“At home among strangers”: GR-management as political governance in the arsenal of “non-political” agents

Abstract

The topic under consideration is still in the orbit of the domestic discussion of political scientists and specialists in Government Relations (GR). And there is no agreement among them yet regarding the subject field of the discipline being studied. Opinions differ, referring GR to applied political science, sociology of communications, or corporate management. This article analyzes the problems of defining the subject of GR-management as an applied political science discipline, as well as its categorical apparatus. The peculiarity of GR as a type of political management is that the goal-setting unit of the activities of GR managers and corporate lobbyists is located in an “internal” and “non-political” environment (economic, social, etc.), which may be associated with maintaining the competitiveness of the firm and obtaining economic profit by it. But the means to achieve these goals are already located in the “external” socio-political environment, in which the field of political behavior of interested actors is formed. And here we are faced with the phenomenon of “inversion” of the particular interests represented in public policy, when in order to promote them it is necessary to convert the goals of the economic strategy into adequate private issues when building a common public agenda, and into specific tasks of the strategy and tactics of an already special GR campaign.