading scholars and practitioners from around the world introduce a core theoretical and conceptual framework to understand this phenomenon and point to promising directions for new research on the evolution of electoral debates and the practical considerations that different country-level experiences can offer.

Three indicators to help analyze electoral debates inform this Handbook: the level of experience of each country in the realization of electoral debates; geopolitical characteristics linked to political influence; and democratic stability and electoral competitiveness. Chapters with examples from the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania add richness to the volume. Each chapter:

• Traces local historical, constitutive relationships between traditional forms of electoral debates and contexts of their emergence;
• Compares and critiques different perspectives regarding the function of debates on democracy;
• Probes, discusses and evaluates recent and emergent theoretical resources related to campaign debates in light of a particular local experience;
• Explores and assesses new or neglected local approaches to electoral debates in a changing media landscape where television is no longer the dominant form of political communication;
• Provides a prospective analysis regarding the future challengers for electoral debates.

The Routledge International Handbook on Electoral Debates will set the agenda for scholarship on the political communication for years to come.