Towards a critical political marketing agenda?

This paper conceptualises political marketing as a field which needs to engage more deeply with the symbolic and discursive insights of critical theory in order to advance significantly beyond its current theoretical and empirical parameters. Although the marketing theories and concepts which have influenced this growing sub-discipline have been applied productively to the marketing of political parties (and, more broadly, to the processes of democratic governance), political marketing scholars now recognise the need to stretch both its theoretical and practical boundaries in order to promote a more inclusive research agenda. This paper reviews some of these concerns, analyses their strengths and weaknesses and proposes a "critical turn" for the field of political marketing based on critical theories of consumption, production and difference.

of various critical theories to political phenomena and alludes to the way in which such an agenda changes both the tone and content of the political marketing agenda. Finally, we discuss the implications of a critical approach to political marketing and conclude with future directions for research.

THE NATURE OF POLITICAL MARKETING: CURRENT DEBATES
According to Wring (1997), the term "political marketing" was first coined by Kelley (1956) in his study on the increasing influence of professional persuaders in politics. For Kelley (1956), "marketing" essentially meant "persuasion" and was an update of a theme familiar since the First World War, as a new instrument of social control. However, the use of the marketing discourse also reflects the view that professionals from the commercial marketing industry, especially marketing, were increasingly involved in political persuasion (Scammell 1999).
The gradual, but inexorable, intrusion of a corporate mindset into political marketing is hardly new, but is only now being critically acknowledged as a source of conceptual "contamination" by scholars. In this sense, political marketing resembles what Kotler and Andreassen (1991, p. 42) have called the "mindset of consumercenteredness" (in O'Cass 1996) inside the organisation. The many analogies between consumer marketing and political marketing have clearly been exploited by researchers (see among others Egan 1999;O'Cass 1996;Niffenegger 1989;O'Leary and Iredale 1976;Kotler 1975;Shama 1973). Applied to political processes, commercial marketing becomes "political marketing", i.e. the application of business practices to politics and the mindset of "voter-centeredness". Lees-Marshment (2001) adopts a similar view by arguing that political marketing is about political organisations adapting business-marketing concepts and techniques. Harris (2003) notes the adoption of electoral campaigning techniques in business, for influencing and gaining strategic corporate advantage. Similarly, Andrew (1996) notes the direct relevance of political marketing techniques to business lobbying. As such, lobbying -already an established tool of modern political communication -and campaigning by pressure groups are viewed as part of modern marketing (Harris 2003;Harris and Lock 2001). Over the last decade and more, analyses of pressure group and political lobbying, public affairs and public relations (e.g. Harris 2003;Harris and Lock 2001;Andrew 1996) have risen to the top of the political marketing research agenda; as such, they form an integral part of contemporary agendas for political marketing research and will be discussed in more detail later in the paper.
At the same time, there are many dissident voices in the debate of the "appropriateness" of marketing in politics. O'Shaughnessy (2001) considers political marketing and commercial marketing as separate "ecologies" (p. 1057). He argues that marketing is primarily a business discipline and, as such, warns against making the assumption that "political contexts are invariably analogous to business to the extent that methods can be important and used with equal effect" (O'Shaughnessy 2001(O'Shaughnessy , p. 1047. Similarly, Lock and Harris argue that the parallels between political marketing and mainstream marketing are superficial, even though "marketing perspectives and analytical methods clearly have considerable applicability" (Lock and Harris 1996, p. 23) and consequently political marketing, as a separate discipline, needs to develop its own paradigms and vocabulary (Lock and Harris 1996). Savigny (2008, p. 5) even argues that on an idealistic level, marketing and politics are actually mutually exclusive categories and therefore both ontologically and analytically distinct. She does, however, acknowledge that on a more practical level this needs to be reconciled with our neoliberal contemporary politics which privileges markets and, more specifically, the practicalities of election campaigning in a technologically dense, media-centred environment (Savigny 2008).
The debates outlined in this section point towards a more radical edge in political marketing research which is emerging today. We wish to extend the vision much further by drawing attention to critical theories which have been used by scholars in a number of other disciplines as well as empirical methods which highlight the discursive and symbolic realities of "political" phenomena (see for example Weaver et al. 2004). Weaver et al. (2006Weaver et al. ( , 2004 for example, use critical theory to show how propaganda and public relations can be understood as discourse practices utilised to legitimate social, political and/or economic power and the public interest. For political marketing to mature as a truly interdisciplinary subject (e.g. Hunt 1983), we advocate not only the application of marketing tools and concepts to politics, but also a deeper engagement with a comprehensive range of social theories which illuminate post-industrial consumer societies. The willingness and ability of scholars and practitioners to develop such an engagement is vital to a "critical" research agenda for political marketing.

CRITICAL AND POLITICAL MARKETING: FRAMING THE ISSUES
The arguments of "critical marketing" (Bradshaw and Fırat 2008;Tadajewski and Brownlie 2008;Brownlie 2006;Brownlie et al. 1999;Brownlie and Saren 1995;Morgan 1992 ) relate directly to the need to re-examine the conventional assumptions of marketing theory and practice which underpin political marketing research today. Two key implications of critical marketing stand out for our analysis of political marketing research. The first pertains to the ideological construction of the "market" and "consumer" as discourses which must be critically examined rather than assumed as "natural", let alone desirable, for consumers. The second relates to how political marketing, therefore, constructs citizens and concerned individuals -in monolithic ways -as consumers of products and services, thus encouraging partyvoter relationships which are commodified along the lines of the market; these, in turn, distort the genuine needs and aspirations of voters.
Political marketing research, therefore, needs to take into account the real effects of these discursive and ideological operations. There is much more scope within the field for greater recognition of the fact that political phenomena is discursively embedded within political and economic systems, through old and new media and new formats of marketing and communications. Emerging research in political marketing (Roper 2005;Kaid 2004), for instance, shows how critical marketing can be put to work in empirical analyses of political advertising and communications. The powerful campaign that carried Barack Obama to the White House in 2009 will be remembered for its use of technologies such as Twitter, viral blogs, SMS, social networking sites, all of which were mobilised along with more traditional activist programmes such as volunteering, political advertising and so on. Such research would be grounded in the view that political marketing is the marketing of texts as much as they are about the infrastructure humans construct to interpret and manipulate those texts.
In terms of how voters are constructed as consumers, a critical politics would need to acknowledge that these communicative platforms tread complex lines of race, ethnicity, gender and class. These differences cannot, and should not, be obliterated through one-dimensional constructions of the voter as a "consumer". We note that an ideology of marketing, embodied in marketing discourse, has contributed to the current centrality of consumption in creating meaning and significance in people's lives (Gibson et al. 2003;Brownlie and Horne 1999). Critical marketing research recognises that marketers not only help provide for the physical needs of consumers; they also provide the symbolic material for their identity construction and expression. As such, marketing has shaped and continues to shape the social sphere by defining the space within which social relations are constituted as social exchanges. A discourse of political marketing which constructs voters not as active citizens in civic society but as consumers deciding which policies and politicians they will "buy" with their vote must, therefore, be reflexively examined.
Taking all these arguments as a whole, it seems only logical to argue that scholars of political marketing demonstrate greater awareness of our own, self-legitimating, discourses. Political marketing research has largely ignored, or taken for granted, its own ideological bases. A reflexive introspection would provide an alternative position to the largely accepted idea that political marketing is (a self-proclaimed) democracy enhancer (see Kotler and Kotler 1999). A good starting point would be, for example, to recognise the reflexive power of the marketing discourse itself in perpetuating inequitable relations between voters and institutional forces, between groups of individuals and between governments with widely divergent, yet interconnected, agendas.

LIKE?
The critical marketing project does not draw attention towards "new" marketing phenomena, but to the conditions of possibility of the "new": how we might render different images of what we have already decided is knowable. In this regard, critical marketing argues for a socially and historically located understanding of the discipline and the traditions that link the interpreter with what is interpreted (Brownlie 2006;Burton 2005Burton , 2001Brownlie 2000;Holbrook 1997;Arnold and Fischer 1994). For example, critical political marketing should be sceptical towards associated truth claims, and express doubts about normalising precepts which are taken for granted: such as the problems and consequences of conceiving political marketing management and practice as politically neutral. Together with a need to question the dominance of positivism which continues to inform so much empirical work undertaken in political marketing, we also question rational choice theory and neoclassical economic assumptions underlying political marketing theory (see Savigny 2008Savigny , 2006. Critical political marketing should open up the range of acceptable, possible methodologies, and address a larger range of problems.
In contrast to current conceptualisations of political marketing, we propose a conceptual framework to put different, sometimes interlinked, bodies of literature to work. In so doing, we aim to highlight the ways in which political marketing concepts and theories can be tested, undermined and/or strengthened, even simultaneously.
We begin by calling for poststructuralist principles which emphasise the multidimensionality of political phenomena across multiple times and spaces (see Laclau and Mouffe 2001;Haraway 1997;Anderson 1991;Appadurai 1988) to be more actively embraced by political marketing researchers. These views are sceptical of conventional or "standard" descriptions of countries, governments, peoples and policies. Let us consider just two examples of how such theories can infuse our framing of political phenomena. The first one relates to characterisations of political segments, voter groups and "special interests" in the political process. In the political marketing literature, these descriptions tend to be static and essentialist. Too often, political marketing research relies on -what the social geographer, Karen Ettlinger calls -"concise summations of, for example, 'woman', 'African American', 'homosexual', and so on" (2004 p. 30) instead of probing the layers of how the political process itself produces and sustains ethnic, sexual and national differences and conflicts. The "rational man" or "rational voter" is another construct which lends itself to this kind of revisionism. Another example which can be cited in this context, relates to the party-voter relationship. The analysis of this relationship has been dominated up till now in the literature by instrumental modes: strategies, tactics, advertising. Yet, the symbolic dimension which underlies material representations of this relationship has not been explored in any great depth. We argue that political marketing research should advance beyond the marketing concept in "traditional" marketing by drawing upon a more nuanced understanding of critical accounts of "consumer consciousness" (Gabriel and Lang 1995;Hirschmann and Holbrook 1982) which shifts between sites of experience and identities. In a globally interconnected economy, political theatre is made within days or even minutes of poll results, campaign trails and policy announcements or even radio, TV and Internet advertisements. Underlying these processes, as sociologists and cultural researchers know well, are the politics of consumption, and audience reception of cultural artifacts (see Axford and Huggins 2002;Kellner 1995Kellner , 1989. This particular aspect of critical social theory is profoundly important to political marketing. The commercial forces, which drive what Horkheimer andAdorno (1948/1972) called the "culture industry", found critical expression in the research of the Frankfurt School in the 1930s. A comprehensive account of their many complex writings lies outside the scope of this paper, but Adorno's critique of mass television, music, film and political speeches (1994,1991), Herzog's discussion of radio programmes (1941), Lowenthal's studies of popular culture (1961) provide ample evidence of how all these agents mediate political reality for millions in Europe. Their aim was "to explore and articulate ways in which conditions of social, economic and political domination limit, distort and depreciate discourse regarding contested public issues" (McClure 1996, p. 488). On a global scale, Critical Theory led the way for a politics of human enlightenment and emancipation so that all (especially minority and vulnerable) interests may be mobilised against elites whose intentions were often kept hidden from those whose lives they affected. For many of the leading lights of Critical Theory, politics was a realm precisely where ordinary men and women would be bewildered and disenfranchised by populist politics, even -or especially -in so-called "democratic" societies. Marcuse (1964), for instance, recognised that human reality (the economic, material and cultural operations of life) could easily be operationalised as a political function and thus be made the subject of arbitrary laws of the market, the economy and so on. Thus, the very structures for which we depend on to serve us only install and embed irrationality and the inherent resistance of societies to effect change by rational means.
The political realities of our times demand the kind of trenchant critique by disenfranchised voters which the rhetoric and instruments of Critical Theory strongly suggest (the recent U.S. election is one of the most gripping examples of our time, for example), and yet political marketing researchers have yet to exploit this conceptual possibility in any great depth. As political marketers wrestle with identifying the issues and solutions which characterise so-called "democratic" societies, we contend that the structural parameters and constraints of the "public sphere" (Habermas 1989) become even more integral to our understanding of the emancipatory projects which engage politicians, voters, backbenchers, frontbenchers, policymakers and media professionals across the political spectrum.
Further, Critical Theory is invaluable in helping researchers discover and unmask the positionings and power relations between and within groups which influence voting outcomes. Rather than fixing on one or two trajectories in a political campaign, we can feature a more dynamic analysis between people and their nodes of influence to take into account symbolic and discursive representations of thoughts, emotions, and other media not just between people but also between people and texts (see Fineman 2000;Law and Hassard 1999). The textuality of political institutions and actors are to be understood as both material and immaterial.
To take the argument further, we need to radicalise the content of political marketing itself (see , but not simply in terms of its "scope" or coverage. "Political" phenomena, in fact, is a problematic category which needs a stronger exegesis and grounding in contemporary accounts of "culture" and "identity", particularly in helping us push the envelope of the sub-discipline further in the direction of cultural economy and the different constructions of "politics" in different spheres of civil society (du Gay 2007; du Hall and du Gay 1996). A key point of relevance for political marketing scholarship in these kinds of explorations is the ways in which persons and personalities (behind the podium, at a convention, rally or conference, in front of supporters and so on) are constituted out of prior regimes of behaviour and social patterning (du Gay 2007).
Yet another critical approach is the discursive method, as applied in the marketing literature to understand identity and power relations in advertising (see Elliott and Ritson 1997;Elliott 1996). The range of methods which fall under this school of conceptual exploration can be applied in critical and political fields to understand political disputes and political rhetoric (e.g. Schön and Rein 1994). A criticallyoriented political marketing research agenda needs methods/methodologies which recognise and manage the ideological nature of texts and discourses. Critical discourse analysis (see Jäger 2001;Wodak 2001;Titscher et al. 2000;Wodak et al. 1999;Fairclough and Wodak 1997;Fairclough 1989), for example, could provide the tools to approach the issue of power relations between and within groups which influence voting outcomes. For the purposes of political marketing research, critical discourse analysis can be used to analyse "exogenous" phenomenon in politics (e.g. election campaigns; party behaviour; communication material; media appearances, etc.), but could also be used "internally" to critically analyse the knowledge claims of political marketing literature.
An emancipatory critical political marketing project should seek to determine alternative models of political representation and participation which would be more in line with democratic ideals. Savigny (2008) uses this point, in fact, to address one of the main criticisms against political marketing. The systems of texts through which such models are mediated and expressed thus become critical for political marketing research. Critical discourse analytical methodology, therefore, becomes a powerful tool for addressing the challenges attached to the analysis of complex, potentially polemical and contested discourses, such as the discursive construction of national identities (e.g. de Wodak et al. 1999); race relations (e.g. Richardson 2008;Teo 2000); extreme-right politics (e.g. Moufahim et al. 2007;Martin-Rojo and van Dijk 1997); war and peace-keeping (e.g. Ferrari 2007; Graham et al. 2004); policy debate and financial regulation (Gallhofer et al. 2001); campaigning tactics and positioning (Roper 2005). A critical approach proved invaluable to Weaver, Motion, and Roper in their analysis of propaganda and public relations (see Weaver et al. 2006). Both propaganda and public relations were framed as (self-) legitimating discourse practices furthering specific interests. Drawing on the work of Habermas, Foucault and Fairclough, the authors analysed public relations' discourse (along with the embedded notions of truth, power, and knowledge), and the engineering of public opinion and social action (Weaver et al. 2006). They questioned the accepted idea that propaganda necessarily operates against the public interest, and that public relations necessarily works for the public interest (Weaver et al. 2006, p. 23;original emphasis). They showed otherwise: […] discourse theory helps to move away from the notion of propaganda as deception and lying because it acknowledges the potential for competing truths in society: multiple discourses circulate and compete with each other for hegemonic power and therefore there is a choice of meanings, identities and realities available to audiences, not one all-powerful construction of reality (Weaver et al. 2004, p. 23) This a similar approach that we are championing for approaching and understanding political marketing discourse and practice, in our so-called critical political marketing agenda.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
We began the paper by identifying the key issues which exercise political marketing scholars in terms of the field's continuing theoretical and empirical development. In their search to establish the ontological and epistemological assumptions of political marketing and to carve out a distinct and attractive disciplinary space for it, political marketing scholars have already demonstrated a healthy scepticism towards its development thus far and a willingness to consider further theoretical developments in the field. Our paper argues that a range of critical theories which have opened up debates in other fields can further drive the political marketing research agenda. Critical marketing viewpoints were taken in this paper, which provide an approach to the study of marketing in a political context focusing on ideological formations borne out of the rigorous scrutiny of bourgeois culture and revolutionary movements (Habermas 1989) as well as the critique of academic discourses. If we accept that ideas in relation to marketing are part of a broader discourse -the discourse of neoliberalism, for instance, makes the ideas and language of marketing acceptable, rendering them intelligible (Savigny 2008, p. 74) -then political marketing, too, needs to avail itself of a much greater range of ideas than it has hitherto done.
If political marketing is understood as an instrument that frames and legitimates political discourse in the eyes of voters, then we need new epistemological tools to capture the mechanisms of such legitimation beyond an analysis of instruments, tactics, branding or even linguistically-based methods. Instead, political marketing research needs to take into account more polemical and activist discourses in other fields, as we have shown. For instance, political marketing researchers take for granted that the ability to connect with voters is a key issue for political parties and that marketing discourse is mainly used strategically by parties to make their speeches "voter-friendly" and encourage the consumption of their political "product". Yet, how much do we know about the conditions which make such strategies possible and desirable in the first place? What are the tools which allow such discoveries to be made? Is marketing used as a form of legitimating discourse to make politics accessible to people who have been socialised in a consumer society or is it a way of manufacturing "consensus" in the public sphere? What are the various "spheres" "out there" and who or what do they exclude or silence? By incorporating our proposed research agenda, new kinds of questions can be raised in political marketing and tackled.
Raising these questions throws the spotlight on the field in a new, perhaps uncomfortable, light. Political marketing makes normative-sounding claims that it is "good", i.e. a convincing self-proclamation to be a democracy enhancer 1 (see Kotler and Kotler 1999). In saying this, we have also noted, as researchers in the field ourselves, that political marketing scholars are certainly not wrong to defend the sub-discipline and to advocate the application of a marketing orientation to the conduct of politics. We could certainly contribute to a better representation of constituents (Savigny 2004) provided we are more critically aware of their changing and multiple identities, their changing aspirations and the increasing corporatisation and globalisation of consumers (noting that stable definitions of any or all such groups must remain a provisional exercise at all times).
In conclusion, political marketing has the potential to emerge as an interdisciplinary subject which would inform not only the application of marketing tools and concepts to politics but also the legacy of social theory that informs the study of postindustrial consumer societies today. To do so is to embark upon a rewarding, albeit risky, journey. It is still the case, as Morgan argues, that "marketing is a substantial and powerful discourse which is currently dominated by a highly positivistic and normative approach to knowledge" (1992, p. 154). Political marketing seems to be no exception.
Understanding political marketing as a discourse and opening it up to critical theories of society offers what we believe is a powerful agenda. Integrating the two levels of analysis presents the next challenge for researchers. Future research and thought in this area are needed to lay out the specific problems and avenues for such a project. A synthesis of relevant theories relating to class, gender, sexuality, cultural and socio-economic preferences, for instance, has yet to be attempted and it is hoped that our paper plays a role in the emergence of such a project among different networks of political marketing researchers and academics. Given the plethora of theories and values circulating around common constructs like the "consumer", the "voter" and, on a much broader scale, "society", "identity" and "politics" itself, an agenda which maps out diverse framings of these concepts within the field of political marketing can only be a healthy development for the field. Most importantly perhaps, a critical political marketing project should not, in our opinion, exclude a necessary dose of irreverence, polemic, and rejuvenation to allow an enrichment of the discipline's theoretical basis, or indeed, a questioning spirit which can always raise the tantalising question with which we began: "Towards a critical marketing agenda?"