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THE PROFESSIONALISATION OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN EUROPE | 41

organisations present a more positive public presence, e.g. managing the news media.
And, as with political consultants, there are issues about whether communication
consultants play a key role in setting out policies,for example,or whether they are mere
functionaries in the sense that they carry out functions determined by others.
Obviously, the answers are bound to provide subtler accounts of what takes place
within organisations but the questions posed illuminate the range of skills that political
parties – and governments,and universities – need to engage with their publics.

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS
The above discussion can be summarised as follows:

n professionalisation should be understood as part of a process whereby individuals
continually reflect upon practices in order to improve them so as to achieve specific
objectives;
n that process has infected all walks of life, including political parties who are also
responding to changes in their environment, e.g. enlarged suffrage, new means of
mass communication,weakening traditional allegiances,etc;
n governments, like political parties, are also responding to changes in their
environments, e.g. the need to establish their legitimacy or to communicate to their
citizens;
n specialists – public relations experts, polling experts, communication advisors, and
so on – are often employed to help organisations (political parties, governments,
universities) to achieve their objectives;
n if parties have similar objectives, i.e. to gain political power, it may be that they will
begin to adopt not only similar practices but also similar structures to achieve their
goals.Political parties may be more alike than in the past;
n such specialists are usually referred to as professionals because of their specialist
skills,their full-time status as specialists or a combination of both;
n specialists (professionals) employed by political parties or by governments in certain
capacities may ‘displace’non-specialist employees, may work alongside them or may
defer to them.There is probably no set pattern;
n a process of professionalisation, whereby individuals acquire ever more
sophisticated skills to deal with their changing environments, is always in process The Professionalisation of Political Communication in Europe
and touches both specialists and others,such as politicians;
n under the condition of ‘reflexive modernity’, it is not only the specialist who reflects
on their work. All organisations, and individuals within them, are continually
reflecting on their work in order to adapt to their environment and achieve their
objectives.

In the chapters that follow these themes are explored in a range of countries. 43