Political Marketing and Professionalized Campaigning

Abstract

During the last decade a number of scholars have argued that political campaigning has become professionalized, and that political marketing has become the new dominant campaign paradigm. However, the conceptual relationship between political marketing and the professionalization of political campaigning is unclear. Furthermore, the distinction between political marketing, market orientation, and marketing techniques is often blurred. At the same time, most of the literature is dominated by either an American or British perspective. This makes it unclear as to whether these concepts should be viewed as general concepts, or as concepts relevant primarily for countries that share some specific set of political institutions.

In this backdrop, the purpose of this article is to analyze (1) the conceptual relationship between political marketing, market orientation, marketing techniques, and professionalization of political campaigning, and (2) whether contemporary concepts of political marketing and the professionalization of political campaigning are equally applicable to all modern democracies regardless of, for example, political system and other country-specific factors. It also outlines a theory of strategic party goals for multiple arenas.     

An Organization of the Theoretical Perspectives in the Field of Civic and Political Participation: Contributions to Citizenship Education

This article provides a review of the theoretical perspectives on civic and political participation. Four distinct views were identified in the literature: (a) The orthodox view: “Civic and political participation are always positive”; (b) The broad view: “Civic and political participation are multidimensional”; (c) The qualitative view: “Civic and political participation are not always good”; and (d) The nonconformist view: “The need to redeem the political dimension of participation.” This article intends to sophisticate simplistic assumptions about civic and political participation and to provide an original organization of the theoretical perspectives in this field. Based on this analysis, this article presents suggestions for an alternative approach to citizenship education.     

Political and Economic Policy Planning on a National Level—Exorcism and Laws of Gravity

Within political and social processes the actors' intentions arc played out against institutional 'laws of gravity'. With this in mind, the article focuses on the planning regime associated with the Scandinavian political model. At present the model seems to be challenged by a series of obstacles, raising the question of the political mechanism's ability to adapt. One hypothesis—called the 'Decay' scenario—is described in detail, thereby presenting: (1) a framework for political analysis on a national level; (2) some indicators on how the 'Decay' story may turn out; and (3) a group of sub-theories supporting the hypothesis; in rivalry with its counterpart, a future success story of the Scandinavian model.     

The structure of political cognition: A new approach to its meaning and measurement

Recent studies of political beliefs have largely abandoned the traditional concern with their ideological content for a newfound interest in their cognitive content. This interest in shared cognition has shed new light onwhat people think about politics, but it has largely ignored the question ofhow people think about politics. This paper addresses one important dimension of that void by considering the structure of political cognition and, more specifically, how that structure varies across people. It uses a schematic approach to (1) develop a general unifying theory of the structure of political cognition; (2) suggest the political implications of different types of cognitive structure; and (3) develop an easily administered and construct-valid methodology for measuring the structure of political cognition. By way of illustration, this methodology is used to measure the structure of individuals' political cognitions about issues in their community.     

Activist and Citizen Political Repertoire in Spain: A Reflection Based on Civil Society Theory and Different Logics of Political Participation

Abstract

Citizen participation in Spain has significantly increased, and its repertoire has broadened as a result of the 15M Movement. From assemblies and acampadas (occupations) to the current proliferation of new political parties, there has been constant movement through a wide range of techno-political actions and experimentation with means and political tools used by civil society and activists. This article aims to reflect on this complex and novel political repertoire from a theoretical framework of civil society. This framework is complemented with the differentiation of (horizontal versus vertical) political logics used in social movement studies.     

Basic Personal Values Underlie and Give Coherence to Political Values: A Cross National Study in 15 Countries

Do the political values of the general public form a coherent system? What might be the source of coherence? We view political values as expressions, in the political domain, of more basic personal values. Basic personal values (e.g., security, achievement, benevolence, hedonism) are organized on a circular continuum that reflects their conflicting and compatible motivations. We theorize that this circular motivational structure also gives coherence to political values. We assess this theorizing with data from 15 countries, using eight core political values (e.g., free enterprise, law and order) and ten basic personal values. We specify the underlying basic values expected to promote or oppose each political value. We offer different hypotheses for the 12 non-communist and three post-communist countries studied, where the political context suggests different meanings of a basic or political value. Correlation and regression analyses support almost all hypotheses. Moreover, basic values account for substantially more variance in political values than age, gender, education, and income. Multidimensional scaling analyses demonstrate graphically how the circular motivational continuum of basic personal values structures relations among core political values. This study strengthens the assumption that individual differences in basic personal values play a critical role in political thought.     

Political fragmentation, fiscal deficits and political institutionalisation

One line of research finds the size of the deficit to be positively correlated with the number of political actors. This ‘political fragmentation’ hypothesis has been tested on OECD countries. We successfully replicate Volkerink and de Haan’s (Public Choice 109:221–242, 2001) model on an OECD sample. However, when we add ten non-OECD countries, the effect of political fragmentation disappears. We argue that the importance of political fragmentation varies according to the institutionalization of political systems. When we interact the age of a democracy with political fragmentation, we find that legislative fractionalisation increases the budget deficit as a democracy becomes more institutionalised.     

Economic grievances and political protest

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU-SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine-grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de-mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro-level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.     

Culture and the Study of Politics*

This article is an introduction to a new and promising alternative to dominant reductionistic, utilitarian and instrumental political theories. ‘Cultural Theory’, or ‘Grid-Group’ analysis has been developed by the British anthropologist Mary Douglas and transferred to political science by the American political scientist Aaron Wildavsky. Starting from two dimensions - ‘group’ (group strength) and ‘grid’ (the number of rules that influence the individual space of action), there exist four main forms of human interaction or ways of life - individualism (markets), sectarianism (egalitarism). collectivism (hierarchy) and fatalism (slavery) which can be applied to all kinds of societies, organizations and individuals. These cultures are then used to predict political action (politics), institutions (polity) and results (policies). The article shows how the theory is built up and where it comes from, and then concentrates on important logical and empirical problems that so far remain unsolved.     

Determinants of political judgments: The joint influence of normative and heuristic rules of inference

Prior research on political judgment has been polarized, with one group emphasizing normative models of political inference and the other emphasizing heuristic models of political inference. In accordance with recent findings in psychology, this article is rooted in the assumption that both normative and heuristic criteria simultaneously influence political judgments. Furthermore, differences in the relative extent to which these two processes serve to determine political judgments are hypothesized to depend on the nature of the judgment task. Two kinds of political judgments are considered: judgments reflecting beliefs about the candidates' stands on the issues and judgments reflecting global evaluations of the candidates. The reported results confirm that (1) voters rely on both normative- and heuristic-based considerations when forming these judgments, and (2) the relative extent to which these criteria influence these judgments depends on the complexity of the judgment task.     

The Cadillac,the mother-in-law,and the ballot: Individual and contextual roots of ambivalence in Swiss direct democracy

Citizens may experience irreconcilable and conflictive values or feelings about a political issue. They may, for instance, both believe in a woman's right to autonomy over her body (pro choice) and that human life begins before birth (pro life). This conflictive situation – referred to as ambivalence in relevant literature – has detrimental effects on political choices. For instance, ambivalence may enhance instability in candidates' evaluations, delay the formation of vote intentions, and finally weaken predictions on vote choices.This being, literature has less looked at what may induce ambivalence, and especially on how informational context may affect it. Our paper aims to compensate for this lack, by assessing under which individual and contextual conditions ambivalence has more chances to be felt by citizens. Through a series of hierarchical estimations based on post-electoral data on Swiss direct democracy and original data retracing content of political campaigns, we will demonstrate that individual determinants (political sophistication, exposure to political campaigns, and heuristics) as well as political campaigning (intensity and negativism) strongly determine the existence of ambivalence.     

Beyond Membership: A Sense of Community and Political Behavior

Why does community matter for political participation? In this paper, I consider how community psychology, particularly “sense of community” can be used to address questions of political behavior. Individuals’ perceptions about their significance in a given community can have meaningful effects on the way in which communities influence politics. Using a unique survey instrument designed to capture individual’s perceptions of community connectedness and political behavior across five contexts (workplace, church, associations, neighborhood, and circle of friends (i.e., an informal network) I analyze data from 822 respondents and examine how sense of community influences two types of political behavior: voting in local elections and political discussion. The empirical analyses presented demonstrate that sense of community contributes to explaining voting and discussion, even after controlling for demographic, personality, and other political factors.     

Fear and youth citizenship practices: insights from Montreal

This article explores how fear contributes to empowerment and citizenship practices among youth who choose alternative lifestyles. Fear is conceived in a threefold manner: (1) as a manipulated resource in the political process, (2) as energy to be tamed through individual will, and (3) as radiating from actors and flowing through situations of action. Through an examination of how ‘risk-taking’ youths play with fear, the article critically reflects on the modern and advanced modern conceptualizations of the political ‘heroic’ actor and its articulation with an understanding of political action as decentered from human actors. Citizenship practices, it is argued, operate on five distinct levels of political engagement ranging from an awareness of the world outside of oneself to empathy for others and activism. Rather than being state-centered, the article develops an understanding of intersubjective citizenship based on affective memory.     

On Active Citizenship: Discourses and Language about Youth and Migrants in Italy

Abstract

The civic and political participation of young people and especially young migrants, who have limited rights of citizenship, is still a significant problem in Italy. Young people struggle to find opportunities and feel excluded from politics: the political agenda tends to see them more as a problem than as a resource. In this article, we illustrate the results of research to understand the dynamics of political and civic participation of young people and what the policy does in their favour. A content analysis of a corpus of European and Italian legislation, policy and planning documents has been undertaken. We also conducted six in-depth interviews with politicians and representatives of Italian nongovernmental organizations in order to investigate (a) policy priorities and institutional points of view, (b) consistency between these priorities and European programmes, and (c) European Union support for the policy actions and projects promoted in Italy about youth. The results showed a general difficulty for young people to ‘engage’ and be engaged in civic and political activities. There is also a gap between the political level and an effective investment which will recognize young people as a real resource.     

The corporate political strategy and its integration with market strategy in transitional China

• The paper provides an integrated strategy framework of political and market strategy aiming to respond to the external environment including political issues: (1) In strategic analysis stage, firm should incorporate non‐market issue analysis, selection and evaluation mechanism; (2) In strategic choice stage, firm should expand its strategic choice scope into political fields. The paper actually explores the taxonomy of CPS in transitional China; (3) Firm should pay attention to the integration between political strategy and market strategy. Finally, some theoretical and practicing implications are provided.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fear and Loathing in California: Contextual Threat and Political Sophistication Among Latino Voters

Environments having candidates or policies deemed threatening to an individual or group have previously been found to trigger feelings of anxiety that in turn motivate people to closely monitor political affairs. Racially charged ballot propositions, and the strong feelings they evoked, made California in the mid-1990s just such an environment for Latino citizens—resulting, we believe, in higher levels of political information. Using the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute's 1997 postelection survey of Hispanic citizens, we compare levels of political knowledge between naturalized and native-born Latino citizens in California and similarly situated Latino citizens in Texas. We find that, as a result of these highly publicized and controversial initiatives, Latino immigrants in California (a) are more likely than native-born Latinos and Latinos outside California to perceive racial issues as most important, and (b) manifest higher levels of political information than their fellow native-born Latinos and Latino citizens outside of California, controlling for other well-recognized predictors of political information levels.     

“央强地弱”政治信任结构与抗争性利益表达方式——基于城乡二元分割结构的定量分析

处于转型期的中国社会,抗争性利益表达已经成为公民表达利益诉求的重要方式之一.利用GCSS2010相关调查数据和Logistic回归模型,本文在对居民利益表达途径做“二维四元”划分基础之上,主要考察了中国“央强地弱”政治信任结构与居民抗争性利益表达途径之间的关系,具体就是考察“央-地政治信任差距”与“体制内非惯例化利益表达”和“体制外惯例化利益表达”的关联.研究发现:与非农业人口比,农业人口选择抗争性利益表达的可能性更大;“央强地弱”政治信任结构与抗争性利益表达之间也存在显著性正向相关关系;同时,女性抗争性利益表达参与率要低于男性.对利益表达途径做“二维四元”划分有助于深入把握和理解当前中国抗争性利益表达的发生机制;而厘清政治信任结构与居民抗争性利益表达之间的逻辑,则有助于认清当前中国政府治理中存在的问题.当然,本文还存在一些不足,特别是未能把体制内非惯例化和体制外惯例化利益表达“同时采取”,以及“均未采取”的情况考虑在模型之内.     

Mapping the production of political communications: a model to assist in understanding the relationships between the production and consumption of political messages

High public interest today in political communications such as ‘spin’ and in political participation such as electoral turnout suggests that there may be value in exploring the processes by which political messages are produced and consumed, and their inter‐relationship with participation. It may be that what citizen‐voters think of message production influences how they consume political news and publicity (through observing and evaluating), and that the propensity to political participation is subsequently affected. This paper offers a model which traces the production of political communications, starting at their origins in the political class, and flowing via traditional political journalism or controlled media and new media to citizen‐voters who both observe and evaluate them (ie consume them) before, during and after making any political choices. It is hypothesised that the observation and evaluation of message production and content by political consumers influences both their types and levels of participation. Research of this nature into political organisations is relatively rare. Similarly, there is little evidence of investigations into other aspects highlighted in the model: attitudes of the political class towards political communications, the production of political communications before they reach the media and how they are received by the media, and their consumption by citizen‐voters in relation to the propensity to participate in politics. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation

A growing chorus of scholars laments the apparent decline of political participation in America, and the negative implications of this trend for American democracy. This article questions this position – arguing that previous studies misdiagnosed the sources of political change and the consequences of changing norms of citizenship for Americans' political engagement. Citizenship norms are shifting from a pattern of duty-based citizenship to engaged citizenship. Using data from the 2005 'Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy' survey of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society (CDACS) I describe these two faces of citizenship, and trace their impact on political participation. Rather than the erosion of participation, this norm shift is altering and expanding the patterns of political participation in America.     

Normative behaviourism as a solution to four problems in realism and non-ideal theory

ABSTRACT

This article advances the case for ‘normative behaviourism’ – a new way of doing political philosophy that tries to turn facts about observable patterns of behaviour, as produced by different political systems, into grounds for specific political principles. This approach is applied to four distinct problems at the heart of the ideal/non-ideal theory and moralism/realism debates: (1) How to distinguish good from bad idealisations; (2) how to rank options of variable feasibility, cost, and danger; (3) how to distinguish legitimate acceptance of a given political system from acceptance based on coercion or false consciousness; and (4) how to translate abstract principles into concrete institutions. Objections against the general viability of normative behaviourism, and against the types of behaviour it tracks, are also considered.