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Journal of Communication Management PR, clientelism and economics: a comparison of southern Europe and Latin America César García

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Article information: To cite this document: César García , (2015),"PR, clientelism and economics: a comparison of southern Europe and Latin America", Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 19 Iss 2 pp. 133 - 149 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JCOM-03-2013-0026 Downloaded on: 11 May 2015, At: 01:28 (PT) References: this document contains references to 87 other documents. To copy this document: [email protected] The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 14 times since 2015*

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PR, clientelism and economics: a comparison of southern Europe and Latin America César García

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Department of Communications, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington, USA

PR, clientelism and economics

133 Received 26 March 2013 Revised 29 December 2013 Accepted 17 March 2014

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between clientelist relationships and economics in public relations practice in European Mediterranean countries and Latin America. It considers the cases of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a critical-conceptual method through a re-conceptualization of themes from secondary qualitative analyses of existing qualitative data sets and reviews of published qualitative papers. Findings – The public relations practice in these two regions is similar. The characteristics of the public relations landscape in these countries must be understood in relation to a broader history of clientelism and economics emphasizing government relationships at the expense of other publics, as well as the lack of scale economies. Persuasive models are prevalent, although a number of forces – including integration in supranational organizations, democratization, and globalization – have strengthened the use of symmetrical models. Research limitations/implications – This is not an empirical survey, there is a need of quantitative studies among practitioners and government officials that can measure empirically the nature of their relationships in a number of countries. This essay opens a door for future studies and cross-cultural comparisons about the role that clientelism plays in the PR practice of cultures and countries. Practical implications – The paper offers useful background information, such as the primacy that media relations still have in the public relations practice, for foreign public relations executives, agency heads, and managers of public relations who are directly involved with or managing international public relations campaigns in these countries. Social implications – Clientelism is a cultural concept that translates to the work of organizations and consequently public relations as a form of organizational behavior. Originality/value – This paper brings to the table the importance of the concept of clientelism in the PR practice as well as the existence of a similar PR culture between countries that are on different continents. Keywords Culture, Communication management, Public relations, Corporate communications, Communication Paper type Research paper

Introduction The practice of public relations in southern Europe – Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain – shares a number of characteristics that distinguish it from the practice in the rest of Western Europe and other Anglo-Saxon countries. These same characteristics can also be found, even more extensively, in public relations practice in Latin American countries. These similarities should not be surprising because of the historical and cultural connections between the two regions and the obvious parallels in their political and economic development, for instance the fact that all these countries are relatively new democracies where the conflict between liberal democratic and authoritarian traditions was resolved only in the latter part of the twentieth century. This paper attempts to develop a theoretical understanding of these similarities, focusing primarily

Journal of Communication Management Vol. 19 No. 2, 2015 pp. 133-149 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1363-254X DOI 10.1108/JCOM-03-2013-0026

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on two aspects shaping public relations practice in these regions: the existence of clientelistic relations between organizations and the state; and the economic structure of these countries. Clientelism Clientelism, a concept with profound political and economic implications, can be defined as “a pattern of social organization in which access to resources is controlled by patrons and delivered to clients in exchange for deference and various kinds of support” (Hallin and Mancini, 2004, p. 135). In the twenty-first century, clientelism has been the subject of study among mostly political scientists and sociologists who have explored the impact of party politics promising improvements in the lives of specific groups of people in exchange for their votes in newly democratic, post-authoritarian societies (Stokes et al., 2013). These studies are mostly focused on Southern Europe (Piattoni, 2001), Latin America (Hilgers, 2013; Seffer, 2012) and Asia (Tomsa and Uffen, 2012), which are considered the traditional bastions of clientelism. Although there are some analyses concerning the influence of clientelism on the world of international communication (Hallin and Mancini, 2004, 2013), clientelism has had limited exploration in the field of public relations (García, 2013). Clientelism is, after all, a cultural concept (Caciagli, 2006) that translates to the work of organizations and consequently public relations as a form of organizational behavior. Clientelism – called rousfeti in Greece and clientelismo in Italy, Portugal, and Spanish-speaking countries (also caciquismo) – is a concept inherited from feudalism, the personal dependence of rural populations on landholders (Eisenstadt and Roniger, 1984). It was transplanted in the fifteenth century from the Iberian Peninsula to Latin America, where social and economic asymmetries combined with racial inequalities derived from conquest and, in societies such as Brazil’s, slavery. The prevalence of clientelism in these societies can in part be explained by a lack of social capital. It is a response to the persistence of traditional hierarchical social structures that alienated those individuals who lacked access to the centers of power through markets, representative political institutions, or a universalistic legal system (Roniger and Gunes-Ayata, 1984). Clientelism adopts a binary form, based on individual relations of dependence, and affects all kinds of social, political, and economic interactions (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). The asymmetrical character is a crucial aspect of clientelism. In clientelistic regimes, “information tends to be treated as a privately-held resource, to be exchanged only within particularistic relationships” (p. 188). It is based on the abdication by the client of any potential autonomous access to the use of resources and to the setting up of public goods and services. It requires “the mediation of some patron, whether a person or an organization (i.e. party or trade union), within which the clients do not obtain autonomous access to major loci of power” (Eisenstadt and Roniger, 1984, p. 168). In the societies under question, companies and other organizations tend to have a greater dependence on the government or political parties that have assumed many of the functions of the individual patrons of an earlier era (Piattoni, 2001). The business world and political institutions are much less separated in Southern European and Latin American countries than, for example, in the US or other Anglo-Saxon countries where, by definition, the influence of the market and the private sector has always been much greater and, thus, the social role of the state much more limited (Hallin and Mancini, 2004, 2013).

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In summary, the priority given to the construction of relationships with politicians, government officials, and the media in Southern Europe and Latin America is often disproportionate to that given other stakeholders. Economic structure A few nuances on these points should be introduced here. While the state plays a relevant role in all industrialized and a number of developing nations, the level of state intervention can vary according to the degree of development of the civil society and the economy. In the US or Great Britain, the state plays a minor role in the life of organizations because more than two centuries of democracy and early industrialization made the construction of a strong civil society possible (Giner, 1982). In Southern Europe and Latin America, by contrast, democracy and industrialization developed later and civil society has never been as solid, a gap filled by other institutions such as the family, the Church, and the state (Fukuyama, 1995). A key point this paper will make about the public relations sector in European Mediterranean and Latin American countries is that there is a much larger number of small and mid size enterprises (SMEs) than bigger companies (OECD, 2006). By comparison to the US and Central European countries, while it is true that every country in the world reflects this imbalance, it is also true that European Mediterranean and Latin American countries rank low on the 12 “pillars of competitiveness” criteria used by economists of the World Economic Forum in their Competitiveness Report (2013). Countries are ranked according to such criteria as market size, business sophistication, quality of institutions, product innovation and level of labor qualification. All of the countries under consideration in this paper rank below the 30th position, lagging behind China as well as most industrialized countries. Another important nuance concerning clientelistic relationships is that such relationships and patronage systems exist to some degree in all modern societies (Kawata, 2006). Ogawa (2006) documents the failure of the European Union to combat institutional corruption and fraud, which led to the resignation of the Santer Commission in 1999. Kato and Mershon (2006) compare the functioning of Italian Christian Democrats (DC) and the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), suggesting that in both Italy and Japan interfactional competition over public office has not only perpetuated incumbency but also spurred clientelism. Indeed, even in the US today, there is evidence of organizations seeking favor from power elites through a $3 billion industry that employs some 12,000 lobbyists (Wakefield, 2013). Furthermore, the centrality of clientelism varies: Mexico is the best example of capitalismo de amigos (crony capitalism), where the 1990s era state privatization of most of the country’s largest companies favored financial groups close to then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (Guillén, 1996). However, this has also been the case in other countries, such as Italy, where despite a more advanced economy and political system, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is generally perceived to have used his government authority to favor his own private businesses and overstep justice. In summary, a discussion centered around clientelism and economic structure unavoidably questions the role of normative thinking in public relations practice. To date, a symmetrical model of public relations has been held up as the ideal. First, because the symmetrical model is the only model supported by the empirical evidence of an international, multi-year research project like the excellence study (Dozier et al., 1995). Second, because most literature on public relations is Anglo-American and tends to describe public relations as a strategic management function (Sriramesh, 2009).

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Most public relations scholarship assumes public relations throughout most of the world is more effective when the two-way symmetrical model and other generic principles are followed, with adaptations for specific cultural, political, social, economic, and media conditions (Grunig, 2010; Sriramesh, 2010). Thus, the ideal of professionalism based on Anglo-American public relations theory is widely accepted by public relations practitioners across the world, even although the actual practice of public relations is substantially different (Sriramesh, 2009). The concepts of clientelism and economic structure are useful in the public relations field because they help to shape a definition of what constitutes public relations strategic thinking in different countries. PR commonalities in Latin America and Southern Europe I will focus on five major characteristics to analyze the commonalities in public relations practice across Latin America and Southern Europe: a lack of social legitimacy, a deficit of professionalism, the prominent role of media relations, the importance of personal relationships, and the dichotomy of the PR profession’s large vs small companies. Lack of social legitimacy Public relations is a relatively new discipline in both Latin America and Southern Europe. Until recent times incipient capitalism and dictatorships made its practice impossible beyond propaganda. Interestingly, some public relations academic programs started in Latin America before they did in Southern Europe. During a time when European nations were still under autarchic fascist regimes whose only communication paradigm was public propaganda, a number of South American nations experienced an initial phase of industrialization between 1930 and 1960, thanks to the arrival of multinational organizations (most of them North American) with public relations operations. For example, the first public relations department started in Brazil as early as 1914 and in Chile in 1952 (Ferrari, 2009b). In Italy, by comparison, a public sector office in the Province of Bologna opened for first time in 1952 (Muzi and Kodija, 2004). Regarding education, in 1967 the University of Sao Paulo’s School of Communication and Arts offered the first four-year public relations program (Molleda et al., 2009). Two Mexican universities, Universidad Latinoamericana and Universidad del Pacífico, offered a focus on public relations as part of the communication profession by 1976 (Rebeil et al., 2009). The first university-level public relations program was offered by Universidad de Viña del Mar in 1992 (Ferrari, 2009a). Most of the public relations programs in Mediterranean Europe originated over 20 years ago. Spain was the first country in the region to create a university degree in advertising and public relations in 1974 (Moreno, 2004). The first graduate degrees in social communication in Portugal were created in 1979 and 1980 (Viegas and Marques, 2004). The single academic program for undergraduates in Greece was created in 1999 (Yannas, 2004). In Italy, the first course on public relations was offered at the University of Milan in 1992 (Valentini, 2009). In all these countries, public relations is a field that is still mostly understood as an occupation rather than a field of study (Van Ruler et al., 2001). There is a lack of indigenous literature on public relations in European Mediterranean countries that leaves the transmission of knowledge in the hands of translations of American

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academic and professional handbooks (Xifra, 2009). Normative theories circulating among South American practitioners are provided by foreign publications that do not fit the political, social, or cultural contexts of their countries (Ferrari, 2009b). Public relations enjoys relatively minor status as a discipline in all these countries, especially when compared to journalism. In Spain, the degree is still taught in communication departments dominated by journalists and advertisers (Moreno, 2004). Moreover, there is a lack of implementation of research methods and empirical accountability that puts public relations in a situation of inferiority by comparison to marketing and advertising (Arceo, 2004). In Italy, many question the ethos of public relations and its basic disciplines (Muzi and Kodija, 2004), and the stereotype that pits public relations practitioners as masters of ceremonies still holds true (Muzi, 2009). Among Chileans, there is a clash in prestige between public relations and journalism, where the greater prestige for journalism in that society lowers the standing of the field of public relations (Ferrari, 2009a). In Mexico, the profession has historically been most frequently associated with tasks like sending gifts, scheduling special events, and cultivating personal relationships (Long, 2004), while in Brazil a strategic conception of public relations is ignored by most business executives who tend to consider public relations as solely media relations that can be measured by media advertising equivalency (Molleda et al., 2009). By comparison to marketing, the outcome of public relations in Latin America is perceived as unmeasurable and unlikely or unable to bring effective financial gains to organizations (Ferrari, 2009b). Deficit of professionalism A common denominator in Southern Europe is a lack of professionalization in the upper-middle levels of most organizations, where a majority of public relations managers are journalists or come from other backgrounds (Arceo, 2004; Viegas and Marques, 2004; Yannas, 2004; Valentini, 2009). Such is the case in Mexico, where most marketing agencies and their clients lack human resources capability with specialized expertise in how public relations can benefit their businesses (Rebeil et al., 2009), or Chile where the practice of public relations has not been endorsed by executives, and is still confused with the press agentry practiced by journalists (Ferrari, 2009a). In Brazil, despite being a licensed profession, encroachment has persisted over the decades. There are a number of self-denominated “institutional journalists” who see public relations as a mere correlate of journalism based on the production of corporate materials and the diffusion in the media of “spun” information (Molleda et al., 2009). This lack of professionalization is also enhanced by the fact that SMEs in Southern Europe represent around 90 percent of the entrepreneurial structure, that an important number are still family businesses, and that most of them operate in relatively low value-added sectors (Roubini and Das, 2010). The situation is even worse in Latin America where 99 percent of companies are SMEs with low access to finance and, therefore, unable to scale up production and specialize. Most of these firms lack the resources to run a web site, an intranet, or broadband access (OECD, 2012). All of this impedes the use of symmetrical public relations models that require investment in research and a long-term mentality absent in this type of management. Prominent role of media relations Managers who do not fully understand the role of public relations feel more motivated to generate fast and tangible results. Indeed, in these countries measurement of success

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is mostly determined by media advertising equivalency. Van Ruler and Verčič’s pan-European book (2004) reports media relations as the main public relations activity in the Mediterranean countries. Spain is at the top with 90 percent of its public relations activities coming from media relations, followed by Portugal (84 percent) and Italy. The situation in Latin American countries is not dissimilar. In Brazil, public relations activities are oriented toward obtaining favorable coverage of the organization in the media, and hiding unfavorable aspects that could damage reputation (Molleda et al., 2009). In Mexico, media relations represents 44 percent of all public relations services. In this country, where “the tendency is to send a client’s messages and consider the task completed” (Long, 2004, p. 53), mass media usage is overemphasized (Rebeil et al., 2009). The importance of press agentry is a determining factor in Chile due to the power of television as an entertainment medium and the press as catalyst for public opinion (Ferrari, 2009b). In Chile, where employers tend to associate public relations with the function of media relations (Mellado et al., 2010), executives still believe “that media efficiency is capable of solving organizational crises or problems with their audiences” (Mellado and Hanusch, 2011, p. 386). Power of personal relationships In contrast to the Anglo-Saxon countries where civil society has deeper roots, personal relationships are generally deemed more important in Southern Europe and Latin America. In Italy it is a frequent occurrence that new top executives change the public relations managers in order to place friends or people of their confidence in positions (Valentini, 2009). Grunig et al. (1995) describe how practitioners in Greece try to establish friendships with key individuals in the media, government, or political groups. This also happens in Spain, where public relations firms and companies tend to allocate part of their annual budgets for gifts to key journalists (Regoyos, 2006). The personal factor is equally relevant in Latin America, where successful public relations requires a physical presence (Montenegro, 2004). In Brazil, “personal contacts, typified by the personal influence model, are essential to develop solid interactions with journalists, editors, and government officials,” (Molleda et al., 2009, p. 740). Mexico is a country where sometimes being simpático generates more access to resources and builds more trust than legal credentials can ( Jones, 2004). Mexicans tend to choose business partners and employees according to their position in the social hierarchy, also known as palanca, or the power derived from extensive interpersonal connections (Daymon and Hodges, 2009). In Chile, public relations culture is typical of the personal influence model, where senior managers play the role of public relations professionals with a social approach, meaning they maintain personal contacts with politicians, society, and the media (Ferrari, 2000). Gap between large and small companies In all of these countries we see two general categories of public relations characterized by the size of organizations. In Southern Europe, there is a core of global companies that received state support prior to their privatization and continue to exist in exceptionally favorable market conditions. A number of them went public in recent years and are part of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (e.g. Repsol, Endesa and Telefónica from Spain; Enel and Eni from Italy). These giants have been able to develop sophisticated CSR programs despite operating in highly intervened industries. Some of them (Telefonica, Repsol, Enel, etc.) bought formerly public Latin American monopolies and have exported their practices to these countries.

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On the other hand, the majority of small and mid-size companies practice asymmetrical public relations. In Greece, the personal relationship model is common and includes payments to journalists for their publications (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). In Italy, there are still a number of organizations whose public relations efforts focus on basic press-agentry concepts (Valentini, 2009). In Spain, one-way models are still the norm. Most organizations do not determine goals and objectives through research (Arceo, 2002), although for a majority of them symmetrical models are a normative ideal (Moreno, 2004). In Brazil, Chile and Mexico, there is a considerable gap between a handful of highly concentrated and technologically advanced businesses and small businesses that often lack the most basic technology (OECD, 2012). In Mexico, big companies require important public relations services to attract investments and they demand constant initiatives for reaching consumers’ needs. This approach is more focused on marketing and advertising than relationship building (Rebeil et al., 2009). In her study, Ferrari (2000) found the organizations that used symmetrical models in Chile were all subsidiaries of foreign multinationals, while Chilean organizations practiced the two-way asymmetric model. In Brazil, there is a difference in perception among executives of large national and multinational companies vs the SMEs (Molleda et al., 2009). How social and economic structure affects public relations practice The practice of public relations in Southern European and Latin American countries has been shaped by political and economic shifts since Second World War. Italy benefited from newfound democracy and European integration after Second World War, while Portuguese, Greek, and Spanish dictatorships fell almost simultaneously in 1974-1975 (Malefakis, 1992). Brazil made its transition to democracy in the 1980s, Chile in the 1990s, and Mexico, although formally a democracy since 1917, was still in transition due to a number of social asymmetries. The dubbed “economic miracles” of European Mediterranean countries transpired in the 1960s and 1970s, enhanced by integration into the European Common Market, while Brazil and Mexico have become in the last decade the seventh and twelfth largest economies of the world, respectively (IMF, 2012), thanks to opportunities offered by globalization. Despite the efforts of modernization, these historical circumstances have allowed for the survival of political clientelism as well as an economic structure that affects public relations practice. The importance of clientelism in public relations practice The politicization of businesses in Southern Europe and Latin America, brought about by the major role of the state in the economy as well as by the nature of the political process, drives the way business is conducted and public relations is implemented. The strong interconnection between political and business powers results in a public relations practice that, in the social media era, still leans strongly towards media relations, especially newspapers. Hallin and Papathanassopoulos (2002) and Hallin and Mancini (2004, 2013) describe a different Southern European and Latin American public sphere in which the central element of political communication is the bargaining process between governments, parties, factions, and other organizations allied with them. Much of this process of communication takes place outside the open public sphere and generally it is more successful when carried out informally. The media – particularly newspapers – have historically served and participated in this process of incessant bargaining, used in a tactical way by political and business elites alike to follow the progress of negotiations,

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establish agendas, pressure one another, and arrive at agreements. This is the case of businessman-turned-politician Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, a man who did not hesitate to use his own private media as well as Italian public media to attack his detractors (who were using allied media outlets such as the lefty La Repubblica to put pressure on the judicial system) for over a decade. Likewise, Carlos Slim, the onetime richest man in the world, and Emilio Azcárraga, the owner of Televisa and a media empire, frequently exchange messages in the Mexican and other international media encouraging Mexican leaders and rivals alike to accept competition in the TV and telecommunications landscapes. The importance of media relations is enhanced by the fact that newspapers have small but influential readerships in Southern Europe (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) and Latin America (Cole, 1996; Lugo-Ocando, 2008). Mass circulation newspapers never developed in these countries. Newspapers are read mostly by a business and political elite, which makes sense in a patronage system where business and political life are not very separate. UNESCO circulation figures run from 145 newspapers per every 1,000 people in Spain to 36 in Brazil (some European countries such as the UK and Germany have 292 and 267, respectively). As described above, the economic powers try to use the media as instruments to gain political and social influence. Such is the case of the great industrial emporiums in Italy (e.g. FIAT, Olivetti, Montedison), industry tycoons in Greece, and bank giants in Spain that simultaneously play an important role as investors in the main media conglomerates of their countries (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). In Mexico, there are indications that advertising is how economic powers influence the tailoring of content in Mexican media. The largest advertiser in Mexico is billionaire bottler and financier Eugenio Garza Largero, while Carlos Slim controls companies that make up the second-largest advertising group (Hughes, 2008). Something similar can be said about the Chilean media landscape, where the news agenda, through censorship and self-censorship, is redefined by the power of advertising. In this country, factious powers impose on the public agenda themes that correspond with the interests of business and political elites (González-Rodríguez, 2008). This type of instrumentalization in Brazil is particularly evident at a regional level where local oligarchs own regional newspapers and broadcasting companies that are used for their own economic and political ends (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). The interrelationship between media, corporations, and government – through ownership (the Chilean government partially owns several newspapers: González-Rodríguez, 2008), subsidies (15 percent in Italy: Hallin and Mancini, 2004), and/or government advertising (such as the case of Spain, where the government is by far the biggest advertiser: González, 2012) – diminishes the notion of a public interest or “watchdog” role traditionally attributed to media in Anglo-Saxon societies. In these countries the media tend to place more emphasis on strategies of political parties and businesses at the expense of citizens’ concerns. Italy’s Berlusconi is the most obvious example, but there are numerous others. In Spain, MediaPro and PRISA, two left-leaning media conglomerates, provided ample support to former Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in exchange for lucrative TV rights to football matches (Carvajal, 2009). In Mexico, variants of an authoritarian journalism model have survived, where state governors impose newsroom personnel and direction in media outlets whose business model is based “on quid pro quo exchanges of advertising or other financial incentives for news” (Lugo-Ocando, 2008, p. 134). For example, in 2003, major newspaper editors argued that top banks threatened to pull advertisements over critical coverage of the $12.5 billion debtor relief fund Fobaproa. Likewise, a number of media outlets in Brazil are still politicized and subject to the pressures of private interest. Such is the case of the regional Brazilian oligarchs: the Collor de Mello family dominates the media

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in Alagoas, the Sarneys in Maranhão, and the recently deceased conservative politician Antonio Carlos Magalhães (ACM) in the State of Bahia (Matos, 2011). This aspect of media and politics has direct repercussions on the communication strategies of many companies. It is often more relevant for companies to focus on media relations rather than relationship building with their publics. Many businesses, particularly the largest companies operating in favorable conditions in highly regulated markets, consider it more of a priority to be in the financial pages of newspapers to generate perceptions among local politicians in order to obtain licenses, subsidies, or public contracts. Building relationships with, for example, their own consumers is less of a priority. A recent example was the reaction of large Catalan entrepreneurs when the President of the Catalan government threatened the central Madrid government with organizing a referendum of independence in 2013. Instead of publicly stating their disagreement with the Catalan government, many preferred to maintain private meetings with Catalan and national politicians so they could elude publicly stating whether they were for or against independence (Sacristán, 2012). Most of the information about this process was reflected in financial newspapers as off the record despite the fact that their perceived-as-ambiguous position by Spanish public opinion could jeopardize their sales in the rest of Spain (boycotts of Catalan products in the rest of Spain have indeed happened in the past). This situation can be understood as an example of a clientelist relationship with a local government, because publics across Spain should be Catalan companies’ main audience. Economics and state intervention Public relations strategies in Southern Europe and Latin America are affected by a number of social and economic circumstances that are often interdependent: low expense on publicity due to the small size of companies, the lack of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for the same reason and because of a weak culture of activism, and a high intervention of states in strategic industries causing disinterest among relevant large companies in building symmetrical relationships with their publics. Southern European firms, often family run, tend to be smaller than their richer neighbors. Germany, Denmark, France, and Britain have an average enterprise size double that of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece (Mulhern, 1995). This factor, as well as the abundance of traditional industrial sectors, shapes a Mediterranean capitalism less concerned with CSR (Rangone and Solari, 2012). Even in Italy, the most developed economy of the group, CSR is scarce, relational, and lacks a strategic approach (Coppa and Sriramesh, 2012). The lack of activism and investigative reporting in these countries (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) enhances a corporate culture accustomed to circumventing existing rules for profit increase (Amable, 2003). The situation gets more dramatic in Latin American countries although the problems are relatively similar. According to the OCDE, SMEs represent 99 percent of businesses in Latin America and employ 67 percent of employees. Their productivity is six times smaller than that of big enterprises (while in OECD countries it is 1.6 times higher). Despite economic growth in recent times, the economy of the region is mainly based on raw materials and low added value exports. The poverty rate is still 31 percent and the per capita income is still low in comparison to industrial countries (e.g. according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brazil’s income per capita is still five times lower than that of the US). Broadband access and Internet penetration are clearly below the developed world. In Argentina, only 49 percent of SMEs and 83 percent of large companies have a web site. The gap is even broader in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.

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Thus, despite the revolutionary tradition in Latin America, activism or CSR are not very strong. There is a culture of resignation as the government is still seen as the indispensable entity for dealing with social transformation (Molleda et al., 2009). Large businesses in Mexico take advantage of the lack of civil society to promote their viewpoints to the government (Rebeil et al., 2009). In general, Chileans also lack a culture of solidarity and citizenship to drive social change (Ferrari, 2009a, b). Another major consequence of the lack of scale economies is a much lower publicity expense than those associated with larger-scale business organizations (Pilati, 1990; in Hallin and Mancini, 2004). The increasing diversity of the population of these countries has not been a motivation, as in the US in the past, to standardize collective customs through communication. There is still a major perception of cultural homogeneity in the seven countries under study here, despite the fact that foreign-born populations increased in percentages of close to 10 percent of the total population in Southern Europe during the 1990s and early 2000s (Muenz, 2006). A perception that has long been popular in historically diverse Latin American societies such as Brazil asserts that assimilation and integration through racial intermixing helps preserve national unity (Arocena, 2008). A third factor caused by the late development of capitalism in these two regions has to do with the strong role the state plays in the economy. The Global 2000 Forbes list, the annual ranking of the world’s biggest companies, noted in 2010 that almost 50 percent of the biggest corporations in Southern Europe were still totally or partially state-owned and/or recently privatized. The Italian government directly or indirectly controls several of the few large, internationally competitive corporations (ENI, ENEL, Finmeccanica, Telecom Italia). In Spain, five out of the ten biggest companies are former state monopolies privatized in the last decade (Telefonica, Repsol-YPF, Gas Natural) or still partly owned by regional governments (Mapfre in Madrid and Criteria Caixa in Catalonia). In Portugal, the three main companies (EDP, Portugal Telecom, Galp) are still state-owned as are the top four in Greece (National Bank of Greece, Hellenic Telecom, Hellenic Petroleum, Public Power). They all tend to operate in strategic sectors (banking, energy, utilities, telecommunications, transportation) in quasi-monopolistic market conditions. Under these conditions, most of these companies do not see the return on investment of symmetrical relations with their publics. In Latin American countries, government intervention manifests itself in a different way. Brazil would be the closest model to the European countries with successive governments that have tried to protect certain industries in order to create sizable “national champions” that could compete internationally. In Brazil, a number of the largest companies are still partially owned by the state (Petrobras, Banco Do Brazil, Electrobras, among others) or have been recently privatized (CIA Siderurgica). On the other hand, Mexico privatized most of the largest companies in a quasi-monopoly, such as the case of the state telephone monopoly (Telmex) that was sold to a consortium led by Carlos Slim, and several commercial banks that were reserved for a group of Mexican capitalists. Chile would be the exception, where the early processes of privatization during the Pinochet dictatorship made the economy less dependent on the role of the state with the exception of several strategic industries such as copper. The telecommunications sector offers a good example of how intervened markets complicate the development of symmetrical relationships between organizations and their publics. In Spain, Telefonica still has a market share of 80.1 percent in landlines and 59.9 percent in broadband (López, 2009), despite the fact that it has been denounced multiple times by the Spanish Association of Internet Users

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(Asociación de Internautas, 2006) and chosen in the past by Spanish consumers’ associations as the worst company of the year in Spain (Facua, 2010). The situation is similar in Mexico, where Slim’s America Movil mobile unit, Telcel and Telmex, have about 70 percent of mobile subscribers and 78 percent of fixed phone lines (Harrup, 2011). According to the OECD (2011), Mexicans pay some of the highest prices in the world to make a telephone call. Under these circumstances, the need for symmetrical relations with publics is almost utopic. These giants can afford to alienate their key publics without losing significant market share. In addition, the high level of government intervention in strategic business decisions eludes concepts such as reciprocity or cooperation with stakeholders. One example is the state’s capacity to approve mergers and/or takeovers. A recent example was Telefónica’s acquisition of Vivo, a Portugal Telecom subsidiary in Brazil. Although Portugal Telecom’s shareholders were in favor of Telefónica’s offer, José Socrates, the Portuguese Prime Minister, blocked the deal because the Brazilian market was “strategic and fundamental for the development of Portugal Telecom” (Minder, 2010). In both cases, factors such as the interest of shareholders (to obtain a major profit), consumers (to enjoy a more competitive energy market), or employees (to work for a more solid and viable entrepreneurial project) were ignored for political reasons. Conclusion Standard public relations definitions emphasize the need for symmetrical, equal, and horizontal relationships between organizations and their various publics (Long and Hazelton, 1987; Broom and Sha, 2012). This approach, however, takes for granted the existence of modern and rational modes of thought that exclude the irrationality of tradition, religion, and myth attributed to clientelistic societies (Günes-Ayata, 1994). They do not take into account that organizations operating in clientelistic environments tend to see the world as unequal, where clients develop strategies to fight against those inequalities. Clientelism would be responsible for the “privatization of public relations” because information is not shared with most of the stakeholders, making the practice at times an exclusive business between politicians and organizations. At its best, clientelism may create equality between organizations with merits and organizations without them in their relationships with their publics. Furthermore, traditional Anglo scholars tend to overlook the impact of the economic structure on the development of symmetrical public relations, assuming an economic model based on a liberal free market economy (Zaharna, 2001). The main problem is that not all democracies and free market economies are the same. In the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom by The Heritage Foundation, a ranking that measures the degree of state intervention, four Anglo democracies were ranked in the top 11 positions: Australia (3), New Zealand (4), the US (8), and the UK (11). In contrast, Southern European and Latin American countries fell way behind: Spain (36), Mexico (54), Portugal (62), Greece (73), Italy (74) and Brazil (99), while Chile (7) was the only country in this group labeled as mostly free. With a high degree of political intervention, many organizations in these countries often find it more effective to receive support from the state (through government contracts and indirect subsidies) than to build symmetrical relationships with their publics. There are certainly social, political, and economic forces that undermine clientelist relationships. First, there is the imposition of a more rational-legal framework in Southern European countries due to European integration. Second, in Mediterranean Europe as well as Latin America, the criteria of efficiency linked to globalization can,

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under certain circumstances, undermine clientelistic relationships. Third, the maturity of established lobbying modes and norms, and their correlated regulation (i.e. of both lobbied and lobbyist) in a number of countries may contribute to limit the temptation of engaging in clientelistic practices. All these forces can make businesses less dependent on political subsidies, less identified with political positions, and subsequently more concerned with building mutually beneficial relationships with all their stakeholders and not only with governments. However, there are reasons to believe that clientelism is permanent. After all, clientelism fits well with the postmodern idea of the search for flexible solutions oriented toward individual needs (Gunes-Ayata, 1994). There are a number of features typically clientelistic in today’s society – such as the decline of ideologies, the rebirth of localism, and the personalization of political relationships – that could expand clientelistic practices in the twenty-first century (Caciagli, 2006). Therefore, despite these forces of change, clientelism will continue impacting the practice of public relations in most regions of the world. Clientelistic practices tend to flourish more in less individualistic societies with high levels of power distance, where personal relationships are more important and the state plays a major role in economic life in absence of private capital. That is to say, in most of the non-western world, and in a lesser measure in the western world too, communication strategies are being dictated by supposedly non-strategic factors such as the clientelist relationships and the size of companies. And the use of gifts, exchange of favors, and the cultivation of personal relationships are considered part of the public relations strategic menu, with a persuasive purpose, for many organizations. Future studies on this subject should explore the similarities and variations in different regions of the world between different forms of clientelism and what public relations scholars have traditionally called personal influence models (Grunig et al., 1995), meaning patterns of social organization in which connections and friendships seem necessary to get almost anything from the media or the government. For example, scholars often identify Chinese guanxi as a variety of clientelism based on the existence of patron-client ties between a state’s administration and private businesses (Barrington, 2012). There are also important similarities between the Indian personal influence model and clientelism, as there is a quid pro quo relationship between public relations managers and key individuals in the government and the media (Bardhan and Sriramesh, 2005). There is also a need for empirical surveys among practitioners and government officials that can measure the nature of their relationships in a number of countries. This essay expects to open a door for these future studies and cross-cultural comparisons. References Amable, B. (2003), The Diversity of Modern Capitalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Arceo, A. (2002), “Research and public relations in Spain. An overview”, European PR News, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 17-21. Arceo, A. (2004), “Public relations in Spain: an introduction”, Public Relations Review, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 293-302. Arocena, F. (2008), “Multiculturalism in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru”, Race & Class, Vol. 49 No. 4, pp. 1-21.

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Further reading Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) (2012), Dow Jones Sustainability Eurozone Index, Dow Jones Sustainability Index, New York, NY, available at: www.sustainability-indexes.com/images/ indexes-monthly-djsi-eurozone40_tcm1071-337289.pdf Heritage Foundation (2010), 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. Ranking the Countries, Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, available at: www.heritage.org/ Interbrand (2012), Best Global Brands 2012, Interbrand, New York, NY, available at: www. interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/2012/Best-Global-Brands-2012-Brand-View.aspx Sriramesh, K. (2007), “The relationship between culture and public relations”, in Toth, E. L. (Ed.), The Future of Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management: Challenges for the Next Generation, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 507-526. Transparency International (2012), Corruption Perceptions Index 2012, Transparency International, Berlin, available at: www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results UNESCO (2006), Institute for Statistics, The World Bank, Washington, DC. About the author Dr César García is an Associate Professor in the Communication Department at the Central Washington University, specializing in teaching and research on public relations and communication with an emphasis on global public relations. He has more than a decade of experience in the professional world of public relations working for international firms such as Edelman and Pleon, where he implemented communication programs for global companies. He has published in academic journals including Public Relations Review, Public Relations Journal, PRism, and International Journal of Strategic Communication, among others. Dr César García can be contacted at: [email protected]

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