The Role of Populism in the Electoral Marketing of the Movement ANO Before the Czech Parliamentary Election in 2013
Abstract
The text provides an analysis of the practical use of populism in electoral marketing by the movement ANO before the last election to the Czech parliament in 2013. Its main goal is to link two heretofore unconnected concepts in political science and develop new insights and approaches in political research in the area of political marketing and populism.
The first part describes theoretical approaches found in populism and electoral marketing, which are later applied to a case study reflecting the role of populism in the electoral marketing of ANO. In the empirical part, we analyze how the election campaign staff of ANO implemented and formulated their electoral strategy, used internal market research, classified the electorate, and identified key segments of voters.
In the next part, we focus on an analysis of the critical rhetoric of ANO leaders against the whole political establishment, including populist features in various arguments. The research of populism in ANO's campaign is based on content analysis of the main party documents as well as an analysis of semi-structured interviews with ANO's election strategists.
We confirm that populism was a part of the identity of the movement, which helped it successfully mobilize the segment of disgruntled voters. The author's perception of populism is based on the proto-political marketing concept, formulated by Henneberg and Eghbalian in 2002.
This form of populism's catch-all strategy of undifferentiated targeting, as well as a lack of clear or dominant ideological roots in ANO's party profile (identity), would characterize the position of ANO as "The Tactical Populist" party in Henneberg's typology. However, we question the significance Henneberg assigned to the Tactical Populist category.