Page 69 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Transnational Trends in Political Communication

Political Marketing
To adapt to their altered circumstances and remain viable, the major
parties in many countries turned to experts in marketing and public
relations, opinion polling, and other techniques to discover how they
could effectively appeal to citizens. In place of or in addition to tradi-
tional campaign practices such as rallies of the party faithful, they relied
on the sophisticated use of the mass media to persuade voters – the
“consumers” of political communication – to support them at election
time, and they offered campaigns that featured the appealing personali-
ties of party leaders (e.g., Franklin 1994; Kavanagh 1995; Maarek 1995,
1997; Scammell 1995, 1999; Blumler et al. 1996; Negrine 1996). Some of
the best studies that revealed these phenomena to be emerging in many
democracies were explicitly comparative (e.g., Butler and Ranney 1992;
Kaid and Holtz-Bacha 1995; Swanson and Mancini 1996b; Holtz-Bacha
1999; Mancini 1999; Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999).
In older democracies, the transition from traditional methods of po-
litical electioneering to media campaigns based on political marketing
was incremental, taking place in steps over a period of years. In newer
democracies such as Spain and Russia, for example, the media-intensive
“modernmodelofpoliticalcampaigning”(SwansonandMancini1996a,
249–52)waswelldevelopedwhenthetransitiontodemocracybeganand
was adopted more or less intact as the model for how democratic elec-
tioneering would be done.
However quickly or fully it has been adopted, the modern model of
campaigning has been identified with some important and fundamental
changes in political parties and their relationship to voters. The media-
intensive modern model has brought the professionalization of political
campaigning, as technical experts in using mass media, opinion polling,
and marketing techniques have been brought into political parties –
sometimes as consultants, sometimes as party employees or officials –
and been given voice in party decision making (one difference in how
the modern model has been adopted in different countries concerns the
degree of authority given to the professional experts).
As political campaigning has been professionalized, the content of
campaigns – and the nature of the political parties that are most suc-
cessful – also has changed. The modern model is, above all, a model for
how to win elections. It leads to catch-all political parties and catch-all
political campaigns, in which the parties try to appeal to the broadest
range of political opinions and, thereby, the greatest number of voters.
In consequence, parties driven by the modern model tend to seek broad,

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