The party evolution framework: An integrated approach to examining the development of party communications and campaigns

Abstract

Existing theories of party organisation, and political communication and marketing, address the issue of party evolution and electoral behaviour from opposing and largely one-dimensional angles. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a more integrated perspective to party campaigning that goes beyond the traditional approaches of party behaviour and present the relationship between intra-party organisation and campaign evolution in a new light. The party evolution approach is an alternative conceptual framework of party campaigning, which integrates the classic approaches of party organisation with the modern accounts of political communication and marketing while taking into consideration the institutional and ideological constraints of political parties. The main aim is to bridge the worlds of marketing and politics by offering a distinct perspective that integrates elements of a party’s innate political identity and readdressing the notion of party communications professionalisation within the wider context of party evolution process. To this end, the employment of consumer marketing techniques and approaches in party campaigning is not considered a means to the end of electoral success but an integrated element of the party’s evolving identity. The intention is that the Party Evolution Framework be used as a tool for comparative analysis. The holistic and integrated scope of the framework is likely to qualify its application to a cross-section of democracies, regardless of their party and electoral systems, campaign regulations, and historical, socio-economic and political landscape. To this end, the present thesis illustrates the use of the party evolution framework in two largely contrasting contexts; British and Greek politics.