Political Brands: Can Parties Be Distinguished by Their Online Brand Personality?

This paper investigates whether five English political parties are differentiating themselves based on the brand personality they are communicating through their websites. The relative brand positions of five English political parties are analyzed using Aaker's brand personality scale. The text from each party website is analyzed using content analysis and a dictionary-based tool. The results are plotted in relation to one another on a correspondence analysis map. We find that the two main dimensions on which parties’ brand personalities differ relate to the trade-offs between communicating competence and communicating sincerity and between communicating sophistication and communicating ruggedness. We find that parties’ brand personalities are distinctive, with the exception of the Green Party, and that the position of one party, the United Kingdom Independence Party, is particularly distinctive. Our research uses Aaker's existing framework for thinking about brand personalities, rather than creating a new framework for politics. By using an existing framework, we are able to use tools developed in other disciplines and show their usefulness for the study of political marketing.     

Populist Radical Right Parties in the Nordic Region: A New and Distinct Party Family?

The Nordic countries are no longer characterized by a stable five‐party system. Not only have small Christian parties and Green parties emerged in most countries, so‐called ‘populist radical right parties’ have also been increasingly successful in recent decades. This article examines to what extent the populist radical right parties in the Nordic countries represent a new party family. Based on various and original data, including archive material, interviews with key representatives, party manifestos and expert surveys, the processes of deciding party names, the development of transnational linkages and ideological transformation are analyzed. The article demonstrates that even though the Danish People's Party, the True Finns and the Sweden Democrats have different historical legacies, they have converged ideologically (i.e., socioeconomically centrist and socioculturally authoritarian), adopted similar names and are on the verge of becoming a more formalized transnational actor. The Progress Party in Norway is better seen as a hybrid between a populist radical right party and a more traditional conservative party. The findings challenge several classifications in the extensive literature on populist radical right parties. Most importantly, the True Finns should be included as a populist radical right party, whereas the Norwegian party should be treated more carefully. Furthermore, Nordic populist radical right parties are no longer – if they have ever been – so‐called ‘neoliberal populists’. Finally, the findings suggest a re‐freezing of the Nordic party systems in which a phase of divergence has been replaced by a phase of convergence.     

Which Electoral Formula Is the Most Proportional? A New Look with New Evidence

A ranking exists in electoral systems research of differentelectoral formulas—the mathematical functions governingthe conversion of votes into legislative seats—in termsof both proportionality of seats and votes and favorabilityto the largest party. I reexamine this issue with new methodsand new evidence, attempting to cross-validate previous rankingsusing a larger and more controlled data set and more preciseparametric methods than have been applied previously. The resultsby and large confirm previous knowledge but also illuminateseveral important new facets obscured in previous investigations.For example, at common ranges of district magnitude (from 5to 15 seats), it is shown that electoral formula may matterat least as much as district magnitude in shaping proportionality.     

Why accommodate minorities asymmetrically? A theory of ideological authority insulation

Tensions between regionalist claimants and state-wide governments remain the primary source of violent conflicts. Existing theories cannot systematically explain why and when state-wide governments accede to such claims. Building on the partisan approaches developed so far, a theory of ideological authority insulation is constructed in this article. It is argued that the willingness of state-wide parties to transfer authority to specific territorial entities is predominantly informed by ideological proximity to those entities. In a nutshell, the dominant conflict dimension in a country superimposes partisan rationales on the territorial dimension. A new dataset has been compiled with roughly 4,300 region-cabinet dyads between 1945 and 2015, including electoral data, party positions and regional ‘centres of gravity’. Using panel rare-events regressions, it is found that ideological proximity systematically explains the accommodation of minority demand controlling for alternative explanations from the partisan and ethnic conflict literature. The empirical evidence therefore supports adding ideological insulation and superimposition to the toolbox of partisan and conflict researchers. Additionally, the findings encourage the application of arguments from the conflict literature in established democracies and the testing of insights from partisan researchers in less democratic environments.     

When,How and Why Are Junior Coalition Parties Able to Affect a Government's Foreign Policy? A Study of Swedish Coalition Governments 2006–2014

Junior partners in a coalition government are torn between an eagerness to profile themselves, and to show loyalty to the coalition. We investigate when, how and why junior coalition parties affect foreign policy and profile themselves despite demands for national unity. We study two Swedish centre‐right governments in 2006–2010 and 2010–2014. The parties' foreign policy positions in election manifestos are compared to the foreign policy positions presented in the joint Alliance manifesto and yearly government declarations. An explorative analysis of possible explanations for junior parties' influence is based on elite interviews. The results indicate that junior coalition parties might influence the foreign policy in symbolic value related issues, but less so in issues with real policy implications. Our analysis reveals the importance of the leading member of the coalition and how junior parties converge over time towards the position of the senior coalition member.     

What Does Credibility Look like? Tweets and Walls in U.S. Presidential Candidates’ Visual Storytelling

This study considers the social media visual messaging of four candidates in the 2012 U.S. Republican presidential primary campaign. The analysis is guided by symbolic convergence theory, its method of fantasy theme analysis, and visual rhetoric theory. Using a schema of visual attributes, this study analyzes a rhetorical strategy of candidates' campaigns: the pictorial “public diary” found on their official Facebook and Twitter pages. It reveals how the credibility character traits of trustworthiness and expertise appear in the candidates' visual narratives, what messages dominate, and how candidates differ in succeeding or failing to visually communicate credibility. This study has important implications for how political management can use images in crafting and assessing messaging strategies in a competitive environment.     

Parties and their Leaders. Does it matter how they match? The German General Elections 2009 in comparison

The ‘personalization of politics’ hypothesis assumes that personalization takes place in election campaigns, in the mass-media, and in the calculus of voting. We claim that the distinction between person/leader and organization implicitly assumed by the personalization hypothesis does not capture how voters observe politics. In contrast, our hypothesis is that evaluation criteria regarding parties and leaders are not in competition but reinforcing. This hypothesis is investigated by looking at the relevance of party and leader evaluations for vote choice in the German Federal Elections in 1998, 2002, 2005, and 2009. The results show that party evaluation matter more than leader evaluation and, more importantly, a match of parties and their leaders with regard to general evaluations determine vote choice as good as single evaluations together.