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D'Elia, Phi Petra Tournay, PhD University at Albany (SUNY), US. Cyprus College Phoebus J. Dhrymes, Ph.D. Contributing Editors ay ania hae enp ° : john §. Kaminarides, PhD. a oma “Arkansas State University, USA Linda R. Martin, Ph.D. Yiannis P. Fessas, PhD. University of New Haven, U.S.A. Proplan Limited Demetris Petrondas, PhD. Charalambos Papageorghiou, PhD. Ministry of Finance, CYPRUS Cyprus College Panikkos Poutziouris, Ph.D. Savvas Savvides, Ph.D. The University of Manchester, UK. Cyprus College Ltd Leon Winer, PhD. Circulation Manager Pace University, U.S.A. Dora Koshiari Andreas Zachariou, PhD. Cyprus College University of Athens, GREECE Contents Editorial Higher Education: Internationalization vs. Globalization Andreas G. Orphanides 3 Articles Convergence Performance of Cyprus Compared with EU and EU Applicant Countries John S. Kaminarides, Edward Nissan 5 Output Supply Response of Wheat Farmers in Cyprus: A Tale of Two Variables with Policy Implications ‘Charalambos Pattichis 26 Copyright G 2002 by Gyprus College. All rights reserved. ISSN 1012-2591ATHANASIOS N. SAMARAS Sigma Multimedia, Greece Political Marketing, Partytocracy and the Transformations of the Political Communication System This paper aims to explore cognitive and structural factors that limit the application of marketing principle as the transformations of the political structure, the media structure and in campaigning and electioneering that may facilitate the application of the marketing principle. Partytocracy as a limitation to political marketing in examined in relation to the Greek context. The most important transformation of media structure has been the dominance of media logic. The transformations is campaigning are examined within the context of the American political system. The penetration of the marketing principles in the American framework is related to three interrelated factors: the emergence of the political communication industry, the rise of the political advertising spot (polispot), and the dominance of the candidate-centred campaign model. 'HE APPROPRIATE STARTING POINT in exploring the meaning of political marketing is the definition of commercial marketing. Newman defines (commercial) marketing as following: “Marketing is an exchange process. The process centers on a seller who is exchanging a product or service for money from a buyer. The exchange is implemented by the seller through the use of a marketing strategy. A marketing strategy is made up of four components: (a) the product or service (b) the development of a promotional campaign (c) pricing and (d) distribution”(1994,8). The broadening of the marketing concept to embrace strictly non-commercial enterprises is based upon the assumption that the tools of marketing are applicable where value is exchanged between two parties. This led to the application of marketing to social causes and political parties (Maarek 1995). Evans and Berman define (commercial) marketing as follows: ’Marketing is the anticipation, management, and satisfaction of demand through the exchange process” (1990, 9. The notion of ‘anticipation’ of the demand is important since it requires a firm to Dr. Athanassios N. Samaras is Director of Political Communication, Sigma Multimedia, Athens, Greece. 158Samaras] POLITICAL MARKETING 159 do consumer research on a regular basis so that it develops and introduces offerings that are desired by consumers. Marketing's unique contribution is the strategic concern with what the market wants. This is made clear by comparing marketing with propaganda. Both employ message crafting. Propaganda starts from the premise that the ‘product’ is sacrosanct, while public opinion is malleable and can be won over Foonote 1 missing; political marketing claims that product is malleable and should be changed according to ‘consumer’ wants (Scammel 1995, 9). Historically there have been certain stages in the evolution of marketing. In the production era the output of the industry increased to meet demand. Since demand was much higher than supply no marketing was actually required by the industry. In the sales era supply equaled demand. Firms sold products without first determining consumer's desires. Communication and persuasion techniques, promotion and advertising were employed in order to persuade the consumer to buy the products. In the marketing department era supply exceeds demand. Marketing is a subsidiary function and consumer research is used to determine consumer needs. During the marketing company era consumer research and analysis is integrated into all company efforts. Marketing plays an integrated, comprehensive role in shaping the product and the company (Evans and Berman 1990, 11-13; Malliaris 1990, 19-21). The marketing company era is characterised by the dominance of the marketing concept. The marketing concept is a consumer oriented, integrated, goal oriented philosophy for a firm, institution of person. For the conceptualisation of political marketing to be valid, the evolution of commercial marketing from the production era to the marketing company era has to be matched by the evolution of electioneering. This process has taken place at a different pace in different countries According to Newman (1994, 31-33), in the USA, electioneering has evolved from the party concept where an internally driven organisation is run by the party bosses and centred on the political party to the product concept, where an internally driven organisation is run by Washington insiders and centred on the candidate to the selling concept where an externally driven organisation is run by advertising experts and centred on the candidate to the marketing concept where an externally driven organisation is run by marketing experts and centred on the voter. Any quest related to political marketing deals with a question: Is the party’s message (and the party as a message) shaped (a) by visions and ideology or (b) by opinion polls and the temporal needs of the voters? Political marketing as a tool and as a conceptual framework is relevant predominantly in the second case ie. when the marketing concept rises at the expense of the party concept. The structure of the wider political framework may delimit political marketing. Partytocracy, in its capacity as a cognitive as well as a structural phenomenon is a dominant factor that affects the scope for political marketing. A major difference between political and commercial marketing is that “the political arena is usually highly charged with beliefs and emotions, as well as conflict and partisanship, that rarely characterise the consumer's choice of commercial products” (Kotler and Kotler 1999, 6). The cognitive dimension of partytocracy is highlighted by examining the role of partisanship in political communication. The theory of limited effects in mass communication theory derived from projects where demographics and partisan affiliations proved to have drastically limited the effectiveness of campaign messages. According to Wattenberg (1996,12), party identification theoretically serves as the primary source of orientation for an individual ’s political160 ___dourwat_or Business anp SocieTy 115, 2002 attitudes. Once one becomes psychologically attached to a party one tends to see political matters as other party members do. In the American Voter such an effect or party identification was labelled as “perceptual screen” ~ through it one sees what is favourable to one’s partisan orientation and filters out dissonant information. The stronger the party bond, the more likely the selection and distortion processes were found to be. Consequently, the stronger the partisanship, the weaker the effect of media content on political behaviour during electoral campaigns. This is evident even in the more recent paradigms. In agenda setting research, for example, Iyengar and Kinder found that the effectiveness of the media agenda on public agenda is closely linked to the intensity of the political preferences of the public (1987, 60). The stronger the intensity of political preferences and the smaller the pool of floating voters, the more political marketing become sinconsequential. The lower the intensity of political preferences and the higher the number of floating voters the more effective political campaigning becomes. This clement is very crucial in Greek political reality since it determines the success of political marketing. In other words, the high intensity of political preferences (high loyalty to political parties) minimises the scope for effective _ marketing communications while the low intensity of political preferences maximises it. Thus the relevance of the market metaphor in politics is related to high “volatility and the perception that voters are increasingly exercising a greater degree of consumer sovereignty, abandoning their previous, supposedly stable partisan allegiances” (Wing 1999,41). Structural Limitations to Political Marketing The structural dimension of partytocracy and the limits it imposes on political marketing should be examined within the context of a particular country. Greece is an obvious choice, since during the 1980s it formulated an extreme case of partytocratic control. Partytocracy is conceived as being based upon five pillars: (2) state control of the economy and clientelism, (b) the electoral system, (c) The interparty conflict frame, (d) control of the media and (e) the polarisation of the electorate (Samaras 1998, 40). Let’s start the analysis by looking at the elections. The elections generate a government that has the capacity to control the state apparatus and to intervene in the economy and consequently can support the network of clientelistic relationships with their voters who have brought the party to power. In a cyclical process this affects the intensity of political preferences that, in turn, affects the electoral results. Moreover, control over the state apparatus is transformed into control over the media apparatus. For broadcasting this is self-evident; since before broadcasting deregulation it was an integral part of the state apparatus. For the press, there is a second level of clientelistic relationships being developed with the state as the patron and the press as the client that guarantees a press/party system parallelism. Control of the media apparatus affects the intensity of political preferences through the content of the media representations of politics. The most important of these is the interparty conflict/interpretative framework, which perpetuates the relevance of the party system in political and social life and organises conflict and disagreement in society across party lines. This framework has the capacity to polarise the audience/electorate and to guarantee high intensity of political preferences. The intensity of political preferences of the electorateSamaras] Powsricat. MARKETING 161 combined with the high degree of politicisation of the press is transformed into strong audience preferences for a newspaper. This in turn becomes a mechanism that maintains the loyalty of the press to the party system. Finally, the electoral system, usually a form of majority system euphemistically called ‘reinforced’ proportional representation, guarantees the dominance of bipolarism by resulting in independent one party governments. Since the late 1980's early 1990's the aforementioned system of partytocratic control has been in crisis. The intensity of political preferences have been falling, until in 1996 this process finally affected the electoral results and resulted in situations where short term campaign communication can actually affect election results. There are three reasons contributing to this: (a) The economy can no longer carry the cost of clientelistic relationships. Very strong pressure by the voters for very few spoils resulted in the parties disengaging themselves from control over the core process of clientelism, the hiring of public servants. (b) Broadcasting deregulation increased the autonomy of communication towards the party system. The latter lost control over its representations. (c) A range of historical factors like the fall of the USSR and the legitimation crisis of the Greek political communication system undermined the ideological dimension and disaffected the polarity of the system. At the core of partytocracy in Greece stands the over-extended state. The parties are managing this over-extended, all-powerful state and thus their position of significance is structurally guaranteed. One of the most significant impairs to political marketing is clientelism. According to Mouzelis (1986), the state in Greece, like in many of the peripheral societies, has an overextended and relatively autonomous character. This is related to the fact that the peripheral state has to perform much rnore difficult tasks than the central state. Clientelism provided a basis for the elite factionalisrn from the liberation war onwards. Control of the state apparatus provided resources in the form of access, exemption, preference and actual goods, which could be distributed through the clientele network in return for loyalty and support (Legg et al. 1997, 73). State employment has been one of the most important parts of this nexus. Serafentinidis’ research (1979) on the period between 1947-67 highlights the incremental role of clientelistic relationships in electoral mobilisation. She argues that the party deputy represented his constituency neither in a geographical sense nor in a functional manner but on an individual/personel basis as a patron in battle with the state and society in general. Gradually, the irnportance of party leadership int allocating favours increased at the expense of local notables. According to Lyritzis (1984), this trend, combined with the centrality of the state in the operation of the clientelistic system, resulted in bureaucratic clientelism: “Bureaucratic Clientelism is a distinct form of Clientelism and consists of the systematic infiltration of the state machine by party devotees and the allocation of favours through it” (Lyritzis 1984, 103). This seerns to be the peak of a process “of growing interdependence between the state and the parties where the former defined the scope of the parties” activity and the latter depended ‘on and, at the same time, influenced the former by using its power to consolidate their power and to attract mass support (Lyritzis 1984,102). Very strong cligntelism turns electioneering into an empty ritual and_ political marketing into an irrelevancy. clientelism increases the intensity of political preferences since they acquire a strong financial basis while minimising the volatility162 Journal oF Busine: AnD Sociery 15, 2002 of voters Electoral decisions take place according to past and/or expected favours rather than the campaign messages, while electioneering becomes an empty ritual. Clientelism is one of the burdens that politics imposes on the economy. Since the late 80's this cost has become very high, which, resulted in deligitimizing such practices.” The Dominance of Media Logic The increased potential of political marketing is directly related o the shifts of the operational logic of mass media which is provided by the concepts of media logic and party logic. According to Altheide and Snow (1979, 10)“media logic consists of 4 form of communication; the process through which media present and transmit information. Elements of this form include the various media and the format used in these media”. Mazzoleni in his analysis of the effect of broadcasting deregulation on the Italian political system, (1987, 85) coined the term’ party logic’ to refer to “the structural and cultural assets that govern the communication enacted by the parties”.Thus media logic and party logic are two antithetical patterns of message production. As Mazzoleni mentions, the media structure, through broadcasting Geregulation and commercialisation, has been emancipated from party logic. The information system, pushed towards more active and independent roles, became capable of imposing a media logic upon the political arena. Research in the Greek political communication system (Samaras 1998) identified three aspects of media content that are affected by media logic: (a) Dichotomous hierarchies of credibility. Political actors affiliated with the party that the media outlet supports are more “credible” sources and therefore their statements and activities dominate the content. (b) Framing. The journalistic commentary surrounding direct candidate communication (television soundbites and newspaper quotations) has not been neutral but legitimising or delegitimizing, Commentary and hard news are often blurred. The media outlets organise their content more in the form of persuasive appeals rather than neutral information. (c) Agenda setting. Each channel projected the topics that were beneficial for the party it supported. The instrumental actualisation of the issues very often resulted in two different media agendas- one for the right wing and one for the left wing press. State television was also playing such agenda-setting games by highlighting issues whose instrumentality was beneficial for the government, or by directly adopting the agenda of the government. These are facets of the same phenomenon: the domination of the inter-party conflict construct, Actually, the polarisation of the media content functions as a conduit for the diffusion of the polarity of party structure in the electorate. At a certain point voters of PASOK and ND in Greece inhabited diverse and often- incompatible versions of reality, they actually lived in different “Greeces’. During the 1980's Greek villages tended to have both a “blue” and a ‘green’ coffee shop with partisans of ND frequenting the one and partisans of PASOK the other (Clogg 1987, 5).3 This is an example of the strength of partytocracy and its ability to organise political and social life. Partytocracy was extended from party organisation to media content and from there to the organisation of social interaction and common discursive space.Samaras] __PousticaL MARKETING 163 In the USA, the increase of advertising revenue and the gradual depoliticization of the audience resulted in the decrease of the reliance of the media on the parties. Economic emancipation resulted in the rise of objectivity as a newsmaking methodology.‘ In terms of media content, the audience is addressed as if it is of no persuasion rather than of a specific persuasion. The operation of the same newsmaking mechanism in all media outlets results in a similar agenda and in the hornogenisation of the behaviour of both journalists and the media output (pack journalism). While with party logic there is horizontal diversity, i.e. diversity in content between different outlets in the same market, with media logic it moves towards vertical diversity, i.e. variety of content within an individual outlet. Bias changes from intentional/propagandistic to unintentional/structural. While political actors retain some form of dominance in the media outlet as credible sources (soundbites) they lose the control of the journalistic discourse that surrounds and frames their staternents. Further pressures of cornmercialisation combined with a media-inflicted depreciation of politics and parties pushed journalists to deviate from ‘objective reporting’ in the direction of active intrusion in the political process. Journalists adopt predatorial behaviour: pack journalism transforms into feeding frenzies; strategic framing and melodramatic imperative guide the presentation of politics; information merges with entertainment to create mindless infotainment; the shrinking soundbite trivialises and distorts; cynicism reigns supreme in the assessment of politics, the journalist transforms from observer to king-maker (aspiring) king.® The list of ‘pathologies’ that the Arnerican literature provides is too long to be exhausted in this paper. It is not politics that intrudes into the media but vice versa. The chain of events related to the rise of media logic in Greece was inaugurated with broadcasting deregulation. This process resulted in (a) the state losing its gatekeeping function in the construction of mediated communication, (b) the increase of media intrusion in politics and (c) the commodification of political communication. The high levels of partytocracy in Greece have limited the overall degree of the displacement of the party by the media as the organising force of the political communication system. The substitution of the parties by the media, and the subsequent journalistic intrusion in the political process is at its high point in the USA. In Greece the structural position of parties allows for lower levels of substitution, a situation that could be defined as imperfect media logic. The rise of media logic affects the potential of political marketing in three manners: (a) It limits the capacity of partytocracy to shape the operation of the political communication system. The undermining of partytocracy at the media content level gradually affects the level of the voters. The intensity of political preferences decreases, the number of floating voters and ‘persuable’ voters increases and thus the potential of campaign communication and political marketing is maximised. (b) The melodramatic imperative, the strategic frame, the shrinking sounbite and the other attributes of content produced under media logic undermine the ideological aspect of the representation of politics. Ideology is the more stable and less manageable part of the party image. Thus partisan image making via164 dourwal OF Business AND SOCIETY (15, 2002 poll-driven conditioning of the party with personalities and issues becomes a more effective strategy. (c) The intrusion of media in the political process has also negative Affects on political marketing. Politicians do not control their image to the degree they did under party logic. Processes of party repositioning and image building have to be negotiated with journalists and the mass media. The growing cynicism of the media and the audience formulates a considerable obstacle. The Rise of Candidate—Centred Pol: :s im the USA The inroad of marketing principle in the USA has been related to a change in the nature of the bureaucratic structure conducting the campaign. Initially, this was the structure of the Democratic or the Republican Party. Later on, however, as candidate-centred politics developed, it changed. There is a division between the candidates’ organisation and the formal party apparatus, while volunteer workers and local party activists have been replaced by professional campaign technocrats whose affiliation is with the candidate rather than the party (Herrnson 1988; McCubbins 1992; Sabato 1981; Wattenberg 1991). The shift of power between party and candidate campaign mechanism has been such that instead of the candidate being a recruit and representative of the state party or faction it is the party leaders that are selected and invited by the campaign to participate in electoral events (Polsby 1983, 73). According to West (1993, 6) American elections have moved from institutionalised to individualised pluralism. Herrnson (1988) defined this change as the replacement of the ‘party-as-political machine’ model by the ‘party-as-peripheral organisation’ model; while Wattenberg refers to a shift from ‘party to candidate-centred politics’. The candidates” election machine is financed by PAC’s money and utilises polispots in order to achieve its ends. PAC’s or Political Action Committees are the only legal way for specialised interest groups to organise concentrated electoral activity in the USA. Some of these PAC’s represent public interest concerns, like the environment or education, but most PAC’s are interest based, expecting action from the government officials that will favour their industry in return for their campaign contribution. Each PAC represents a specific interest group rather than the aggregation of groups that a party represents. PAC’s in effect displace the party organisation as a useful tool for political candidates, and thus undermine its power to impose policy stances upon the candidates (Herrnson 1988; Sabbato 1981; Wattenberg 1991; 1996). The dominance of candidate-centred politics has been attributed primarily to political factors and only secondarily to polispots and the media. The fall of the party in the USA is a drama in two acts. The first act was the introduction of the secret and official (Australian) ballot at the beginning of the century.’ The effect was that the split ticket became possible and the network of clientelistic relationships that maintained the power of party bosses over the voters was dismantled. The second act played with the adoption of the ‘open’ primary in the 1960s and the 1970s and virtually eliminated party leaders’ control over nominations. Finally, as a form of encore the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 diminished the party as a source of campaign funds and‘Sarnaras] _Pourricat, MARKETING 165 institutionalised the growth of non-party sources, that is. the federal government and PAC’s (McSweeney and Zvesper 1991; Sabbato 1981). The result of this drama has been the proliferation of candidate-centred politics. Media in this process have been a facilitator rather than a causal factor. As Wattenberg mentions there is nothing inherent about the media that requires that campaigns be run independently of party, rather, the growth of the media and persuasion industries has simply made this strategy far more feasible (Wattenberg 1996, 91; McSweeney and Zvesper 1991, 138).® Finer differentiates between two levels of analysis of the role of parties. One that considers parties “things that do” and one who considers them as “things that are” ‘The first is primarily concerned with how well parties as organisations perform functions related to the machinery of government and the contesting of elections. From this point of view, the rise of candidate-centred politics should be considered as a disempowerment of parties at the campaign level. The second focuses mainly on partisan attitudes amongst the mass public. The question is: what effect does the first level have on the second? There are three possible communication routes through which the fall of the party as structure results in its fail as concept: a. the negativity generated due to the public display of intraperty friction The primaries necessarily lead to the public airing of policy disputes between rival factions of the parties (McCubbins 1992, 23) and thus shamelessly opens schisms that in earlier years were smoothed over behind closed doors (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995, 3). It is common knowledge in the USA that the result of presidential elections highly correlates with the intensity of interparty conflict in the primaries (Jamieson 1984). No president has won re~ election if challenged during the primary season by his own party (Rosenstiel 1997, 6; Fowler 1997, 22); b. the inability of the party to impose discipline over policy issues on their candidates, thus the content of the spots fails to condition the party label with the issue orientation of the candidate; and c. the party’s, is loss of visibility resulting in its loss in relevance. If advertisers continually atternpt to influence voting by not talking about partisanship, they could be reducing the party identity’s importance to voting. As the election dialogue takes place more and more through mass media and paid advertising, the absence of partisanship from the dialogue is likely to contribute to its further decline among those who depend on that dialogue for information. The party identification is thus atrophying (Boiney and Paleiz 1991, 21). The accumulative result is that the representation of politics in the spots undermines the party while the focus of news media in personalities makes it irrelevant. The question still remains: what is the extent of the fall of partisanship in the USA? Wattenberg provides the obvious answer: party labels, though still intact and enduring for many voters, now often lack the depth and meaning formerly associated with thern (Wattenberg 1991, 2). Without candidates and issues with which political parties can be identified, the salience of partisanship in the electorate is likely to suffer (Wattenberg 1996, 74), while the correlation between party and candidate evaluations have declined over the years and the stances that candidates take on the issues may no longer be linked to voters” perceptions of the parties (Wattenberg 1996, 79-81).166 Jousnat or BUSINESS AND SOCIETY. (15, 2002 Polispot and the Rise of the Political Communication Industry Television networks in the USA are in the business of selling audiences to advertisers not prograrnmes to audiences. Their main goal is profit maximization and thus 30-second commercials are a customary phenomenon. It was within this setting that televised political advertising spots (henceforth polispot) were broadcasted for the fist time by the Fisenhower campaign in the presidential elections of 1952. At the time media consultants were technicians. They played little role in the planning of the campaign. Often they did no more than produce live televised speeches. Until 1960 a separate agency had never been spawned simply to create a campaign (Jamieson 1984, 35). In 1964 a cadre of new communications specialists began to arrive in force to take over a significant part of the work of the political campaign. These men either had no experience in advertising agencies or else had served short apprenticeships before breaking away from the business (Diamond and Bates 1988, 117). At the same time big advertising companies started to get out of politics from fear of alienating commercial clients. Thus a new branch of the persuasion industry came into existence: the political communication industry (PCI). This term stands for all the professionals involved in political campaigning and electioneering. The development of PCI is due to the rise of the candidate cenire model. The candidates’ election machine is financed by Political Action Committees money and utilises polispots in order to achieve its ends. The unit of PCI is the political consultant. Larry Sabbato (1981) defined political consultants as campaign professionals who are engaged primarily in the provision of advice and services to candidates, their carnpaigns and other political committees. Political consultants are concerned with the five broad categories of campaign endeavours: management, planning and strategy, research, and candidate image and personality. !° The rise of PCI incorporates the phenomena of displacement and of mediation. Political consultants function as a level of mediation between the candidate and the people. In the USA, they have displaced the political bosses and to a large degree disempowered candidates. Polsby and Wildavsky refer to this process of displacement as “consultant imperialism” (1991, 225). Indeed in a survey of American consultants conducted by Petracca, 44 percent agreed that candidates generally backed off from making decisions on the priority of different issues on the campaign. Most “were neither very involved nor influential in the day-to-day tactical operations of the campaign” (1989, 13). Every level of mediation, however, is a potential source of discord, a conflict over control of the process. The discord derives from the struggle for the control of the campaign between the consultants and the political apparatus. The political consultant is a lever in the merging of the advertising principle in the political process, since he/she harmonises the behaviour of the candidate with the requirements of the media. Stated otherwise, the consultant is a mechanism that imposes the prerequisites of media logic upon political behaviour. Thus, the conflict between media and party logic may be examined not only at the level of media operations but also in the decisiomaking process that took place at the core of the campaign. The discord related to this level of mediation is evident in the resistance of British Labour politicians to the influence of advertising and the “Mandelsonization’ of the party (Scammell 1995, Rosenbaurn 1997).Samaras] Pouricat Mankerine 167 Every level of mediation is also a source of distortion. In the case of political consultants distortion may take the following forms: a. Direct contact by the politician with the voter may be substituted by mass~ mediated and consultant-mediated contact."! b. The candidate may function as an independent factor of departicization of the candidate-centred campaign. Consultants tend to substitute partisanship with opinion polls results in organising the campaign message. Thus, in cases where bipolarism reigns supreme, as in Greece, consultants may function as “conveyors” for Hotteling’s principle of minimurn differentiation thus pushing political discourse from position to valence politics. c. When campaigns are born out of research rather than conviction, candidate~ controlled communication cannot be considered as indicative of the real intentions of the politicians but rather as indicative of the impact of the consultants.” This undermines the academic argument for the necessity of studying the polispot as one of the few formats that mirrors the real intentions of the politicians. It also undermines the politician’s image with the audience; either because the advent of valence politics decreases the sense of difference and thus of choices of the audience; or because the parties once in government may act upon their actual positions rather than their valence rhetoric which thus creating a reliability problem. ‘Newman identifies a further step in the evolution of the PCS. He argues that there has been a continued evolution of marketing into politics: the power structure of campaign organisation has moved from party bosses to advertising executives, to a new cadre of consultants with marketing expertise (Newman 1994, 2). Thus the emergence of the marketing concept into politics should be considered as an extreme form of consultant imperialism where the consultant as a conduit of the marketing principle and not the candidate as a conduit of ideology has the definitive say. ‘At an international level, the political consulting/advertising industry has outgrown this particular format. In Greece, for example, the employment of advertising agencies in campaigning preceded the appearance of polispots. In 1985, ND used the US political communication company Soyers. More often, however, Greek parties tend to employ indigenous commercial advertising companies that are ‘co-ordinated’ with high standing political members. Developments Within Party-Centred System The evolution from a party-centred system to a candidate-centred system did not materialise in Greece where the parties maintained their dominance over the individual MPs while the party leader personalised the party. This does not make the party concept / marketing concept dichotomy irrelevant for Greek politics. The party concept corresponds to the traditional notions of an ideology-driven party aspiring to power in order to transform society. This was the traditional conceptualisation of the party in Greece until the depreciation of the Left Right bipolar affected the ideological standing of the parties and eroded their bonds of representation with certain segments of society. ‘Consequently, a repositioning of the parties needed to take place. While a marketing concept is useful in this repositioning, there are problems with its168 Jourat oF Business AND SOCIETY (15, 2002 employment; while the application of the marketing concept in commercial marketing is related to efficiency in the domain of politics, it may clash with the normative expectations for ideological parties and may create anti-party feelings and cynicism among the audience. Political marketing has been accused of destroying the function of leadership within a democracy. Being elected and governing by the polls has the effect that the masses are reducing leadership to the lowest common denominator needed for majority support (Scammell 195,17). A marketer altering a product in order to make it more effective to the audience is efficient. A campaigner who changes what the party stands for in order to make the party more compatible with the needs of the electorate may be described as ‘a power-hungry, amoralist, manipulator who sells out the parties ideology, vision and its glorious past’. And this is how the intraparty opposition has described such people in Greece. The interparty opposition attempts to gitimize the effort by applying the strategic framework and claiming that nothing has really changed and the other party is still ‘a wolf in a sheep’s skin or alternatively claim that the other party is unreliable because who could really trust people who are sacrilegious enough to sell out their ideology for office?.!! The most important part of the repositioning of a Greek party does not take place during the electoral carnpaign. It takes place during the time it is in opposition where, through a process of internal debate and blame game, the party takes the necessary measures to adapt to the new realities. The processes of structural repositioning may take a very long time. In the UK the transformation of the old unelectable Labour into the electable New Labour took a decade and three party leaders to be completed. In Greece the transformation of ND from a rightwing party into a centre-right party and finally into a party of ‘the middle’ has not yet been fully completed despite efforts of 15 years. In every change in media technology, in every significant transformation of the media structure, in every major development in campaign practice a question arises: to what extent and in which way is the novelty going to affect the power structure? In the USA, polispots, consultants, commodification of media structures and electioneering processes as well as the inroads of marketing principles are intimately related to the candidate-centred mode. In many European countries, such developments have been integrated within a party-centred model. At the party level new developments have altered the relationship between the party and the voter and on certain occasions have affected the power structure. Perot launched his effort in 1992 by utilising tele-marketing techniques. Marketing techniques also played a significant role in the displacement of Christian Democrats by Berlusconi in Italy in the aftermath of the Tangepoli scandal. In other countries, however, the results have been less dramatic. Greece is a case where the new techniques have been integrated within the existing power structure; despite the rise of media logic and polispots bipolarism reigns supreme. Authority structures the allocation of publicity. In the candidate-controlled communication, where the effect ‘of commodification is more direct, bipolarisrn reached its highest point: 92.5%. In the newscasts, where the effects of commodification are filtered by journalistic practices, bipolarism achieves 80,7%; a percentage which is 5.5% less than the election results of 1993 and almost equal with the results of 1996.Samaras] Powrnicat. MARKETING 169 Table 1 Facets of Bipolarism im Greek Elections PASOK ND BIPOLARIS MINOR PARTIES ELECTION RESULTS 1993 * 46.9% 39.3% 86,2% 138% POLISPOT ADVERTISING EXPENDITURES 1996 ** 59% 335% 92.5% 07.5% PARTY TIME IN CAMPAIGN NEWS 1996 *** 48.9% 31.8% 80,7% 19.3% TALK SHOW UNITS 1996***** 49% 35% 84% 16% ELECTION RESULTS 1996 * 41.5% 38.1% 79.6% 20.4% “Expresses a percentage of the electoral vote. ** Data from table 8, chapter 3 *#* Dala from quantitative content analysis of the central newscast of ET-1, MEGA, ANT-1 and SKY. Indudes both partisan soundbites and journalistic references to the party. Total time 133.927 seconds "Fe Aggregate of PASOK and ND e+ Data from quantitative content analysis of all the politicians that appeared in tall shows in four major Greek channels during the 1996 campaign. Control over the structure results in control over the content. As extensive content analysis of the Greek spots of the period 1993-2000 (Samaras 1999, 2000) suggest, polispot content is organised optimally for the parties in the sense that it perpetuates the interparty frame which is the hermeneutic pillar of partytocracy. The reason is that in the polispots the political structure can directly, and unobstructed by journalistic mediation, shape the content of the media output. For the same reason there is no employment of the intraparty conflict frame in either the candidate-sponsored or in the party-sponsored spots. There is only very limited employment of accusation of intraparty conflict against the opponent as part of the interparty frame. Moreover, there is no employment of the anti-political schema in the Greek polispots. The absence of the intraparty conflict frame and of the antipolitical schema differentiate the Greek political advertising spot both from its American counterpart and from the Greek newscasts. In the USA the existence of the open primaries structurally guarantees the publication of intraparty conflict through the spots. Furthermore, the contarnination of the American political culture and of the candidate-controlled communication by cynicism and distrust against politicians gave rise to the anti-political schema in the USA spots. In Greece the appearance of the intraparty frame and the anti-political schema are related to the dominance of media logic in the newsmaking process. The frames provided in the polispots are different than those of the news media During the pre-electoral periods the parties control their behaviour in order to avoid the kind of intraparty conflict activity that -would feed the relevant media frame. Moreover, the ritualistic character of elections coverage and the dominance of the parties as ‘credible sources’ minimise the employment of the antipolitical schema in the newscasts. It is during these periods that the use of the Greek polispots is pervasive. Thus in the170 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND SOCIETY 15, 2002 pre-clectoral periods spots prime the voters with a framing of politics which is more to their advantage than that of the newscasts. The employment of interparty conflict frames in the spots manages to polarise and mobilise the electorate by invigorating latent political affiliations and thus rejuvenates partylocracy during campaign periods. While the main structure of the party system in Greece has not experienced the transformations of the American one, certain transformations within the political product increase the relevance of political marketing. For example, the displacement of the old leadership that took place in both major parties during the 1990s also affected the ‘political product’ in Greece and increased the potential of marketing. For the old leadership, being old meant more than simply ruling for a long period. Karamanlis had dominated Greek politics since 1955. The antithesis between Konstantinos Mitsotakis and Andreas Papandreou that personalised the antithesis between ND and PASOK for the decade 1984-1993 carries with it a 30 years - old, intensely personal, and at the same time highly publicised, animosity. The context of such strong connotations tends to undermine the potential of image ~ making. The new leadership in both parties formulated much more open signs; thus making themselves more available for “cosmetic improvements” through marketing and for_ games of terministic control. Until 1974, in Greek politics, the leader had become more stable and the party more transient in the forrnulation and signification of the political blocks. Both Papagos’ and Kararnanlis” leaderships resulted in a different party emerging as the standard-bearer of the Right. When Karamanlis returned from Paris, the post-junta ND replaced the pre-junta ERE in order to signify the overall change of attitudes. A much more messy and polemical displacement took place between the old- centre-style EDIK and the more (rhetorically) radicalised PASOK. It is important that, while both ND and PASOK were originally signified and contained by the personality of their founders, in both cases they have outlived them. The critical event in each case was the replacement of the founder by a democratically elected leader within the context of the same party.!5 Thus, the party label becomes a permanent system of signification in Greek politics parallel to and more stable than the personality contest between party leaders.'® The ideological connotation and the polarisation capacity of this system has weakened, thus allowing for image manipulation and the repositioning of the party. A candidate’s image is defined by the subjective impressions voters have of that individual. At an operational level, in candidate-centred systems like the American one, the term ‘image’ usually refers to the image of the candidate ie. it refers to the personal traits of the candidate (Cundy 1986,214). In party-centred regimes, like Greece, the personal traits of the candidate merge with the connotations attached to the party label and the use of the issues to formulate the image of the party. A candidate’s image is the outcome of two interrelated roles the political actor performs: his political role (acts that are related to his position as a community leader) and his stylistic role (acts which are not directly political but involve personal qualities such as physical appearance, speech patterns and personality projection) (Nimmo and Savage, cited in Johnson and Elebash 1986, 310). The ‘overall candidate image is thus comprised of the attitudes and feelings voters have toward the individuals running in a given race. Parties, on the other hand, have a long history. Actions and statements in the past have created expectations animosities, affiliations. They have shaped a nexus of connotations. WhenSamaras} _ Pourricat_ MARKETING _ am retrospective voting is employed, images of the past are more important than images of the future. A very strong synecdochecal connection between the leader and the party, where the leader acts as a personification of his party, facilitates the transferral of connotations frorn the one to the other. Thus, in eras of high intensity of political preferences, the party tag may turn an unacceptable candidate into an acceptable one (ie., the brand sells the product). On either occasion, the choice of the candidate aims to affect what the party stands for (i.¢., the product enhances the brand). Thus, after the death of Papandreou, PASOK elected Simitis as its new leader because the connotations of modernity and effectiveness attached to him would make the party more electable, a choice that was proved wise both in the 1996 and in the 2000 elections. ND, on the other hand, chose Evert as head of the party in 1993 because his personal image was better than his opponent's. Evert’s virility and dynamism made a striking contradiction to the very sick and old Papandreou. This strategy would have been effective if Papandreou hat not gotten sicker, quit and then died before the elections. In 1996, ND chose Kostas Karamanlis because his image of youth could attack connotations of ‘new’, ‘modern’ and ‘near to the people’ and thus help rebrand ND. The application of the iriangulation strategy in the USA and of the ‘third road’ strategy in the UK indicate that ihe transformation of the political product according to the marketing principle is becorning reality. Notes This is evident in the definition of propaganda. Jowett and O"Donnell define propaganda as “the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognition, and direct ‘behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist. Propaganda is an attempt at directive communication with an objective that has been established aprior.” (1986,16) Ellul defines propaganda “as a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an ‘organization” (1973:61) 2Both the discourse of Neo-Liberalism in ND (1990-3) and of modernisation in PASOK (1996-) attacks the legitimacy and practice of clientelism. The reference of the colours is synecdochecal. Blue is the colour of ND and green is the colour of PASOK. ‘In the Greek case other cultural reasons may have accommodated the rise of objectivity. Objectivity has been idealised as a professional ethos by the international journalistic community. ‘The BBC functioned as an ideal while the experience of the Greek state broadcast functions as the negative stereotype. These two increased the normative pressure on ‘the journalistic community for changes in the news making process. Consequently, as soon as the restructuring ‘of media allowed it, “objectivity” was adopted. 8For the definitions of horizontal and vertical diversity see Entman (1989, 97-98). See for example the candidacy of Pat Buchanan for the nomination of the Republican Party in the USA and the premiership of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. The latter does not exactly qualify as a journalist but is the epitome of a ‘media person’ replacing politicians. Using this system, the state printed alternative tickets that the voter could check off in secret. Voters could thus now pick and choose from the two tickets, voting for Republicans for some offices, Democrats for others (Wattenberg 1991, 33). This replaced the tickets distributed by the ‘various parties. Formerly, voters acquired the party ticket of their choice and placed it in the ballot box. Parties thus had detailed information at their disposal about who had received tickets and how they voted (McSweeney and Zvesper 1991, 119). ‘This argument is also valid when reversed. When the media system is limited and restrictive it may impair the tendency towards candidate-centred politics.172 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND SOCIETY (15, 2002 Cited in Wattenberg 1996, 3. ‘For the division of labour within the PCI see Denton and Woodward (1990, 52); Hagstrom (1992, 5) and Polsby (1983:73) as well as the Campaign and Elections magazine annual issues on the state of the industry (The Political Pages, C&E“s Complete Guide to Political Products and Services) "In most cases consultants’ profit is earned primarily through a surcharge they buy on television time purchased for airing the candidate’s ads ~ typically 15 percent because their profits are based on volume. Media consultants are often suspected of encouraging candidates to do ore advertising than they actually need (Frithz and Morris 1992, 27) There is no agreement on this issue in the American literature. Sabato (1981, 26) argues that for most consultants ideology is a surprisingly minor criterion for the selection of candidates while Luntz (1988, 50) argues that party affiliation is by far the most important factor considered by consultants in selecting their clients, outweighing a candidate's likeability, ideology or financial standing. There are examples for both points of view. Another argument is that consultants offer their services only to candidates of one of the parties. But this is due to practical rather than ideological reasons and does not guarantee that the consultant will push the candidate towards partisan positions and issues. “For example, the shift of the political discourse from position to valence issues. All these evaluative statements derive from the actual news coverage of efforts to transform the main parties in Greece. It is very interesting to examine the discourse related to political marketing and how marketing efforts in politics are re-evaluated when perceived from the perspective of political science. This happened with the accession of Karamanlis to the presidency in 1981 and the illness of Papandreou in 1995. . *SLegg et. al claim that “political parties in Greece, if identified by name alone, have a relatively short life. Party labels in some elections seem to have no connection with party labels used in prior elections ... This lack of name continuity, however, did not mean an absence of a continuous political tendency"(1997). While this statement may be accurate of the past it is not of the present of the Greek party system. 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