Re-conceptualising party-centred politics in terms of "market." A relationship marketing approach.

This study is an inter-disciplinary theoretical endeavour which situates itself at the interface between marketing and political science and which contributes to both political marketing and political science perspectives. It emerges from the proposition that there are important differences between the workings of party-centred political systems as practiced in many of the well established democracies in Northern/Western Europe and candidate-centred systems such as in the United States. The latter are characterised predominantly by self-introduced political entrepreneurs who capture the nomination of a political party while the former are mainly constructed around the workings of membership parties that allow, encourage and facilitate party members' and associated members' participation in intra-party production processes (of policy and representatives). While these differences are acknowledged by interested political marketing and political science scholars, such insights have yet to penetrate at the level of theory. As a result, significant aspects of party-centred political realities are rendered theoretically invisible or they are misrepresented in these literatures. This study aimed to remedy these shortcomings through the application and extension of an alternative marketing framework - that is, the relationship marketing framework - which departs from the managerial marketing framework which is most often applied cross- contextually in the contemporary political marketing literature. The thesis offers a problematising re-description - a theoretical rethinking - of how party-centred political contexts may be understood in terms of "markets". The theoretical argument is constituted, firstly, by the methodological procedure involving an independent critical and reflexive analysis; and secondly, through the introduction of a theoretical contextual distinction between markets for 'high-touch labour-intensive services' (on the one hand) and ordinary goods and commoditised services (on the other); Together these aid in the development of a set of conceptual models aimed at furthering our understanding of party-centred politics in terms of "markets" and at helping to distinguish them theoretically from candidate-centred systems such as those in the United States. The argument contributes to scholarly debates devoted to understanding the dynamics of party-centred politics within both the political marketing and political science analytical traditions. The analysis also helps to shed theoretical light on the different types of political power that party-centred and candidate-centred systems potentially make available to their citizens, thereby contributing an enhanced understanding of different categories of democracy