Payment on delivery - Recognising constituency service as political marketing

The Authors


Patrick Butler, School of Business Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, and
Neil Collins, Department of Government, National University of Ireland (Cork), Cork, Ireland


Abstract


The notion that political marketing occurs only during formal campaign periods is discarded in the political marketing literature. Political campaigns, rather than being periodic, are “permanent”. Accordingly, the attention of political marketers must increasingly turn to the analysis of how and when politicians serve their communities or constituencies. Indeed, the kinds of services commonly associated with political influence and constituency activity indicate a convergence of politics and public sector service provision. In this essay, the nature and effects of constituency-focused service delivery are examined as an integral part of political marketing.

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Article Type: General review
Keyword(s): Politics; Services marketing.


European Journal of Marketing
Volume 35 Number 9/10 2001 pp. 1026-1037
Copyright © MCB UP Ltd ISSN 0309-0566

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Political marketing and the permanent campaign

The political arena usually is highly charged with beliefs and emotions, as well as conflict and partisanship, that rarely characterize the consumer’s choice of commercial products (Kotler and Kotler, 1999, p. 4).
Elections and the campaigns that precede them are atypical periods in the political life of a country. The unusual air of excitement, tension and expectancy produces a certain myopia among politicians, activists and journalists. In the context of political marketing, the beguilement of the election campaign, together with its supposed role in informing the electorate’s views, have led to disproportionate attention being paid to it by political scientists and others. As Scammell asserts:

Researchers from predominantly political science backgrounds generally locate marketing within “campaign studies” (Scammell, 1999, p. 719).
The notion that political marketing occurs only, or even mainly, during formal campaign periods is now firmly discarded in the political marketing literature as too limited an understanding of politicians and marketers alike. Even those who write extensively about campaigns admit that, in particular circumstances, “... it is difficult to believe that [the campaign for the 1997 UK general election] made much difference to the outcome” (Kavanagh, 1998, p. 143).

Political campaigns, rather than being periodic, are “permanent”. Since Blumenthal (1980) popularised the term, the “permanent campaign” has been increasingly observable in the major Western political marketplaces. One illustration of this kind of permanence is that statesmen, when governing, are still relentlessly campaigning. Prime Minister Blair in the UK, ever since his election success in 1997, is reported as presenting speeches that contain the same material and arguments as his campaign addresses. Similarly, President Clinton, when well into his final term in the USA, was perceived to have travelled the country promoting essentially local issues elevated to national prominence – to be running the government on “tiny ideas” (Nimmo, 1999). Contemporary leaders, then, may be said to be governing to campaign, rather than vice versa. While Nimmo (1999) carefully addresses the realities of age-old democratic political life, in which officeholders turn “... office itself into a full-time campaign platform” (p. 75), the greater permanence of political consultants in relation to politicians themselves is a noticeable contemporary phenomenon.

Political parties are obviously busy between elections; a political marketing model should provide a useful theoretical perspective on this activity. At a popular level, the fuller picture is obscured by the attention given in the media to national issues, policy statements, attacks on opponents, and sound bites from the legislature. However, to view the campaign period as the major element in a marketing model of political party activity is equivalent to focusing only on the high profile market activities of mainstream commerce, such as mass advertising campaigns, new product launches or major public relations exercises. That perspective neglects the critical analytical, planning and monitoring roles that both precede and accompany them, such as market research and test marketing, market segmentation and profiling, brand positioning, pricing, channel development and the like. The objective here is to show that political marketing extends beyond the obvious campaign period; in particular, the continuous constituency-focused efforts of politicians and parties is presented as fundamental to understanding the reality of marketing practice in this context.



Change in political systems


In the context of the permanent campaign, the emphasis of politics has shifted from the abstract or principled to the tangible or immediate. Citizens as customers are evaluating more closely the measurable outputs of political systems. This is reflected in the volatility of voter behaviour, the “end” of ideology, and an increasing consensus on economic liberalism. Increased volatility does not necessarily lead to major shifts in the party system (Mair, 1997), though in both the 1970s and the 1990s a number of countries, e.g. Canada in 1993 and Austria in 1994, saw significant shifts in the support for particular parties. What is clear, however, is that many parties face a decline in party identification and membership. In Europe, for instance, Plasser et al. (1999) report that the erosion of voter loyalty and the decline of political organisation strength has led to the professionalisation of political parties, and consequently to the strategies and explicit practices of political marketing.

There has been a decrease in the importance of ideology in mobilising mass support. In pre-1980s politics, for instance, British political parties could mobilise support by appealing to class issues. In the classic summary of voting behaviour in Britain, Pulzer remarked that: “Class is the basis of British party politics: all else is embellishment and detail” (Pulzer, 1967, p. 98). In Italy, Christian Democrats would raise the spectre of communism to garner support. Similarly, Communist parties in Europe mobilised support around issues of ownership of resources. In recent times there has been a marked and widespread reduction in the potency of ideological rhetoric and conflict; today, ideological politics differ in emphasis and tone.

Finally, there is a broad consensus on public ownership, social security, secularisation, etc. in Western polities. In the USA, it would be difficult for an outsider to differentiate between Republicans and Democrats. Even as political party membership is declining and as voter turnout is falling, the fight now is largely for the centre. Perhaps the critical political problem, then, is mobilising – getting the voters out. For example, Appleton maintains that in France there are:

... two mutually reinforcing trends. The first (and most obvious) is the decline of the ability of the “established” parties of the Fifth Republic to mobilise the (potential) electorate (Appleton, 1995, p. 52).
Appleton’s second trend is the increase in the number and diversity of small parties. This being the case, it becomes necessary for politicians and parties to recognise new kinds of demands, and to address them in innovative ways. Ironically, as politics becomes more global, issues become more local. Hence, citizens, as consumers, are concerned less with earlier political heroes and symbols of identity, and more with community infrastructure such as medical and housing provisions. Therefore, the appeals of politicians must change in terms of their ideological tone, the channels of communication and interaction, and the mechanisms for serving their communities. In this situation, the concept of service delivery – so central to marketing theorists and practitioners – is key. That is, parties as well as individual politicians, seek to show they are better at managing such service delivery.



Constituency service as marketing


Given the features highlighted above, the attention of political marketers must increasingly turn to the analysis of how and when politicians serve their communities or constituencies. The kinds of services commonly associated with political influence and constituency activity naturally draw together questions of politics and public sector services. Of course, as will be addressed further below, such questions are contingent on the nature of the political system. Nonetheless, that time between formal election campaign periods is when such service delivery is the principal focus. Indeed, it could be argued that the daily concerns of constituents are hardly attended to during the campaign, as candidates concentrate on traditional electoral strategies.

A simple marketing analogy might suggest that this time between formal election campaigns is dedicated to analysis and planning, wherein past successes and failures are addressed and reviewed; current affairs are considered; and forthcoming issues are forecast. However, that negates the actual “hands on” marketing activity and implementation that is at the heart of this argument. It is naive to assume, as campaign-centred models tend to, that there is no active marketing on the ground, or that the permanent campaign is simply “spinning”. So, the more obvious ongoing marketing outputs and activities are positioning and repositioning on policy; development and amendment of personality profiles in response to, or in anticipation of, new socio-cultural issues and preferences; ongoing research in the form of polling and focus group interviews and so on. But, here, the claim is that the real marketing activity is the ongoing interactions between politicians and their electorate in the form of service delivery.

In the light of such observable political reality, a new model should recognise that public services are directed at electorally sensitive sectors, key constituencies and potential supporters. Important theoretical advances can arise out of this observation: that is, the convergence of the disciplines of political marketing and public sector marketing. Elsewhere (see Butler and Collins, 1995; Collins and Butler, 1999), the priorities of public sector reform and service delivery are stressed, and the politician’s role in those functions are addressed. Here, the matter is primarily understood from the perspective of political marketing: that is, the role of the politician in public service delivery attains a new emphasis in political marketing.



Politicians and public service delivery


It becomes clear that theoretical understandings of political marketing need to recognise the patterns of politicians’ actual work. In the vast majority of cases, even in parliamentary and local government systems, most political representatives are either members of non-governing parties or backbenchers or both. This fact is largely ignored in the literature on political marketing, which tends to emphasise either formal campaign periods and related activities, or policy-level aspects and implications. The tasks of speaking in the legislative chamber or its committees, researching policy options and other law-making activities occupy only a proportion of a politician’s time. For many, the ratio is very low compared to constituency service. The importance of this part of the politician’s job is attested to not only by the time but also by the resources given to it. Many analysts resist such observations because:

At the core of our political culture is the expectation that parliament and popular democracy should play a leading role in legislation and policy-making. However ... the opportunities for popular representatives and their institutions to play their “proper roles” are very limited, if not becoming largely infeasible ... One of the main reasons that parliamentary systems are increasingly marginalized in modern politics and governance is that Western societies have become largely differentiated and far too complex for a parliament or its government to monitor, acquire sufficient knowledge and competence, and to deliberate on (Andersen and Burns, 1996, p. 227).
Hence, the attention paid to both formal campaigning and national, policy-level political activities does not reflect the inherent marketing behaviour of the majority of politicians. Constituency-oriented activities are becoming recognised as central. In the USA, for example:

Casework and other forms of constituency service and attentiveness have been recognised as vital elements of legislative life in parliaments around the world, the US Congress, and state legislatures. Constituency service is a major form of responsiveness and representation (Johannes, 1983, p. 531).
Janda et al.’s (1999) analysis concurs:

Much of the work performed by the large staffs of members of Congress is casework – such services for constituents as tracking down a social security check or directing the owner of a small business to the appropriate federal agency. Constituents who are helped in this way usually remember who assisted them (Janda et al., 1999, p. 101).
Even in jurisdictions such as those of Britain, where constituency service was once considered of marginal electoral significance, politicians now devote increasing efforts in their constituencies. The received wisdom was that the “personal vote” in Britain was worth no more than five hundred votes. In contrast, in the USA, an incumbent is dependent on constituency service to stay in office. The weight of research indicates that Britain is now coming closer to the American pattern in that constituency service is becoming more important (Norris, 2001). British MPs must look to their “surgeries” and other direct contacts with their constituents to cushion themselves from electoral swings (Cain et al., 1987). In the Scandinavian countries parliamentarians may be allowed to be indifferent to constituency needs. The electoral system and cultural patterns there insulate individual politicians from constituency service unless prodded by the party élite. It is no coincidence that the origin of the ombudsmen is found in Scandinavia. Similarly, there is some evidence that Australian legislators may have less pressure than others to service their constituencies:

Contrary to findings in other polities, dealing with constituents’ grievances reduces a legislator’s vote, mainly because such activity displaces other, more electorally advantageous, party-focused activities (Studlar and McAllister, 1996, p. 69).
This counterintuitive finding may reflect the predominance of “safe seats” in the Australian system. Ireland, however, is probably typical of small liberal parliamentary democracies:

Judging by the large amount of time spent on constituency affairs, it seems in practice to be more important in the working life of a TD (an Irish parliamentary deputy) than narrowly defined parliamentary duties such as speaking in the Dáil [parliament] chamber or examining legislation. In most countries, it is taken for granted that parliamentarians will work assiduously to protect and further the interests of their constituents; constituency work forms part of an MP’s parliamentary duties rather than existing in counterposition to them (Gallagher and Komito, 1992, p. 206).

Blurring of politics and public service


The blurring of governmental and party-political behaviour evidenced in the level of importance that politicians place on service delivery is an important focus for analysis of political marketing realities. On the subject of governing, or policy development, just as the prevailing models of political marketing ascribe too much significance to electoral “events”, they also exaggerate politicians’ role as legislators:

According to the democratic concept of representation, sovereignty lies with parliament, which alone has the right to vote on the law ... all the decision-making and practical activities of bodies...are inferior or subordinate to parliament, starting with the government itself ... Since the Second World War this fine edifice of juridico-political theory has lost some of its lustre ... the existence of disciplined party majorities has made parliaments appear as rubber stamps that offer legitimacy to “elective dictatorships” (Meny and Knapp, 1998, p. 186).
The Wilsonian dichotomy that perceives the separation of policy and administration is a dated analytical perspective. While general issues of allocation are assigned to politicians, and specific entitlements to bureaucrats, the notion that they are disconnected is unrealistic. Politicians are concerned with the implementation of policies on the ground, and public servants, while non-partisan, are rarely politically neutral. Particularly at the local level, public sector service delivery is a joint endeavour:

Local partisan activities of legislators and their electoral coalitions systematically influence field office activities of federal bureaucracies in their electoral districts. This alternative to centralised democratic controls over bureaucracy occurs because discretionary policy decisions made at the field office level are influenced by local resources generated through partisan activities (Scholz et al., 1991, p. 829).
But as Scholz et al. (1991) go on to observe:

... [T]he Weberian image of a rational, centrally controlled bureaucracy continues to dominate political analyses of federal bureaucracy even though it has been replaced in organisational theory by a recognition of the more open structure and broader range of environmental influences affecting most complex organisations ... To cope with the complexity of the environment in which organisations like federal agencies operate ... with multiple specialised functions (budgeting, personnel, rule-making functions, legal services) interacting primarily with their counterparts in other organisations in the central environment (Washington) and a number of field offices where the “production work” takes place, all interacting with local clientele, local elected representatives, and local officials from other government agencies ... [F]ield offices of federal bureaucracies respond to local electoral politics in a way that reinforces democratic controls (Scholz et al., 1991, p. 831).
So, recognising the converging roles of politicians and bureaucrats alike in policy networks and in delivering services, it is incumbent on theorists to include their combined design and implementation efforts in a political marketing model. Such convergence is typical in the management field; in the strategic management literature, separation of planning and implementing is considered unrealistic (see Ansoff, 1991, 1994; Mintzberg, 1990, 1991, 1994). The “design” school, with Igor Ansoff as its icon, perceives strategy as a logical process in which rational analysis guides strategy formulation, which is then communicated and implemented down through the organisation; it is strongly normative. The “process” school, identified with Henry Mintzberg, argues that strategy formulation and implementation are not dichotomous. This view identifies “intended” strategy as that conceived by top management; “realised” strategy as a small proportion of the intention; and “emergent” strategy, as the primary determinant, consisting of those decision patterns that emerge from the adaptation of individual managers to strategy interpretations and external circumstances. Mintzberg’s (1987) ideas on “crafting” strategy emphasise iteration, experience, intimacy, and harmony. For the delivery of public services, and the actual role and functioning of politicians in this, the extent of hands-on experience of politicians in implementing policy on the ground may be argued to be directly related to their effectiveness in developing and framing policy.



Public service delivery mechanisms


As convergent and emergent perspectives are recognised in public service design and delivery, and as the role of politicians is accepted in both development and implementation of policy, the broad range of services and their delivery mechanisms become relevant. Public sector service delivery will differ according to the scale and scope of the service being provided. An understanding of the distinctive characteristics of public sector services is relevant to marketing:

The public sector market is hugely diverse in terms of population, structure, demand and activity. Among the characteristics of particular interest to marketing are: the status of the customer as a citizen; the peculiar competitive forces and players; and the distinctive nature of demand (Butler and Collins, 1995, p. 89).
The actual delivery mechanisms of public services involve both general provisions and specific allocations over a wide range of products. Innovation and change in the design and development of channels for delivery have increased many of the complexities involved, thereby furthering the role of the politician as intermediary. Increasingly, delivery is organised using:

... a mix of governmental relationships, new “partnerships” between the public and private sectors, market mechanisms and “marketized” public policy and new roles for ... the voluntary sector and the “community”. In place of the relatively ordered pattern of relationship which existed ten or more years ago – like a cake of relatively well-defined sections – industrial societies have become all jumbled up, and resemble not so much a Battenburg as a marble cake (Parsons, 1997, p. 492).
This, then, draws us towards the need for a more realistic understanding of the politician’s role in delivering services to the constituency. Despite attempts at public sector reform and the improving of public service provision and allocation, a distinctive feature of this marketplace is the high-profile role played by politicians as customer advocates. On the one hand, the increasing interest in streamlining public services, the improvements in access to public bodies and services, the quality statements and customer service promises of government departments in so many Western countries should improve overall service delivery. This is an extension of the kind of managerialism promoted by the influential Osborne and Gaebler (1992) study in the USA, in which they enjoined governments at all levels to reconstruct themselves around the needs of the customer. There is an associated suggestion that such a process will squeeze out interfering politicians and render pork barrel, credit-seeking, gesture politics unnecessary and even distasteful. This is the view of the streamline strategists, who might favour system and process over behavioural analyses, and there is obvious merit in it. On the other hand, however, there is a clear danger in ignoring the inherent advantages to all of having a close involvement in the implementation of public services by politicians. It may be perceived, and usefully leveraged, as a form of market research and testing, with beneficial outcomes both on the ground and at policy redesign stages.

In Ireland, for instance, various studies have described politicians as specialists helping the “bureaucratically illiterate”. Politicians regularly bring complaints to departments on behalf of their constituents, and it is the social welfare, housing and medical entitlements problems that dominate their caseloads. These “customer” complaints may not be heard if not facilitated by politicians. It is important to note that the evidence from case studies offers a picture of brokerage that is low key and routine. Major allocative decisions are not involved. Rather, the politician is like a

... lawyer, who operates not by bribing the judge, but by ensuring that the case is presented better than the citizen would be able to present it (Gallagher and Komito, 1992, p. 140).

Managing at the margin


For all the attention paid to marketing in the political and public service domains – a differentiation that may be somewhat exaggerated – its impact in the short and medium terms is relatively limited. In the main, the stability of the broad mass of public service delivery defies radical adjustment by politicians, even in government, in the short, electorally crucial, time period. They are managing, for the largest part, at the margins. The major determinant of public policy as expressed in public expenditure include demographics, global economic trends and other environmental factors which are not amenable to short-term political adjustment. Most politicians feel the pressure of the local impacts of these forces when schools have to be built or hospital wards closed. The vehicle for the pressure is competing claims of constituents or their lobbyists for help or amelioration from the impact of economic change. As US House Speaker Tipp O’Neill expressed it, “all politics is local”. The type of electoral systems and the administrative frameworks within which they work insulate politicians in some countries from some of these complexities. In others, electoral imperatives, cultural expectations and the scope of state activity ensure a close attention to service delivery. It is likely, however, that a consequence of decreasing ideological competition will be an increase in the importance of constituency service delivery.

The debate about the influence of politics on policy is a long and acrimonious one (Paldam, 1989; Cheung, 1997). For the position advanced here, it is not necessary to suggest that all government policy or even most of it is the product solely of underlying socio-economic determinants. The different paths travelled by Western democracies in response to the changing economic challenges since the late 1970s demonstrate more right-wing responses in the UK and the USA than in other countries. Similarly, it is important to note that, even within tightly constrained policy environments, marginal changes can be very significant politically. As with companies, some policy sectors are more amenable to changes in strategic direction than others. What is being highlighted, however, is that policy parameters are narrower than the rhetoric of politics suggests; a focus on campaigns can obscure this reality and much political marketing is about maximising the local significance of relatively stable public policies.



Conclusion: recognising constituency service as political marketing

Political marketing shares much in common with marketing in the business world. In business marketing, sellers dispatch goods, services, and communications (e.g. advertising) to the market, and in return, money (consumer purchases), information (consumer research), and customer loyalty are received. In [political] campaigns, candidates dispatch promises, favors, policy preferences, and personalities to a set of voters in exchange for their votes, voluntary efforts, or contributions (Kotler and Kotler, 1999, p. 6).
Kotler and Kotler spell out the central analogy of political marketing. Nevertheless, they still draw back from the implications of their observation that “sellers dispatch goods [and] services”. However, they do acknowledge the importance of “favours”. This article seeks to place services in terms of services to the individuals, communities and key constituencies at the centre of the political marketing effort.

In the developing political marketing literature, the campaign remains the focus of political marketing observers, and constitutes the bulk of such analysis and commentary. There are good reasons for this, given that campaigns demand enormous resources and attention to planning, are a time of concentrated activity in the political marketplace, and are the subject of intense analysis post the event. It is clear that for politicians in government office, the permanent campaign is a reality that permeates every day and every decision. The short time frame of their tenure, the importance of opinion polls and the financial requirements of campaigning demand as much. But most politicians elected to office, even the majority of those in the governing party, are not involved in high office and policy development. As backbenchers, they must somehow maintain a kind of permanent campaign also. This process is largely manifested in their constituency work and their association among the electorate with the delivery of benefits and services to their constituency – either in personal or broad community terms. Because governing party politicians have the ears of colleagues appointed to ministerial office, they have some advantage in influencing decisions in favour of their own constituencies, and may be inclined to take credit for what occurs in the interests of their electoral base. Where the politician is on the opposition backbenches, the potential for marketing differs again. Clearly, the opportunities are more at the service implementation and delivery end of the continuum rather than at the policy design and development end. Hence, basic, functional constituency work, especially where the “safe seat” does not exist, is the reality for the majority of politicians. This is the nature of their marketing; their permanent campaign.

We show here that the role and status of the formal campaign is over-emphasised in the political marketing debate, at the expense of a more inclusive perspective. In agreement with initiatives by the likes of Lock and Harris (1996), O’Cass (1996), Newman (1999) and Baines et al. (1999), it is necessary to cast wider and mine deeper to capture those other critical factors that influence and determine political marketing outcomes. Frankly, it may be said that the attention paid to formal campaigns in the development of a sound theoretical basis in the discipline is unhelpful, because it is not a fair reflection of marketing as it is actually practised.

The ideology-based mobilisation of the electorate in the past led to limited attention being paid to policy delivery analysis. With the trend away from such politics, it becomes clear that new analytical forms and new criteria are required to evaluate competition, achievement and potential in the political marketplace. In this regard, the permanent campaign is not simply about communicating messages, spinning and glossing over stories: it is now seen to be critically concerned with ongoing service delivery. Whereas this concept may have conventionally been perceived in terms of policy initiatives and administrative improvements, the developing argument here is that the service delivery of interest and benefit to politicians and their electorate is the continuous, low-level, repetitive work that a critical mass of constituents actually value.

The nature and effects of service delivery at these levels is neglected in the literature for several reasons, not least of which is that, realistically, it is difficult to research. In research terms, contact with senior party officials, and the ready availability of policy papers, media files and electoral data make for more concentrated and accessible forms of investigation. However, if marketing is to be understood and explained in the political arena, the reality of politicians’ working lives must be uncovered in these terms. Landmark research on the US Congress has argued that members of Congress are overwhelmingly motivated in their behaviours by their desire to be re-elected (Herrnson, 1999). Consistent with this analysis, the rational choice literature teaches us that people engage in behaviours that they perceive to be rational efforts towards reaching their goals. In the case of the US Congress, the literature shows that members of Congress dedicate a great deal of their time to the time-consuming projects of constituency service and pork-barrel representation. They do so because they see this as a way to improve their chances of achieving their goal of winning re-election. Indeed, the existing literature suggests that little else but the desire to be re-elected motivates members of Congress to spend their time on constituency service.

Campaigns and elections are central elements of liberal democracy. They are the means by which voters choose between competing political offers. Increasingly, the campaigning ethos is reflected in the way government itself is conducted. The literature attests to the continual use of the techniques of campaigns. The process of governing is, however, also part of the effort of securing votes, as is the attention to their own constituencies of all politicians. The impacts of these aspects of politics are difficult to research and to assess. Nevertheless, they are very much an aspect of political marketing, and deserve greater attention in building theoretical models.


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