Abstract

Modern election campaigns consist of two elements: a centralized media campaign around the leadership of the political party and a campaign involving the participation of active party members or campaign activists. The literature on parties and campaigns emphasizes the importance of the first element, the media campaign, while at least until recently downplaying the importance of members. Political marketing literature itself has paid little attention to the role of members. This chapter will address that omission by combining insights derived from relationship marketing with ideas on party members and grassroots campaigning. Using the concept of part-time marketers, we demonstrate the potential importance of party members in modern or postmodern election campaigns. This will be illustrated through a case study of Dutch parties and party members.