ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book attempts to give international researchers an inside view of how electoral campaigning has changed over the last decades in Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, and the Philippines. It focuses on comparative analysis of the driving forces behind the changes in electoral campaigning in East and Southeast Asia, the transnational diffusion and implementation of United States (US) electoral concepts and strategies, and the future directions of electoral campaigns in the region. The book refers to the police department of a major US city, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the public schools in Oklahoma City as examples, illustrating the need for a broader definition of what marketing comprises. The Global Political Consultancy Survey, for instance, shows that 57 percent of the top US political consultants offered their services to foreign institutions in the 1990s.
