Editorial

• Published date: 01 August 2013
• Author: Danny Moss,Phil Harris
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1485
• Date: 01 August 2013

■Editorial

Perhaps from the very origins of professional prac-

tice, academics and practitioners have debated and

even agonized over how to best define public affairs.

Indeed, the diversity of views about what constitutes

public affairs and the public affairs domain were

reflected in many of the articlespublished in the very

first issue of Journal of Public Affairs published in

2001. Some 12 years later when the Journal of Public

Affairs published a special anniversary special issue

(12:1), many of the previously identified issues and

ambiguities surrounding how public affairsis under-

stood and practised,still appeared to dominatethink-

ing in many circles about the discipline. Of course,

this is not to say that public affairs has not advanced

over the past decade, not the least in terms of the

application of new technologies, which have forced

new thinking and practices across all communication

functions. However, what does not seem to have

changed that significantly are the academic and

professional debates about what constitutes public

affairs and its sub-functions such as lobbying. A

recurring theme within these debates has been that

of the legitimacy of lobbying as a corporate represen-

tational and influencing practice. Indeed, lobby-

ing, as well as especially corporate lobbying, has

come under increasing critical scrutiny in many

arenas in recent years, particularly in terms of

its perceived lack of transparency and use by

vested interests to try to shape, frustrate and/or

amend government decision and legislation in

ways that may favor those organizations initiat-

ing the lobbying activity. Concern over the

practice and ethics of lobbying, especially where

this involves past or current members of govern-

ment, and questions of access to government, has

figured prominentl y in the recent deba tes about

the registration of lobbyist in the UK.

With a range of professional bodies in the UK

now engaged in the escalating debate about the

practice of lobbying and the merits of a voluntary

or compulsory register of lobbyists, a new twist in

this on-going saga has emerged with the joint

formulation [by APPC, PRCA, CIPR*] of a lengthy

definition of lobbying [ just over 1000 words in

length], which has been sent to the UK’s

constitutional reform minister Chloe Smith. A key

clause in text is that “anyone who provides ‘lobby-

ing services’must be on the Government’s register”.

Lobbying activities in turn were defined as

‘activities carried out in the course of a business

for the purposes of influencing gove rnment’.

Although this relatively concise description of

lobbying activities might appear quite clear and

uncontentious, the fact that these professional

bodies felt it necessary to submit a much more

extensive definition of lobbying is perhaps indic-

ative of the potential complexity and variation

in the scope of lobbying. The implication here

for scholars and authors interested in the field

of public affairs is that this debate surrounding

the use and practice of lobbying [as a broadly

acknowledged sub-function of public affairs ]

looks set to rumble on and seems likely to

continue to provide the substance for many

future interesting papers that may be published

in the Journal of Public Affairs.

Returning to the articles contained in this issue of

Journal of Public Affairs, these offer an interesting

mix of academic and practitioner papers, which it

might be argued reflect the broad and sometimes

contested definitions of public affairs andthe domain

which it embraces:

In this first paper, Bo Laursen and Chiara Valentini:

Media relations in the Council of the European

Union: insights into the Council press officers’

professional practices provides some very inter-

esting and useful insights into the role of

media relations within EU institutions and

more specifically in this paper, on the work

of press offices working with the Council’s

General Secretariat. Drawing on interviews

with press officers and observation of their

working practices, the paper illustrates the

typical pattern of working practices with the

press officer corps and the influences on them.

Aimei Yang: Building global strategic alliances in

the virtual space: a structural analysis of interna-

tional nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations’

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 13 Number 3 pp 227–229 (2013)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1485

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.