Party planners – how political strategies are chosen

• Author: Sigge Winther Nielsen
• Date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1537
• Published date: 01 November 2015

■Academic Paper

Party planners –how political strategies

are chosen

Sigge Winther Nielsen*

Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

When and why do party strategists select one marketing strategy over another relevant one? In this research,

we answer this question by outlining a new institutional strategy framework on the basis of social psycho-

logical assumptions. This framework links the cognition of party operatives to their task of selecting a mar-

keting strategy. On this ground, we empirically test a number of hypotheses derived from this framework.

The results suggest that party strategists are influenced by their cognitive framing of the environment, but

this influence is mediated by context-specific variables embedded in the political realm such as historical ten-

sions, coalition partners, or the ideology, goal, and organizational structure of the party. Copyright © 2014

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Strategic decisions shape the destinies of political

parties. In complex environments, good strategic

actions can make them and bad decisions break

them; it is therefore crucial to understand the

processes underlying strategic decision making

(Collins & Butler, 2002; Henneberg, 2006; Lynch,

Baines, & Egan, 2006). Accordingly, scholarly work

in political marketing is burgeoning, specifically be-

cause the strateg y concept is an esse ntial part of

marketing research . Indeed, many of t he predomi-

nant strategy models from marketing have been

transferred to the field of political marketing in o r-

der to illumina te the behavi or of parties. It relates

to models that examine the strategy selection of

parties on the basis of their market roles (Collins

& Butler, 2002), capabilities (Barber, 2005; Lynch

et al., 2006), voter segmentations (Newman, 1994;

Smith & Hirst, 2001), market analyses (Kotler &

Kotler, 1999; Baines, Harris, & Lewis, 2002; Maarek,

2011), market orientations (Ormrod & Henneberg,

2010; Ormrod & Savigny, 2012), or market struc-

tures (Baines, Brennan, & Egan, 2003).

Much of this research is based on the premise

that the environment, broadly speaking, can be

rationally understood and processed before a

strategic decision is made. However, some

scholars acknowledge that the inherent, biased

cognition of party strategists and the complexi-

ties of institutionalized organizational environ-

ments are important factors to incorporate

when analyzing strategy selection (Baines &

Lynch, 2005; Henneberg, 2006; Savigny, 2007;

Lim & Moufahim, 2009; Nielsen, 2012). The

problem is, nonetheless, that we know little

about how these cognitive mechanisms influence

party strategists when they make sense of their

environment and in turn use this perception to

embark on a certain strategy. In this article, we

seek to address this gap. In particular, we out-

line and empirically test an organizational new

*Correspondence to: Sigge Winther Nielsen, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Oster Farimagsgade 5,

Copenhagen, Denmark.

E-mail: sigge_winther@yahoo.dk

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 4 pp 340–363 (2015)

Published online 2 September 2014 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1537

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

institutional strategy framework

1

investigating the

social psychological foundation undergirding strate-

gic choices in politics.

Overall, this article makes one central contributions

to the literature on political marketing strategy. That

is, we empirically encircle when and why party strate-

gists select one marketing strategy over another

relevant one. This is made possible through a unique

access to the strategic thinking of top party operatives

in combination with a survey experiment.

The argument is laid out in four steps. First, we

present a framework capturing the process by

which the cognitive categories of party strategists

are understood as the mechanism coupling environ-

mental perception and organizational action. From

this departure, four hypotheses are delineated.

Second, we describe the method employed to test

these hypotheses by pinpointing the research partic-

ipants, procedures, measures, and the empirical

setting. Third, we report the findings. Finally, we

discuss the limitations of these results and evaluate

ways to improve the outlined framework by inte-

grating literature on parties from political science.

THEORY: POLITICAL MARKETING

STRATEGY

In the following,we first brieflydefine what we mean

by a politicalmarketing strategy.Next, we outline a new

institutional strategy framework for political mar-

keting. Finally, on the basis of the framework, we

delineate four hypotheses for empirical testing.

Defining a political marketing strategy

Anumberofdefinitions have been proposed for

political marketing strategy (e.g., Smith & Hirst,

2001: 1059; Collins & Butler, 2002: 2; Baines & Lynch,

2005: 2; Barber, 2005: 9; Lees-Marshment, 2009: 40;

Nielsen, 2012:293). We suggest that:‘Political market-

ing strategy is the identification of a political entity’s

purpose and the schemethrough which that purpose

will be achieved’. (Nielsen, 2012: 294). The choice of

this definition is twofold. First, it is a minimal defini-

tion, which means, prima facie, that it can include

all other definitions of political marketing strategy

(e.g., Gerring, 1997). Put differently, the definition

does not exclude or contradict other important

defining attributes from the field, such as looking

solely at capabilities or market orientations. Second,

it encourages us to embody the richness of the politi-

cal marketingstrategy concept by outlining subclassi-

fications to the minimal definition. As an example, in

this article, we will surround an organizational new

institutional strategy perspective, which subscribes

to an interpretive epistemology (Savigny, 2007; Lim

& Moufahim, 2009;Lim & Moufahim, 2011), whereas

other authors dealing with linear political marketing

planning (Newman,1994; Kotler & Kotler, 1999)sub-

scribe to a rationalepistemology (for an overview,see

Nielsen, 2012: 297).The minimal definition is thereby

a common denominator, which scholars should be

able to support despite having different outlooks

concerning epistemological presuppositions.

More broadly, the definition propels that the

strategies a party conducts are not solely based on mar-

keting management techniques such as various promo-

tional campaigns, which symbolize the icing on the

cake. Rather, the definition encompasses the notion of

a‘scheme’, which implies that a marketing strategy

can also be about launching novel truth claims, which

symbolize the process of baking the entire cake. As

such, a marketing strategy might simply be responding

to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-

operation and Development (OECD) by introducing a

new ad campaign—but it could also be a commission’s

instigation to postpone a decision or completely

change the discursive turf by outlining an alternative

dimension in the electorate’s view of a political topic

(e.g., Lees-Marshment 2001: Henneberg, 2006).

In this way, the political marketing strategy litera-

ture separates itself from, for example, political science

party research. In political science, it is assumed that a

party (especially a vote-seeking party that mostly

resembles the marketing strategy lens) will take its

point of departure in a spatialconception withgeneric

postures (Meguid, 2005: 349; Wagner, 2012: 64). That

is, a party basically has two modes of operation: (i) it

1

In the institutional theory literature, there is a well-established dis-

tinction between old and new institutional theory.In sum, old insti-

tutionalism focuses mostly on the internal organizational processes,

whereas new institutionalism directs attention toward the external

organizational events (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Scott, 1995). Even

so, within new institutional theory,another fundamental distinction

is prudent to underscore. It is a distinction between rational, histori-

cal, and organizational new institutionalism (Hall & Taylor, 1996). In

this article, we take our point of departure from organizational new

institutionalism. Tworeasons are germane to underscore. First,ratio-

nal and historical versions of new institutionalism consist of

mindsets that to some extent are already reflected in the field of po-

litical marketing strategy. By contrast, organizational new institu-

tionalism has only briefly been touched upon (e.g., Ming and

Moufahim 2009); thereby,we can contribute with novel knowledge.

Second, organizational new institutionalism has achieved great

merits in both marketing and business strategy (e.g., Oliver, 1991;

Handelman&Arnold,1999;Creed,Scully&Austin,2002).Assuch,

the selection is aligned with other theory transfers to the field of po-

litical marketing strategy, which have highlighted relevant market-

ing and business concepts such as the resource-based view (Lynch

et al., 2006) or market positioning (Butler & Collins, 1996). However,

as a transfer object, organizational new institutional theory separates

itself from the other examples because it plays a pivotal role in the

literature of both parents of political marketing—political science

and business/marketing research. And this observation makes

new institutional theory,at the outset, commensurable with political

marketing studies.

Party planners –how political strategies are chosen 341

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Public Affairs 15, 340–363 (2015)

DOI: 10.1002/pa