Conclusion: Political Marketing, Democracy and Partnership

Abstract

Politics in the twenty-first century will be radically different to what has come before. Political practitioners — whether politician, market researcher, advertiser, strategist, policy advisor, press secretary, campaign manager or party secretary — have at their disposal clear rules on how to use marketing to navigate the complex electoral game. However, to win the political marketing game elites need to make careful choices. Politicians need to adopt principled pragmatism. They need to offer responsive leadership that responds to but does not just follow public opinion; authentic reflectiveness that shows genuine consideration of different demands but does not change position without justification; research informed decisions that are not just led by market analysis; and still have a sense of strategic vision that takes multiple markets into account but also incorporates attempts to achieve belief-stimulated change. Furthermore, politicians need to move towards a partnership relationship with the public whereby both citizens and government work together to find solutions. This chapter will summarise the results of the research, before suggesting a theory of a partnership democracy which will be discussed within the overall context of a changing relationship between the public and politicians.

What you saw in 2003 with the Howard Dean campaign was the beginning of a very different model … where you view people out there not as couch potatoes as we called them in the US, but as partner in your fight … it’s not a broad based model it’s a partnership model.

—Rosenberg (2007)

It was moving from transactional politics to transformational politics: transactional politics is — somebody comes to you and says ‘If you vote for us, we’ll give you this.’ Transformational politics is community building. It’s the idea of saying ‘We’re all in this together. Don’t you want to see our community get better? If we elect Barack Obama we will see our lives improve in the following ways. Come do it with me.’

—Mehta (2009)

It needs a much clearer sense about what government’s role is. … where are the bits that need an act of partnership between government and community? … while there are instances of really good practice coming out of government in terms of how it works with community, because there isn’t a brand … and an expectation built around it, that good practice falls into a void of ‘You were lucky, or, I didn’t notice.’ So, we need to change our market expectations.

—Pattillo (2009)

However pleasant popularity is, ‘all things to all people’ never lasts for long. Then as I struggled with the levers of power … I was determined to do the right thing. But … if you’re not careful, ‘doing the right thing’ becomes ‘I know best’. So, starting with the Big Conversation, I went back out, and … I learnt … the best policy comes from a true partnership between Government and people. Governments can spend. We can exhort. We can legislate. But we cannot cure the sick. We cannot be inside every classroom. We cannot police the streets … So this journey has gone from ‘all things to all people’ to ‘I know best’ to ‘we can only do it together’. And we all know which is best of those three. A partnership.

—Speech by Tony Blair to Labour’s spring conference at the Sage Centre in Gateshead (13 February 2005)