Political marketing, party behaviour and political science

This chapter will critically examine theories of political marketing, with particular reference to the three-stage model as developed by Jennifer Lees-Marshment. The analysis will concentrate on what is arguably the major weakness in the operationalisation of approaches rooted in marketing theory, in that the media appear to be merely an agent for getting the message of both ‘sales-oriented parties’ (SOPs) and ‘market-oriented parties’ (MOPs) across. Both the methods of political marketing (such as focus groups) and the normative elements of the Lees-Marshment model also pose problems for traditional conceptions of democratic accountability. Despite such criticisms, the Lees-Marshment model has been an important contribution to the literature and, as the country studies in this book demonstrate, a valuable aid for comparative study.