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.     

Recent books on the East

The following paper was discovered by Laurence Evans, Professor of History at the State University of New York at Binghamton, during the course of research in the files of the Department of State (to which Department the paper had been made available in 1918 for use as background information by the American Delegation at the Peace Conference), and Professor Evans has kindly communicated it to the Society. Its contents are not included in the book on Mecca which Snouk published in German, and it is not among the scattered articles in Verspreide Geschriften (1923–27). That collection does, however, include another essay about Ahmad Dahlan, in Dutch, entitled “Een rector der Mekkaansche universiteit”, originally contributed to a learned journal and reprinted in vol. 111, pp. 65–122. [We are printing this paper in good faith believing it to be previously unpublished. Ed.]     

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.     

Gender equality and social security

He is author of Capitalism and the Welfare State; Clients and Constituents;and co-author (with Barbara Gilbert) of The Enabling State: Modern Welfare Capitalism in America;and (with Joel Duerr Berrick) With the Best of Intentions: The Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Movement.     

Generic Prejudice and the Presumption of Guilt in Sex Abuse Trials

In 25 Canadian criminal trials involving charges of sexual abuse, 849 prospective jurors were asked under oath whether they could hear the evidence, follow the judge's instructions on the Jaw, and decide the case with a fair and impartial mind. Knowing only the nature of the charges against the accused, on average 36% of the jurors stated that they could not be impartial Some jurors explained that they themselves had been victims of abuse, others expressed fears for children, while others stated simply that they could not set aside a presumption of guilt. These findings from real trials are consistent with a body of social science literature about attitudes toward sexual abuse and sexual assault charges. The article distinguishes between prejudices arising from specific pretrial publicity and generic prejudices that cause prejudgments of the case of any defendant perceived as belonging to a general class of defendants who likely are guilty of the crime(s) charged.