The Phenomenon of the Greens or On the Utility of New Technologies
The outcome of the election campaign has not produced any special surprise except the phenomenon of the Greens and the failure of the NEP democratic bloc. The latter is interesting not because someone had predicted great success and the party failed, but because it showed the significance of the name of the party and its image on the whole in the election campaign. I should remind you that the NEP bloc includes the Democratic Party, which having only the name, rather than structure or influence, had always been popular (up to 10%). Some intelligent people advised them to change the name and, as a result, they blew it.
In terms of politics, the much spoken-of phenomenon of the Greens is not really significant. The faction of the party will in no way influence the Center-Left orientation of Parliament, because it is Center-Left itself. Thus the phenomenon of the Party of the Greens of Ukraine (PZU) is interesting as an aspect of election technology.
In fact, what had our parties in stock to win voters besides the image of their leaders, policy proposals, and a certain general idea exploited by one party or another? Surely, all three components are normally used in advertising, and all three are designed to create a positive image of a given organization. But in a particular election campaign one of these approaches always prevail. Its success depends not only on the quality of the method developed, but also on the extent to which it can be used. For instance, the image of party leaders was efficiently exploited by the United Social Democrats, while other parties lacking such a colorful lot have not benefited much from this approach. Policy proposals, as predicted, turned out to be the hardest to exploit. To do so in television ads was rather difficult (other advertising methods are not considered because of their low effectiveness) where one has to resort to concise statements. Those who chose that path (for instance, the Liberal Party of Ukraine promising to assure adequate pensions and wages) blundered most, for nobody believes politicians’ promises anymore. And, finally, playing on a certain general idea, which was demonstrated by the Party of the Greens of Ukraine (whose leaders did not appear on TV, and the voters never heard about its program).
It should be pointed out that other parties have also made strenuous efforts to find a magic wand to open the hearts of the voters (like the Rus requires Reforms and Order slogan), but to no avail for one reason: they tried to “answer the voter’s questions”. In other words, they acted according to what here is a usual and long-established scheme. According to it, a party should use the results of pollsters to identify “community” problems to be ex-ploited in the election campaign. The genius of the Greens’ image-makers exhibited itself through their selecting an area of pain above any political slogan. It went like this: “the politicians are engaged in demagoguery”, but the Greens “will save life.” Thus the PZU has exploited the negative attitude of the voters to politics as itself. In reality, Green adherents voted for the motto “Screw the politicians!” rather than for the party. To be honest, we must admit that any other party could hardly have used such a slogan, for the Greens are widely considered to be the most remote from the sheer politics and are mostly associated with a certain romantic struggle for “nature”. However, this does not mean that other parties could not use the PZU’s methods.
The success of the PZU is a good lesson. First, it is a lesson to our image-makers (I have an impression that the campaign for the Greens was organized by foreigners, because so far Ukrainian experts have refused to take into account voter’s motivations). Second, their campaign was a classic example of how easily the voter can be fooled by emotional appeals. If the politicians are engaged in demagoguery, then the Greens are demagogues, too. For they are in no way different from other politicians. The voter fails to notice this simple logical contradiction and is happy to cast his vote for those who touched his heartstrings. Third, the Greens’ success shows once again that our politics are far from being a contest of ideas and programs (which is also proved by the success of the Com-munists who received most of their votes thanks to President Kuchma’s efforts). And fourth: unfortunately, the voting at the March 29 election was again mostly negative (that is most people voted against and not for anything).
As far as the PZU is concerned, it must already today to think about its future. The romantics became politicians, and they have four years ahead of them of the same parliamentary demagoguery before the eyes of the whole nation. The party will hardly be as successful in the next election, if it employs the same methods.
Photo by Rolf Neser:
Electoral technology can alter a party’s “face” unrecognizably
