What's in a Brand? Party Rebranding in Europe
PS7-4
Presented by: Matthias Avina
Seminal work in the political science literature has argued that political parties have brands in the same way as corporations. However, one of the characteristics of a corporate brand is its malleability in that corporations change aspects of the brand by “rebranding.” If party brands are indeed analogous to corporate brands, is it possible for parties to rebrand, and if so, what are the electoral consequences of doing so? In this paper, I argue that parties do rebrand, and that this is done by either changing the party features, such as the name, or party policies. I further argue that these rebrands are an effective electoral strategy, but only for small parties. I test this latter argument on a data set of 245 political parties in 18 European countries from 1945-2019, and find support for my argument. This paper contributes to our knowledge of party strategy, and specifically the tools and actions that parties take when competing with one another.