The Human Resource Management of Political Staffers:Insights from Prime Ministers' Advisers and Reformers

The Human Resource Management of Political Staffers: Insights from Prime Ministers' Advisers and Reformers explores the human resource management of political staffers and advisers who work for politicians. Deeply grounded in the experiences of those who worked in the highest political offices under Prime Ministers Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau, Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern, it makes the case for better management of staffers by illuminating past problems with the workplace such as extreme workloads, little work-life balance and lack of orientation and training. But it also offers a way forward by combining ad hoc positive experiences into guidance for future best practice. Drawing on interviews with advisers/staffers and practitioners working on HR reform in politics, in four countries - the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - it provides a research-informed best practice guide for the staffers/advisers, their managers and reformers which offers practical advice on how to recruit, orientate and train, manage and support staffers and advisers appropriately within the complex political environment. It also conveys the highly skilled roles staffers undertake and the democratic contribution they make. The Human Resource Management of Political Staffers is a must-have guide to current and future advisers, politicians and ministers. Human resource management for political staffers is important not just for the individuals but to enable taxpayer-funded staffers to perform more effectively, which will in turn help elected politicians deliver for voters.</p

The ministry of public input: report and recommendations for practice

As political leaders acknowledge the limits of their power and knowledge, they seek a diverse range of public input into government, but this raises profound practical and democratic questions as to how we ensure that public input is collected and processed appropriately and what political leaders are supposed to do with that public input. Through interviews with government ministers and practitioners this research shows how politicians are becoming deliberative political leaders; integrating constructive input from inside and outside government into their decision-making. It also argues that we need to develop a permanent government unit to collect, process and communicate ongoing public input such as a Ministry or Commission of Public Input. By improving public input systems; acknowledging the limits of their own power and knowledge; and devolving solution-finding to others, politicians achieve change that lasts beyond their time in power. Public input is not irreconcilable with political leadership; it is essential to it

Political marketing as party management - Thatcher in 1979 and Blair in 1997

Political Marketing has attracted increasing attention from political commentators in recent years, yet relatively little academic work has been conducted into its nature - either theoretically or empirically. That which does exist have focused on the use of marketing in campaigning, which although important, limits discussion to just one aspect of a party’s behaviour where marketing can have an influence. Marketing as used by businesses is not just about the slogans or catch-phrases used to sell the product. It is used to inform the design of that product. Transferred to parties, marketing can be used in deciding what policies to adopt and what organisational structures to employ. More importantly, it has been used by British parties, most recently by New Labour in the lead up to the 1997 election, but also informed the behaviour of the Conservative Party as far back as 1979. This wider utilisation of marketing has affected many aspects of the parties behaviour, including leadership powers, membership rights, constitution and policies - not just their campaigning activities. This has much wider ramifications, suggesting a new role for political parties, with normative implications for politics as a whole. This paper will thus explore the potential of political marketing and its use by Thatcher in 1979 and Blair in 1997 in order to enable consideration of these implications

Being more with less: Exploring the flexible political leadership identities of government ministers

The paper focuses on the identity work of government ministers, exploring how they experience themselves in relation to contemporary demands and discourses of leadership and democracy. We note a substantial number of studies seeking to develop theories of political and public leadership, particularly in more collaborative directions, but no studies that seek to explore how such demands are experienced by the political leaders who occupy leadership roles. We adopt a poststructuralist approach to identity as a means of empirically exploring how government ministers construct their identities. Drawing on 51 interviews with senior politicians, we propose a model of flexible political leadership identity, which argues that just as public agencies in these austere times are asked to do more with less, so political leaders seem to need to be more but with less perceived discretionary power. We propose four identities that answer quite different leadership demands: ‘the consultor’, ‘the traveller,’ ‘the adjudicator’ and ‘the master.’ These are semi-occupied identities, partial fulfilments of contemporary but contradictory leadership discourses. We conclude the paper with a reflection on how our findings might inform future research and leadership development interventions

Is the personal always political? Education and political knowledge strengthen the relationship between openness and conservatism

Abstract. Research demonstrates that the negative relationship between Openness to Experience and conservatism is heightened among the informed. We extend this literature using national survey data (Study 1; N = 13,203) and data from students (Study 2; N = 311). As predicted, education – a correlate of political sophistication – strengthened the negative relationship between Openness and conservatism (Study 1). Study 2 employed a knowledge-based measure of political sophistication to show that the Openness × Political Sophistication interaction was restricted to the Openness aspect of Openness. These studies demonstrate that knowledge helps people align their ideology with their personality, but that the Openness × Political Sophistication interaction is specific to one aspect of Openness – nuances that are overlooked in the literature. </jats:p

Political social media marketing:a systematic literature review and agenda for future research

We focus on political marketing and conduct a systematic literature review of journal articles exploring political marketing on social media. The systematic literature review delineates the current state of political social media marketing literature. It spans six databases and comprises sixty-six journal articles published between 2011 and 2020. We identify and categorize the variables studied in the literature and develop an integrative framework that links these variables. We describe the research themes that exist in the literature. The review demonstrates that the field is growing. However, the literature is fragmented, along with being predominantly based in the US context. Conceptual and theoretical shortcomings also exist. Moreover, the literature ignores pertinent contemporary topics such as co-creation, influencer marketing, and political advertising on social media. Nevertheless, a nascent domain with growing practical significance, political social media marketing provides various exciting avenues for further research, which we outline in this study.</p

Introduction:Political Marketing and Management in New Zealand

This chapter sets the scene of how political marketing is used in New Zealand just like other established democracies but adding context about the 2017 Election. It notes how the election was very unpredictable, with a change in the Labour and Greens leadership just before the campaign started, and that National won the most votes and seats but lost control of government due to the decision by minor party NZ First. Jacinda Ardern, elected Labour leader just 8 weeks before the election, when the party was languishing in the polls, became Prime Minister. This chapter introduces the rest of the book, outlining how the different chapters will seek to explain the result by covering varied aspects of political marketing, drawing on rich and extensive quantitative and qualitative data

Canadian Political Consultants' Perspectives about Political Marketing

This research in brief explores Canadian political consultants’ practices in political marketing, exploring whether they are, as democratic critiques of marketing often argue, encouraging politics to become poll-driven, and whether they fit into previous international studies on consultants in other countries, especially the United States. Drawing upon qualitative data collected from interviews with key practitioners in Canada and from Canadian news sources, it considers how political consultants utilize market research, communication, and strategy. It also considers the potential impact of the use of political consultants on politicians’ decisions and leadership. It concludes that Canadian political marketing does not fit into an idealistic, realistic, or cynical view of political marketing but is a more complex synthesis and thus the democratic impact is more varied and debatable

Political Marketing and Opinion Leadership:Comparative Perspectives and Findings

Political marketing is an essential aspect of modern politics in established democracies, with politicians utilizing a range of marketing tools and strategies to help them understand and respond to voter concerns. This raises the concern that continual attention to public opinion can cause politicians to simply pander to it. However, this chapter proposes a new model of political leadership for the twenty-first century, reflective leadership, which suggests that politicians can use market research to identify a range of possible responses to public opinion, which not only helps them maintain public support but achieve change. Globally, in established democracies there is a trend towards a public that wants to feel a sense of involvement in political decision-making but also desires strong, principled leadership; a reflective political leader is better positioned to meet these contradictory demands.</p

Political marketing and British Political Parties (2nd edition)

The first edition of this book demonstrated that British political parties now attempt to offer a complete product that will appeal to a majority of voters, rather than being influenced by a political ideology and firm belief system.This new edition provides an updated and more in-depth exploration of the political marketing approach, including analysis of the 2001 and 2005 elections. It re-presents the influential theory of market, sales and product-oriented parties, discussing the potential and the limits of consumerism, and the need to blend business concepts with a traditional understanding of politics.Lee-Marshment examines Blair's New Labour government in order to draw out lessons on delivery, maintaining market intelligence and the effect of changing to a leadership approach that goes against country and party. Analysis of the Conservatives in opposition shows how the best intentions of party leaders to implement a market-orientation can be thwarted by internal resistance and traditional party elites.Providing a more reflective and critical analysis, the second edition offers a more nuanced discussion on how political parties can not only win elections but govern successfully