Human Branding in Political Marketing: Applying Contemporary Branding Thought to Political Parties and Their Leaders

Political marketing advances by engaging with new and advanced concepts from both of its parent disciplines. One of the most recent fields of brand research—the study of the human brand—is taken into the political marketing arena in this essay. Human branding is an emergent topic in mainstream marketing. The value as a brand of a person who is well-known and subject to explicit marketing communications efforts is being investigated in many fields. The concept has clear prima facie value in political marketing, where the role of a political leader as part of the political marketing offer has been recognized extensively. Politics is also a unique context given the relationship between leaders and parties, each of which has some unique brand associations. The process of exploring the application of human branding in politics also provides a context in which some of the interactions among party and leader, human brand, and organizational brand can be explored and further developed. Among the conclusions are that political party leaders require brand authenticity as an advocate of the party policy platform and brand authority to command the organization and deliver on the policies being advocated. Implications for party and campaign management are outlined.     

State formation in seventeenth-century Ireland: the Restoration financial settlement, 1660–62

The Irish Restoration financial settlement formed an integral part of the deal that was struck between Irish Protestants and the restored Charles II in the early 1660s. Driven by a desire to retain lands acquired in the 1650s, the Protestant-dominated Irish government crafted a set of financial bills that granted the Crown a perpetual and hereditary revenue in Ireland in return for security of tenure. Based on innovative Cromwellian reforms, the royal government retained many elements of Cromwellian fiscal policy, which transformed the Irish economy into a net contributor to the English Treasury by the 1680s. The customs and excise acts also laid the basis for the emergence of an embryonic state bureaucracy that emerged in Ireland during Charles II's reign. This article examines both the rationale behind the Irish Protestant interest's policies in the early 1660s and the political negotiating that saw them secure favourable land legislation at the expense of those Catholics who had served the monarchy in the 1640s and 1650s.     

PPB: Its relevance to financially constrained municipalities

Abstract. This paper assumes that Planning-Programming-Budgeting (ppb ) is preferable to the current historical budgeting procedure of municipalities. This is in part because ppb necessitates policy-making (defined as the setting of goals). The paper argues that the ability of municipalities to adopt ppb and policy-making is severely constrained by fiscal imbalance. The reliance of Canadian municipalities on conditional transfers and on the property tax has negated ppb procedures by distorting priorities and narrowing decision-making. The paper further argues that inflation will accentuate the financial problems of municipalities because of different revenue and tax elasticities. The point of departure is a brief examination of the logic behind urban government and the division of responsibilities. The second section looks at municipal fiscal imbalance, and the third analyses how fiscal imbalance negates policy-making and ppb . A final section suggests three remedies that might induce adoption of ppb . One would reduce the distortions of transfers and the other two would ease fiscal imbalance. Sommaire. Cet article suggère que le processus de Planification-Programmation et Budgétisation (ppb ) est préférable au processus de budgétisation couramment en usage dans les municipalités, en partie parce que le ppb implique la détermination d'objectifs politiques. L'article soutient que la possibilité d'adoption du ppb et d'une politique précise par les municipalités est très limitée à cause du déséquilibre fiscal. La subordination des municipalités canadiennes aux subventions conditionnelles et a Fimpôt fonder, en changeant les priorités et en limitant le pouvoir de décision, a rendu impossible le ppb. L'article soutient de plus que l'inflation accentuera les problèmes financiers des municipalités à cause des différentes élasticités des taxes et des revenus. L'étude commence par un bref examen des principes qui régissent l'administration urbaine et 3a division des responsabilités. La deuxième partie traite du déséquilibre fiscal des municipalités, et la troisième indique pour quelle raison le déséquilibre fiscal rend impossible une politique suivie et l'application du processus du ppb . Une dernière partie suggère trois solutions qui pourraient faciliter l'adoption du ppb. L'une réduirait les distortions dues aux subventions conditionnelles et les deux autres permettraient d'alléger le déséquilibre fiscal.     

The majority as minority: women and contemporary politics in Scotland,New Zealand and Finland,c. 1960–96

SUMMARY

In this article, Catriona Burness seeks to establish the current potential for increasing significantly the level of women's participation in politics in Scotland and the United Kingdom in the light of the experience of their representation in Scotland, New Zealand and Finland since 1960. The comparator countries have been selected because they are small countries of comparable size, with advanced political cultures, in which women have been eligible to vote and be elected to parliaments for a considerable period of time. The article reviews the history of women's representation in each of these countries and seeks to identify patterns in the developments that have taken place. It then discusses the prospects for further advances on the current position, in particular in the light of the probable introduction of a devolved assembly in Scotland.