The State of Public Affairs in Central & Eastern Europe

Since the 1990’s the political, economic and social landscape of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe has changed dramatically.

During the same period and throughout the world, public affairs has strengthened its position as an established corporate function with academic research and practitioner work as proof. While there appears a large variation in how public affairs is defined and practiced partly due to the differences in political structure among countries and regions, we believe that the term public affairs can refer to different sets of strategies and tactics and still fall under the umbrella description of the function, formulated by some as “an association’s or corporation’s external politics”, and by others as “influencing an organisation’s external audiences.”

What then is meant by public affairs and how does it differentiate itself from public relations and other functions or disciplines in different regions? In 1984, Grunig and Hunt defined public relations as “the management of communication between an organization and its publics” (Grunig & Hunt 1984: 5), while they related ‘public affairs’ generally to efforts towards publics’ interests, which would be primarily in the social, political and non-commercial fields. The Public Affairs Council in the United States defines public affairs as “the management function responsible for interpreting the corporation’s non-commercial environment and managing the company’s response to those factors” (Grunig & Hunt 1984:285). And at that stage public affairs involved “the key tasks of intelligence gathering and analysis, internal communication and external action programs directed at government, communities and the general public” (Gruger & Hoewing 1980:13). In a more recent paper, McGrath, Moss & Harris (2010) consider how public affairs is, and should be, defined and argue for a position of public affairs as “the fundamental bridge between the organisation, society and government, in the face of challenges from other organisational functions”.

This JPA Special Issue is dedicated to highlighting and exploring the area of public affairs as researched and practiced in Central & East-European countries. We define Central and Eastern Europe as including Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia with Germany and Austria closely involved. Our goal is to create a better and bigger picture of the intricacies, similarities and differences of how public affairs is practiced, regulated, developed, organized, researched and taught in this specific environment in transition.

We are inviting  academic as well as practitioner papers covering specificities of Public Affairs in the region as well as country profiles of the state of public affairs, including, but not limited to,  the following topics:

• What is seen as the domain of public affairs?
• How is public affairs developing and what is the stage of development of public affairs in a particular CEE country / region
• Has the region’s history led to a different type of public affairs, a different definition of what public affairs is and is able to do?
• Is public affairs shaping or repairing, pro-active or defensive in the region?
• Case studies of successful or not-(so)-successful public affairs activities?
• How is public affairs embedded in the university sector? Curriculum, chairs, research institutes, activities ?
• Who are the public affairs professionals?
• institutional setting:
• registration
• regulation
• education and training
• standards
• transparency
• Parameters of the political and political party systems from a public affairs perspective
• The state of professionalization of public affairs

We invite
• Research / theoretical papers on the understanding, theory, regulatory issues, history and application for public affairs at national / regional level, as well as
• practitioner papers, focusing on the state of affairs but also on well-grounded work on the “how to” aspect of public affairs in the CEE countries.

Review process and submission
• All manuscripts will be double-blind reviewed.
• Manuscripts should follow the style guidelines of the Journal of Public Affairs and are submitted with the understanding that they are original, unpublished works and are not being submitted elsewhere.

• First page: manuscript title and names, institutional affiliation, and contact information for each of the authors.
• Second page: manuscript title and brief (100 word maximum) biography of each of the authors.
• Third page: manuscript title and brief (250 word maximum) abstract of the paper.
• Fourth page and following: manuscript title followed by the text of paper. Third, fourth, and pages following should have no reference to, or name(s) of, the author(s) of the paper.
• Length of paper: ideally between 4000 and 5000 words.

Proposed papers should be submitted as an email Word attachment addressed to rebecca.coatswith@ashridge.org.uk  by 28 April 2013. In the heading state ‘JPA CEE’.
The Special Issue will be published as issue 13(4) or 14(1).

References
Grunig, James E. and Todd Hunt. 1984. Managing Public Relations. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Gruger, William H. and Raymond L. Hoewing. 1980. The new management in corporate public affairs. Public Affairs Review.  1: 13-23
McGrath, Conor, Danny Moss and Phil Harris. 2010. The evolving discipline of public affairs. Journal of Public Affairs. 10 (4): 335-352.

Professor Carla Millar is a Fellow at Ashridge, professor of International Marketing & Management at the University of Twente and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Public Affairs.
Dr. Peter Koeppl teaches Lobbying & Public Affairs at the University of Vienna’s Department for Mass Communication, he is vice-president of the Austrian Public Affairs Association and a public affairs consultant.