Appendix 8 - On public affairs consulting as a profession

Summary

Public affairs consulting is at best a partially professionalized field. In some respects, the firms’ work is a “craft,” which involves control over a particular technique without control over the abstractions used in generating new techniques (which “professions” enjoy). Additionally, their professionalization is only partial because, as others have argued about electoral campaign consulting, a number of considerable barriers exist to the professionalization of those who specialize in generating citizen activism: a lack of closure or control over entry, few requirements to hold credentials (and a limited number of training or degree programs), and a quite blurry boundary between this domain and related fields such as government affairs (“lobbying”), public relations, and campaign consulting.

Still, there are professional training programs now in existence for the field, key professional associations like the Public Affairs Council, semi-formal networking groups like the Grassroots Roundtable and Innovate to Motivate, and support from related professional associations.