Towards a Critical Political Marketing Agenda?

This paper conceptualizes 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 recognize 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.