Policy and Political Marketing: Promoting Conflict as Policy

This paper is an attempt to try and understand the processes and interactions that take place in society when a group attempts to lobby in favor of contentious forms of public policy, which may not necessarily be in national or public interest, through the political marketing lens. What are the necessary environmental conditions in society and political tactics employed that could be sufficient to try and influence and persuade a public to accept a form of security policy or military intervention? Two cases are used to try and investigate these questions – the NATO debate in Sweden and the 2015 Parliamentary debate in the United Kingdom on using military force in Syria. In spite of the differences in the two individual cases, a number of similarities in outcomes emerge. One of the requisite underlying environmental conditions is that the publics concerned need to perceive an immediate security threat to themselves. Political tactics used tend to revolve around intangible value and norm laden emotional argumentation. These are, to some extent, further influenced by the historical experience and memory of the public in historical accounts of armed conflict

political marketing, public policy, public opinion, political relationships, security and armed conflict