Reflections on 20 years of the Journal of Public Affairs: Public affairs in a rapidly changing and globalising world

• Author: Phil Harris,Danny Moss
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Date: 01 February 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2095

EDITORIAL

Reflections on 20 years of the Journal of Public Affairs:

Public affairs in a rapidly changing and globalising world

1|INTRODUCTION

As we commence the 20th year of publication of the Journal of Public

Affairs (JPA), we reflect on having published 20 volumes of the journal,

comprising 80 issues with over 1,000 academic articles and close to

10 million words of text and illustrations. This endeavour has been

superbly supported by a network of 1,500 authors and 2,000

reviewers contributing from across the world. This remarkable body

of work has been generated by an international collection of aca-

demics, aficionados, businesses, experts, governments, interest groups

and practitioners associated with the vast industry of public affairs.

The editorial team would like to acknowledge and thank all our con-

tributors and reviewers for their support over the past two decades.

The breadth of work that has been published in JPA over these

two decades spans such diverse topics as international accountability,

communication and public affairs strategy, corporate governance, and

industry regulation and management. We plan to mark the achieve-

ment with the publication of this special issue of the JPA containing

papers written by some of the leading contributors to JPA over the

past two decades, along with the publication of a number of specially

commissioned commemorative papers that will be published through-

out the year.

Since the publication of the first issue back in 2001, JPA has con-

tinued to provide an important platform for scholars and practitioners

to share their thoughts, research and critical observations on a broad

range of themes that arguably can be seen to fall within the domain of

public affairs, which itself embraces a quite rich and complex array of

subject matter ranging among others from government relations and

lobbying, to issue management, community relations, corporate and

social responsibility, political strategy and political marketing to stake-

holder management. Indeed the breadth and scope of the subject

matter that public affairs scholars and practitioners have treated as

falling within their sphere of interest have continued to shift and

adjust contextually over time, geography and circumstances. Indeed

more recently, we have witnessed a growth of interest in exploring

public sector government and financial control and its management

from a public affairs perspective in what is a rapidly internationalising

world. Here, one broadly common thread that can be detected run-

ning through much of the work of public affairs scholars and practi-

tioners arguably remains that of a focus on issues that to a greater or

lesser degree connect citizens, government or public sector institu-

tions/organisations and business. Indeed, when Morkunas et al.

(2018) completed a comprehensive bibliometric review of JPA

covering the first 16 years of its publication, they identified the most

prominent themes found among articles published over this period to

have included papers exploring social advocacy organisations, and

issues relating to general and other government support.

However, notwithstanding this strong emphasis on understanding

and influencing relationships with and on behalf of government and

government bodies of all complexions; what is treated as falling within

the public affairs domains has shown a degree of “definitional

elasticity,”particularly when examined from outside the traditional

western London–Washington–Brussels perspective.

Of course, as a discipline concerned with the world of politics,

business and society, it is only to be expected that the way public

affairs has evolved and the type of issues it is concerned with have

reflected some of profound changes and trends that have permeated

societies around the world over the past two decades. For example,

soft power backed by trade seems to be very much the dominant

form of “modus vivendi”in our ever changing times. One notable fea-

ture of the past decade has been the growth of activism and political

interest groups concerned with political freedoms, human rights and

environmental issues. Among the most high-profile issues attracting

widespread political and regulatory attention has been the growing

concern about the security of personal data, particularly in relation to

power of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and

Instagram. More recently, and still controversially, we have witnessed

mounting concern over climate change and the sustainability of the

planet's ecosystems. Here, activist groups such as “Extinction Rebel-

lion”and the “FridaysForFuture”school strikes movement led by the

young Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg have forced the

climate change issue to the fore on the public affairs agenda of gov-

ernments, NGOs and businesses around the world. These are issues

that have already begun to attract the attention of public affairs

scholars and are likely to continue to exercise the attention of contrib-

utors to JPA and other publications going forward.

As mentioned earlier, as part of our plans to mark this anniversary

year for the JPA, we have commissioned a number of articles from

leading scholars and professionals that will appear throughout the

year. One is a bibliometric analysis of political marketing research and

another notable work planned is a systematic review of trends and

themes published in the JPA over the past two decades, which will

build on our previous published bibliographies in the journal (2001

and 2012) and the bibliometric analysis of JPA conducted in 2018

referred to earlier. We expect to publish this systematic review in the

final issue of the year.

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2095

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2095. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 1of2

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2095