Exchanging Political Value: The Global Layer in Political Marketing

Abstract

The Romanian presidential elections in 2014 have witnessed a large turnout to polls, an unexpected result but also two successful key-propositions on the winning side, the candidate Klaus Iohannis: “After 25 years, let’s say stop and restart everything from the beginning” and “We’re going to take our country back”. While the first is an original output of the campaign staff after both a data analysis of the race and a catch-phrase proposal from the author of this paper, the second one has more international history behind it. From Michael Dukakis in 1988, to Howard Dean in 1993 and also the Tea Party Movement in 2009–2010 or Donald Trump in 2016, “take back our country” or “take back America” have reemerged as powerful messages in US politics. More interesting, in recent years, the slogan has a polymorph and changing meaning in different international contexts: anti-immigration or anti-Muslims, anti-corporations, anti-elites or anti-politicians in general. Phenomena in politics like ideology contamination from a country context to another, exporting international political consultants, pollsters or strategists from one democracy’s electoral campaigns to another’s or just following some sort of “fashions” in campaigning style have been a long presence in western-like democratic systems. Yet, in the case of the 2014 message in Romania, there is more to the story than a simple copy-paste: a thin but visible new layer in understanding elections and public opinion. “Let’s take our country back” was at the moment in Romania more than a resurfaced message with a prior and ulterior tracking history, but also a descriptor for a wider spreading antiestablishment mood in societies and elections around the world. Eastern Europe alone provides other clarifying examples only the same year: Miro