Politicians as brands in parliamentary vs. presidential systems: A cross-national comparison

Abstract

Recent research has shown that politicians, specifically candidates, are viewed by the electorate as brands (Guzmán et al., 2015; Harrison et al., 2023), and that their brand image has an effect on voting intention (Van Steenburg & Guzmán, 2019). However, in all of these cases, the research was conducted in a presidential political system, where the electorate vote directly for a politician to function as head of the government. In parliamentary systems, though, the electorate vote for members of parliament, from which the head of government is appointed either by a non-executive president or a hereditary monarch. Therefore, the electorate in these systems do not directly choose the leader of their government, which leads one to question whether a politician’s brand matters as much in a parliamentary system as it does when the electorate vote directly for the head of state. To answer that question, data were collected in two presidential systems (United States and Mexico) and two parliamentary systems (Canada and the United Kingdom) using methodology that tests a politician’s brand image. Results show that politicians’ brands help shape the affective response toward the politicians regardless of political system, and that one’s self-brand image is as important to shaping those attitudes in a parliamentary system as it is in a presidential one. This is important to political marketers working in parliamentary systems as strategies can be developed to create a politician’s brand image that is valuable for elections as well as when governing.