Confronting EU unpopularity: the contribution of political marketing

Abstract

Political marketing is making headway around the world. However, this development is not uniform in nature. Research to date into political marketing has offered limited insights into different national contexts and involves only the study of political parties or of particular political campaigns. Research into government policy-making and political marketing is also immature. The present analysis of political marketing and EU integration addresses this gap in the research. More specifically, following a deductive approach, this paper investigates whether EU policy-making conforms to the Lees-Marshment political organisation behaviour model, in particular, its market-orientation element. It argues that the decline in popular support for European integration is the result of a lack of market orientation in EU policy-making. Group social psychology is deemed to be at the root of public dissatisfaction with EU policy-making and the lack of market orientation of the latter. While pressure from voters (the market) should not feed directly into EU policy-making without any input from political organisations, public consultation on EU policy should take place at all stages of the policy process.