Public Affairs is still a relatively novel field in Spain. The object of the matter is often confused with lobbying, a term loaded with negative connotations in a culture like ours, in which it seems that only public powers are legitimized to decide what general interest is. That idea on which our Administration was built in the nineteenth century, the idea of the old ivory tower, impenetrable and objective, which decided what was good for the public at all times, still marks, in a certain way, the ethos of our Administration.
This confusion between Public Affairs and Lobbying is not unique, since the term Public Affairs is also used as a synonym for institutional relations, although, as we will see, all three are concepts with their own meaning. Lobbying is the narrowest of the three concepts: it is related to the idea of directly influencing the regulation of a specific issue or a public body in order to change its position. Encompassing lobbying is the concept of institutional relations, which not only refers to the ability to influence but also to the establishment of a fluid dialogue with all the actors that make up the relationship ecosystem of an organization, although it does not directly affect them. Above both concepts is Public Affairs, which is more strategic in nature and seeks to integrate the two previous realities into a synergistic model that recognizes the complexity of the public ecosystem and the logics that make it up.
In the field of Public Affairs, therefore, the objective is to understand the clients’ interests and needs and generate a clear and coherent narrative focused on the public ecosystem. It is not so much about, or merely influencing a decision, as in making the regulator or politicians understand that all parties have to be heard in the decisionmaking process, because in the modern world simplicity is usually, at best, naive: there is not a single legitimate response to public problems because these problems are built among all the actors, and it cannot be that only those who have privileged access to the agenda can present their arguments. The right to be heard, to use the terminology of Michael Ignatieff, is one of the pillars on which to base a consistent strategy of Public Affairs, because it is also a constituent element of any liberal democracy.
To assume that in heterogeneous societies like ours, there are not only objective problems to be solved, but also that they do not have unique responses (or definitive answers – no society has ended the big problems -) demands a high degree of maturity on behalf of all the actors. The problems are not resolved, but are managed, and to manage them well you have to listen to all parties, and establish mínimum guarantees in the relationship between organizations and public decision makers, such as transparency, participation of all and access to decision makers. Only then do modern societies advance in the best possible direction.
Manuel Mostaza | Public Affairs director of ATREVIA | mmostaza@atrevia.com
