Political Marketing in Canada

Jennifer Lees-Marshment editor Alex Marland editor Thierry Giasson editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of British Columbia Press

Published:1st Jul '12

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Political Marketing in Canada cover

A multifaceted account of how marketing has infiltrated Canadian politics, transforming the way parties and politicians electioneer on a permanent basis.

The first book-length exploration of how marketing tools and concepts are transforming elections and politics in Canada.

Political parties worldwide are using marketing tools such as targeting and segmentation to win elections. Are these strategies making politicians and governments more responsive to voters’ needs, or do they pose a threat to democracy? Political Marketing in Canada, the first book to ask this question of Canada, considers the consequences of political marketing in the realms of public policy, leadership, and the government-citizen relationship. Through dynamic case studies that range from the resurrection of the Conservative Party, to media accounts of political marketing, to Tim Hortons as a political brand, the authors trace how political marketing is transforming the old system of brokerage politics into a new, distinctly Canadian model. Citizens are now viewed as consumers, and platforms and promises have been repackaged as products. Whether this trend is positive or negative, the authors argue, depends on how politicians and governments carry out political marketing – and its promises – in practice.

The book is a collection of sophisticated, learned research into the nuts and bolts of modern campaigning, aspects too often ignored in Canadian political science, which tends to view politics through the loftier prisms of history, ideology or procedure. The editors and contributors to this volume force us to confront the reality that modern Canadian politics is as much about commercial marketing principles as it is about any of the other more intellectual and less pragmatic views of what drives our political world. -- Susan Delacourt * The Literary Review of Canada, July 2012 *

  • Commended for The Hill Times Editors' 25 Pick of Best Books for 2012 (Canada).
  • Commended for The Hill Times List of Top 100 Best Books for 2012 (Canada).

ISBN: 9780774822299

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 480g

320 pages