Political Public Relations: origins, challenges and applications

When compared to corporate public relations, political public relations are still a new field of study, which nonetheless has a great development potential. This article presents a reflec-tion on public relations in the political sphere, by remembering its conceptual grassroots and studying the challenges imposed on its practice by the new media. Grounded in the relationship management theory and in the ideal of symmetrical and dialogic communication, this article, presents possible paths for applied research in the field of political public relations. Keywords Political public relations; relationship management; symmetrical communication; dialogue The practical and conceptual borders of public relations have always been in con-trast with other disciplines, such as marketing, management or journalism. The case of political public relations, whose field of study and action focuses on political institutions and their actors, is therefore identical. Political public relations result from the intersec-tion of well-established fields of study within the social sciences, such as political com-munication, political marketing and public relations itself. But as all these discipline