Voter empowerment for emerging democracies: Mobilising the marginalised in Peru

Motivating the politically and economically disenfranchised to vote can be problematic, particularly in the emerging democracies where political marketing is gaining ground without concurrent voter education. Utilising textual and discourse analysis this paper deconstructs a social marketing campaign in Peru where the rhetoric of political candidature is challenged. Through characterising voters as employers and selection criteria based on analogies of daily life, the political process is made comprehensible and accessible, if not also radically appealing. The author introduces voter empowerment as a concept positioned in the interstices between social marketing and political communications, and distinct from political marketing. Comparative studies of similar campaigns are needed to demonstrate whether these may prove effective and how much adaptation is needful cross-nationally. Meanwhile the Peru campaign provides policy-makers and social activists elsewhere with a model for communicating creatively with marginalised citizens about exercising their democratic rights