Inclusion and Exclusion Works Well in Both Marketing and Politics
Dr. Alby Anand Kurian
The Inclusion-Exclusion Game, as a Marketing Tool
in Politics
Guest Editorial, Written by Dr Alby Anand
Kurian,
June 6, 2019, Singapore
Imagine that you are sitting in the portico of your
very select club; you have just been admitted as a member there. Around you,
you hear the soft hum of conversation, the rich and famous are unwinding over
the weekend. You feel very good about life, at the moment.
Somewhere at the back of your mind—fairly
deep in the recesses of it, where you don’t have to confront it—is
the small thought that you enjoy it the
more, because all of this is not available to everyone, that you have been
included and many others have been excluded.
The
Inclusion-Exclusion Political Game
In the case of your club, we see that the majority
of people are excluded and only a small minority is included. What we see
currently playing out across the world in politics is rather different in many
significant ways, it could be referred to as the Inclusion-Exclusion Game. Since
election victories are decided by numbers, to win an election, the player must
attract the majority.
Political parties and political leaders have
various means of winning an election – by ensuring a good economy, equal rights
for all, peace at home and abroad – in short, by good governance. Or instead,
political parties and leaders could choose to follow the path that we see
increasingly being used – they could employ the Inclusion-Exclusion Game. We
have seen recent applications of the Game to elections in several countries. Since
election victories are decided by numbers, the player must attract the majority to win an election. (This is a
rather dramatic difference from positional products, where the majority is excluded.)
Here is Subramaniam
Swamy, a Harvard University alumnus, a
member of India’s Parliament and an articulate leader of the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party, talking about the relevance of good governance to elections. ‘Governance is a necessary condition for achieving electoral
victory, not a sufficient condition. For sufficient, you needed some
sentimental issues. For us, for the BJP, the sentimental issue was Hindutva.
And unless we articulate that, we will not be able to win. Economic development is a must, but you can win the
polls (even) if the economy is flattened.’
Subramaniam Swamy may be right. The Bharatiya
Janata Party has employed the Inclusion-Exclusion Game rather adroitly to win
elections, using their call for a ‘Hindu
Rashtra’ (‘Hindu Nation’), a concept that excludes non-Hindus. President
Donald Trump seems to have used the Game
with equally consummate skill. While Trump’s clarion call may have been to make
America great again, was the underlying message, at a subliminal level, to make
it white again?
Writes Steve
Phillips in the New York Times, ‘From
the day he opened his presidential campaign in 2015 by demonizing Mexicans to
the enthusiasm generated by the calls for building a wall along the Mexican
border to aggressively ramping up deportations of immigrants of color to
eliminating DACA to vulgarly denigrating African nations and Haiti, this
administration has been quite clear about its preference for white people.’
You see a similar pattern of the Inclusion-Exclusion
Political Game being played by politicians in far-flung countries. In Malaysia,
it was institutionalized several years
ago. The Malaysian government has conceived and
developed policies to favor the ‘bumiputras’ (‘sons of the soil’) which The Economist had
denounced as "racially discriminatory". The groups included are the Malays and other indigenous peoples,
those that are excluded are the Chinese and
Indian Malaysian communities. A
similar pattern is visible in Indonesia – with the Chinese minority
being the one to be excluded.
Of course, the beneficiaries of the
Inclusion-Exclusion Political Game could enjoy subsidies and reservations from the
government (as in Malaysia) but even without tangible benefits, the Game would still
achieve its objective. More than concrete profit, it is the sense of inclusion (‘We
are part of the group’) and the pleasure that comes from exclusion (‘They are
not part of the group’) that makes it work. (Remember that the gratification
that accrues from being a member of an exclusive club does not emanate from the
club infrastructure and facilities that it offers.)
Why people buy into the Game
In her studies of Nazi Germany, Hannah Arendt wondered
in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the
Banality of Evil if
the events of the time could be explained by a ‘tendency of ordinary people to
obey orders and conform to mass opinion, without a critical evaluation of the
consequences of their actions’.
That certainly could be part of the answer but, perhaps, not
the whole of it. The call of the Inclusion-Exclusion
Political Game, when it is made, seems almost
impossible to resist. The call seems to become more irresistible when it rationalised in religious terms. The religious
underpinning to the campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India
is rather obvious; in the case of Donald Trump, it was less obvious but the dog whistle was
heard and understood by his target audience.
The Inclusion-Exclusion Political Game is also made
irresistible at times when it is justified on the basis of history, and on the
basis of past wrongs (which could be real or manufactured). Adolf Hitler was adept at using historical wrongs very
adroitly to his advantage. His goal, he declared, was to bring about a New
Order, to replace the post-World War I international order (dominated by
Britain and France that he claimed was unjust).
Subramanium
Swamy harps on similar issues, as
do members of his party in India: “We
Hindus are being put upon, we are 80 percent, but we are treated like the 10
percent… We are the ones who fought the Mughals, we are the ones who fought the
British, but Hindus are the ones who have not been able to rule.”
The
Globalisation Paradox
Sometimes, it may seem anomalous that we are seeing
the Game at play in these times of globalisation.
Technologies are erasing borders as never before. Large populations are
traveling on work and for leisure. It may be better understood if we realise that, perhaps, the backlash occurs, not
in spite of globalisation but because of it. At one level, while it
may seem we welcome it, perhaps, at another level (not often expressed), we
resent and fear it.
Even the humourist Joel Stein of Time,
was motivated enough to write of the
changes he saw in his own home town. (In
his inimitable way, he wrote, ‘I am
very much in favor of
immigration everywhere in the U.S. except Edison, N.J’. He subsequently apologised,
saying, ‘I
was shocked that I could feel a tiny bit uncomfortable with my changing town
when I went to visit it.’).
There could be a biological hardwiring, within us
that makes it difficult for us to view the world as one global village. As the zoologist Desmond Morris pointed
out in The Human Zoo, ‘The sobering
lesson to be learnt from all this is that
the ancient biological need of the human species for a distinct tribal identity
is a powerful force that cannot be subdued… Well-meaning authorities talk
airily about “hopes for a global society”. They see clearly the technical
possibility of such a development, given the marvels of modern communication,
but they stubbornly overlook the biological difficulties.’
Those who practice the Game today use the changes
in local culture that are caused by globalisation
and the unease that some members of the community may feel to provoke thoughts
that their community and their culture are under threat. Given that the Inclusion-Exclusion
Political Game is proving to be an effective marketing tool in politics,
it is very likely that we will see even more of it in the future, than we have in the past.
(Alby
Anand Kurian, PhD, is a marketing communications practitioner and theorist
whose clients have included Coca Cola, P&G, Nestle, Pepsi Foods and Unilever. Kurian also teaches at the MBA programme and supervises the
doctorate programme of
the Management Development Institute of Singapore. His book, The Peddler of
Soaps, featured in the bestseller
list. His recent concept, ‘Conflict
as a Marketing Tool’ has been published by Wharton Business School.)
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