The Marketing of Populism and the Political-Economy of War: Learning from the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

This conceptual study explores the social and political-economic conditions that spawn competing campaigns of democracy, populism, and autocracy from a macromarketing perspective. It delves into the less visible and deeper contexts that produce contemporary autocracies and international crises they provoke by analyzing the autocratic regime in Russia that resulted in its invasion of Ukraine. Instead of the reductive framing of this conflict as a contest between unsystematic notions of democracy and autocracy, this study offers a nuanced understanding of contemporary autocracies by investigating the links between populist political movements, neoliberal ideology, and state-sponsored capitalism as a growth oriented political-economic form. Examining the underlying political-economic conditions of such international conflicts contributes to constructive engagement efforts in marketing discipline toward developing proactive research agendas.