The Phenomenon of Political Marketing

This book provides a survey of the phenomenon of marketing which has become the dogma of America's politicians and their campaign managers. It poses some fundamental questions about how the import of commercial techniques to politics has revolutionized the nature of American democracy.;In this new order, political office becomes a cycle of permanent re-election campaigns as real power is siphoned off to the staffers and bureaucratic incubi of Washington. Political skill has been re-defined so that mediability becomes the central asset and the smart phrase is preferred to the smart idea.;Elections, the author contends do not merely use marketing methods - the content itself has become a marketplace shaped by a market dynamic, its agendas set by commercial consultants and sold as products.;Marketing sponsors a fickle, atomised political agenda in which majority interests are crowded out. But the author is not a pessimist. Under the marketing dynamic, politics is opened to new talent and the interests of previously ignored social groupings are placed on the political agenda. In the author's view there is a non factional, but also more sensitized political system emerging, as old power elites shuffle off the stage.