ABSTRACT
Contemporary political systems are facing pertinent legitimation and rationality crises. This is often manifested in decreasing electoral turnout and volatile voting behaviour, negativism and dissatisfaction with politics and political personnel, political apathy, civil disobedience, decreasing civic engagement or even incivisme, decreasing party membership and partisanship, as well as pessimism regarding the future of Western democratic polities (Dalton 1988, pp. 225–44; Gibbins 1990). All these issues go along with a subjective sense of political inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism, three interrelated aspects of contemporary political disaffection. Under these circumstances, enhanced by the electronic communication media, party systems of the Western societies are in a status of “permanent campaigning” (Nimmo 1999). Therefore, political marketing strategies flourish with a purpose to grab non-voters, to tackle realignment, to manage political crises, and to (re) make the image of politicians. A common wisdom among political marketers is that people see politicians as catering to special interests and economic elites and as being chiefly concerned about promoting their own careers and image. Addressing the public’s cynicism is one of the cardinal objectives of today’s political marketing as it is often considered the basic impediment to stable or increasing voting turnout.
