Credibility enacted: Understanding the meaning of credible political leadership in the Dutch parliamentary election campaign of 2010

In times of perception politics, the credibility of electoral candidates
is a crucial asset in political marketing. This raises the question to
which political leaders citizens attribute credibility and how
political credibility is gained and lost through media performance.
We analyze and compare two contrasting cases during the Dutch
parliamentary election campaign of 2010. Whereas in this
campaign Mark Rutte—leader of the liberal party VVD—gained
credibility, the credibility of Job Cohen—at the time, leader of the
social-democratic PvdA—waned substantially. To understand this
we extend the source credibility approach with a dramaturgical
approach, and as such we shed light on what happens in the
dynamic, interactive process between leaders and audiences in
which credibility is constructed.