The structural turn in public affairs

Integrating communicative paradigm, strategic foundation and arena dynamics.

Effective public affairs work requires answers to three questions. How should we engage? On what basis should we engage? And where does engagement actually place? The dominant traditions in public relations theory and political communication each answer one of these questions well. None answers all three.

As a result, most public affairs practice operates without a framework that connects communicative principles to strategic positioning and to the realities of political and regulatory terrain.

This essay presents a framework that integrates the three traditions into a single model.

Three traditions, three limitations

The communicative paradigm

Grunig’s Excellence theory[1] and its core prescription, two-way symmetrical communication, give the most rigorous available answer to the question of how organisations should communicate with their publics. Communication should be research-based, dialogical and designed to bring information from the external environment into organisational decision-making. The organisation takes part in decisions rather than merely conveying messages about decisions already made.

This is correct as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough.

Grunig tells us that public relations should be a bridging function rather than a buffering function. He does not specify what the bridge should be anchored to on the company’s side. The paradigm is universal: it applies equally to any industry, any company and any political context. That universality is its strength as a theory and its weakness as a strategic tool. A public affairs professional who adopts the two-way symmetrical model knows how to engage, but not about what, from what position, or why that position and not another.

Arena thinking

Arena thinking answers the third question: where engagement takes place. Two strands matter. Hilgartner and Bosk’s public arenas model[2] describes institutional settings – media, legislatures, courts, agencies – each with a finite carrying capacity. Only so much can be salient at once. Competition runs at two levels: issues compete with one another for attention, and within each issue competing framings compete to be accepted as the authoritative version of reality. Selection follows principles such as drama, novelty, saturation, cultural preoccupation and political bias, not the seriousness of the problem. Feedback between arenas amplifies or dampens salience.

Vos, Schoemaker and Luoma-aho[3] brought the concept into corporate communication and made the decisive move. In an issue arena the focal point is the issue, not the organisation and not the venue. An arena is the sum of the settings in which an issue is discussed and of the actors who take part. Actors enter and leave according to their stake in the issue; the same actor appears in several arenas, and the same venue hosts several. I use the term in this issue-defined sense throughout, including the less public settings – hearings, consultations, supervisory dialogue – where much public affairs work is done.

Arena thinking is descriptive, not prescriptive. It explains how issues rise and fall, not what a company should do before it finds itself in an arena. It describes the terrain but gives no basis for strategic positioning within it.

A public affairs professional who understands arena dynamics knows that attention is scarce and that issues compete but still lacks a method for deciding what position to take, why that position is credible, and how it connects to the company’s long-term political standing.

Issues management and stakeholder theory

The broader literature on issues management and stakeholder theory provides important concepts – issue life cycles, stakeholder identification, framing, legitimacy – but tends to operate at the level of individual issues or bilateral relationships. Most stakeholder models place the organisation at the centre and arrange stakeholders around it. In political and regulatory contexts that inverts the actual power dynamic. The issue-arena concept corrects it: the issue is at the centre, and the organisation is one actor among several around it.

Issues management literature acknowledges the importance of the external environment but typically treats the company’s response as reactive: monitor, assess, respond. Neither tradition gives a structural account of why the company is exposed in the first place.

The integration

The framework presented here integrates these three traditions into a single model for public affairs strategy. It does so by introducing a structural layer between the communicative paradigm and the arena environment, a layer the existing literature does not provide.

The structural layer

The structural layer begins with a diagnostic question: What is the defining characteristic of this industry? Not the feature the company finds most commercially attractive, but the structural fact that creates its most fundamental political exposure: the characteristic that, if handled badly, would cost the company its right to be heard and therefore its right to operate.

Two examples illustrate this. For an aquaculture company, the defining characteristic is that it produces food in the commons, under water and largely out of sight, in an environment where many actors have legitimate rights and interests. For a ready-to-eat food producer, it is that it places products directly on the consumer’s plate without further safety barriers.

From the defining characteristic follows a structural exposure: the permanent political and societal anxiety that attaches to the industry because of how and where it operates. Producing food in the commons means people will always be anxious about potential harm to the environment and to shared resources. Ready-to-eat food means existential food safety exposure and immediate consequences for trust.

From the structural exposure follows a foundational approach: the company’s long-term strategic posture: what it must consistently demonstrate to keep the legitimacy that makes policymakers willing to listen. In aquaculture, the foundational approach is to consistently demonstrate care for the marine environment and for the local communities living in, of and with it. In ready-to-eat food production, it is an uncompromising commitment to product integrity and food safety.

This chain, from defining characteristic to structural exposure to foundational approach, together with guiding principles constitutes what the framework calls the foundation: the below-the-line strategic layer that is relatively stable, rarely changes, and is not derived from the current political agenda.

Identifying the defining characteristic

Leadership teams will often propose several candidates for the defining characteristic. Each framing implies a different foundational approach and a different position towards policymakers. The test is the one above: which characteristic, if handled badly, would cost the company its right to operate, and with it its standing with policymakers?

Getting this wrong means building public affairs on a foundation that cannot hold. The company will advocate on the wrong issues, frame its positions incorrectly, and fail to build the kind of credibility that makes policymakers listen.

Guiding principles

The foundation has two elements: the foundational approach defines where the company must position itself, and guiding principles, which define how it engages. Principles govern conduct. They ensure that public affairs work is professional, disciplined, and credible regardless of the issue at hand. Unlike strategic priorities, principles are not situational or tied to individual policy debates. They apply across issues, regulatory environments, and political cycles and ensure consistency.

Consistency is a necessary condition for credibility.

The relationship between principles and foundational approach is exposed to tension. Advocacy work frequently involves situations where a commercially attractive position conflicts with what the foundational approach demands. A company that has built its legitimacy on environmental responsibility cannot credibly lobby for regulatory exemptions on environmental grounds, however compelling the short-term economics.

When such conflicts arise, the foundation takes precedence. The reason is structural: the foundational approach derives its political force from the company’s credibility, which the principles protect. A company that advocates without principled conduct will be heard once. A company that advocates with it will be heard repeatedly.

Current strategic priorities

Imagine a sa horizontal line. Below it sits the foundational approach and the principles. Above it sit the current strategic priorities, which are dynamic, time-bound, and derived from the intersection of corporate strategy, the external political and regulatory agenda, industry and technological developments, changes to the competitive landscape, and reputational and societal perceptions. This is the level at which day-to-day public affairs work takes place, and where arena thinking becomes operational. The model is described in detail here.

A sustainability debate, a regulatory development, a technological breakthrough or a market shift may become a priority for a defined period. Current priorities must always be consistent with both the foundational approach and the guiding principles. Sometimes the key priority is to reposition the company so that it is better aligned with its own foundation.

If short-term priorities contradict the foundation, credibility erodes. If they ignore current realities, influence disappears.

The arena dimension

A foundational approach does not exist in the abstract. It is enacted in arenas, and a company does not choose most of the arenas it is in. It is drawn into one whenever an issue touches its products, its conduct or their consequences, whether it takes part or not. What it chooses is where to be present, at what stage and with what priority.

Within an arena the company meets different counterparts: regulators, customers, journalists, employees, publics. The counterpart determines the evidence required and the register. A ready-to-eat food producer demonstrates product integrity to a retail buyer with test data, to a supervisory authority with evidence of systemic control, and to a public with conduct that holds when something goes wrong. The posture is constant. The proof differs with the counterpart.

Arenas also change shape over the life of an issue. Early on, admission is open, attention is scarce and framing is contested. Later, admission is regulated, attention is secure and the terms are procedural. Room to influence is greatest while an arena is still open and narrows as it fills. Once every frame is taken, volume buys nothing: conduct moves position, communication does not. I explain this development in influence runs out before attention arrives.

Arena analysis is therefore part of the situational analysis that produces current priorities. It answers a question the foundational approach alone cannot: which arenas are we in, on what terms, and where must we demonstrate our position now?

What the integration produces

It grounds the communicative paradigm in structural reality. Two-way symmetrical communication becomes credible, rather than performative, when it is anchored in the company’s foundational approach. A company that engages in genuine dialogue about the issues arising from its defining characteristic is doing something structurally different from one that practises “stakeholder engagement” as a communications exercise. The foundational approach specifies what the bridge connects to. Without it, the bridging function has no fixed anchor.

It makes arena thinking strategic. The foundation determines what position the company must hold in the arenas it is in, and which of them demand its presence. Current strategic priorities identify specific arenas and issues, but they are always tested against the foundation. This prevents the common failure mode of public affairs work: reactive engagement driven by whatever issue is currently loudest, without reference to a coherent long-term position.

It explains why so much public affairs work fails. Without a structural foundation, the company responds to issues as they arise, takes positions that reflect short-term commercial interests, and wonders why its advocacy lacks authority. The root cause is the absence of a foundation derived from the company’s structural exposure. Without it, public affairs is not strategy. It is a lobbying calendar.

It integrates principles and strategy. The foundational approach governs where the company positions itself; the principles govern how it engages. When a commercially attractive position conflicts with either, the foundation prevails, for the reason given above.

What this framework is not

This is a framework for strategic positioning in a political and regulatory context. It determines whether public affairs work has a coherent foundation and a clear focus at any given time.

It is not a stakeholder map, a regulatory process guide or a lobbying playbook. Those are important tools, but they belong downstream. Used without the foundation described here, they produce activity without direction and advocacy without authority.

The framework in summary

The three layers are interdependent. The communicative paradigm without a foundation produces dialogue without authority. A foundation without arena awareness produces strategy disconnected from political reality. Arena engagement without a foundation produces activity without direction. The framework requires all three.

My thinking on corporate communications is laid out here: www.jorgenchristiansen.no/how

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[1] James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984; James E. Grunig (ed.), Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992; for a retrospective statement of the paradigm, James E. Grunig, Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalisation, PRism 6(2), 2009.

[2]Stephen Hilgartner and Charles L. Bosk, The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: A Public Arenas Model, American Journal of Sociology 94(1), 1988, pp. 53–78. The two levels of competition are set out on p. 57, novelty and saturation on p. 62.

[3]Marita Vos, Henny Schoemaker and Vilma Luoma-aho, “Setting the Agenda for Research on Issue Arenas”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal 19(2), 2014, pp. 200–215. Vos and colleagues place the emphasis on what is visible in public rather than in the lobby (p. 202). The use here extends the term to less public settings.