Political Marketing And Women Candidates In The 2014 Parliamentary Election In The Kingdom Of Bahrain
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Date
2018-08
Authors
Ebrahim A. Aziz Al Jawder
Abdulwahab Yusuf
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
The 2002 Constitution of Bahrain guarantees electoral rights for men and
women. Thus, this political science thesis focuses on the political marketing
strategies and tactics used by female candidates to win the 2014 parliamentary
election in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The main aims of this study are to investigate
political marketing awareness and the behavior of the candidates in the light of Arab-
Muslim culture, reflecting on the frameworks adopted, and the electoral orientations
characterized by the performance of the female candidates. This qualitative study
uses Grounded Theory to develop a theory based on collected data. Data was
collected from two sources: in-depth semi-structured interviews and documents. Ten
out of 22 female candidates (i.e. 45.45% of the total nominees) were selected as
informants with diversity of qualification and experience from each of the four
Governorates based on purposive sampling method – three informants won
parliamentary seats, three qualified to the second round and four lost the 2014
Parliamentary Elections. This also reflected the informants’ diverse demography and
cultures considering the cultural diversity across the Governorates. To maintain
validity, the findings were triangulated. To evaluate the informants’ strategies, the
study utilizes Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threats strategy (SWOT). The
research findings show that the candidates’ behavior was controlled and influenced
by Arab-Muslim culture, notably masculinity, tribalism, stereotype and uncertain
avoidance. Informants were relationship-oriented, deeply reliant on relationships
with stakeholders to circumvent the cultural factors and used strategies of alliance with heads of families to conduct their election campaigns through traditional and
modern media. One limitation of the study includes the avoidance of discussing
sensitive sectarian issues by most people which was officially banned. Since political
marketing approach covers the time frame of post 2010 election to 2014 election in
this research context, the illustration of the election cycle was unclear. The
candidates’ campaign activities generally began only a few weeks before the election
and ended immediately after announcement of election results. More related studies
would be needed to include the perceptions of voters or stakeholders to compare the
findings with previous or subsequent elections.
Description
Keywords
Political candidates , Marketing