Public relations theory: Conceptualising hegemonic communicative power as a continuum between expansive and neutralising strategies

Abstract

The paper aims to further develop the trend towards incorporating agonism into PR theory by integrating agonistic perspectives on hegemonic power to argue the existence of a continuum between expansive and neutralising communication strategies. The paper traces how power — and particularly dispositions towards active citizenship — have been incorporated into PR theory, and the shift from functionalism which portrayed civic activism as a problematic threat, toward more dialogic and agonistic approaches which seek to foster public participation and co-creation of campaigns. By synthesising the concepts of articulation, legitimacy and autonomy, the paper discusses options for how PR can deploy hegemonic communicative power to support democratic engagement and positive social change. The paper argues that hegemonic power should not be an “elephant in the room” for PR theory, as hegemonies are inevitable, and therefore, the question before us is to understand what forms of communication strategy are conducive to healthy democracies by encouraging active citizenship, converting antagonisms into agonism and improving prospects for the empowerment of marginalised groups.

Introduction

This paper seeks to make its contribution to the emerging agonistic directions (e.g. Capizzo, 2022; Davidson, 2016; Weder, 2022) in public relations (PR) by incorporating agonistic democracy theory, in regard to hegemonic power strategies, to propose a framework that conceptualises a continuum between expansive and neutralising communication strategies. The expansive-neutralising continuum distinguishes PR strategies by their orientation toward civic participation, with expansive approaches tending towards fostering participation to co-create policy and drive social change, while neutralising strategies lean towards prioritising control and stability.

PR in this paper is understood as enactments of communicative agency and power by organisations. PR frequently directly organises the spaces where citizens and organisations come together to share information, lived experiences and articulate their meaning. Within this process, PR’s moral compass is in constant tension between the attraction of two different poles. The predominant pole is the perception of what is in the interests of the employer/client, the other is the perception of what might constitute the interests or expectations of wider civic society. How PR negotiates this tension can be supportive or damaging to trust in the efficacy of civic participation, or in the legitimacy of democracy itself.

Agonism is understood in this paper as a theory of democracy as perpetual contestation of power, identities and values, where dissensus is understood as a productive force that energises democratic spaces and the processes where identities are shaped through engagement with difference, and no consensus should ever be considered final (Connolly, 1991; Mouffe, 2013). Agonistic PR’s goal is to cultivate an ethos that acknowledges deep-seated differences between publics while preventing those differences from escalating into destructive antagonism. This requires communication management that balances organisational objectives with a commitment to sustaining stakeholder dialogues rather than seeking to close down dissensus (Davidson, 2016).

The concept of agonism originates from the ancient Greek term agon, denoting the existence of contest or conflict. Classical agonism extolled competitive struggle as a necessary condition for those who held power. Contemporary forms of agonism are concerned with the capacity of publics to change hegemonic power relationships and suggest this can be at least partially achieved by ensuring dissensus and contest are not removed from public spaces through preferences for more consensus-oriented forms of deliberation (Davidson, 2016; Kalyvas, 2009). Contemporary agonistic democracy theory (Connolly, 1991; Mouffe, 1993; Owen, 1995) reconceives democracy as a dynamic and ongoing contest of ideas, values, and identities, rather than as a Habermasian style quest for rational agreement. It emphasises contestation, contingency, and necessary interdependency. Contestation celebrates passionate and open engagement among diverse citizens, recognising conflict as a productive force that energises democratic spaces. Contingency is important as agonists assume that no consensus is permanent or universally acceptable to all publics. Necessary interdependency frames society as a web of interrelations where identities, interests, and actions are mutually shaped through engagement with one another (Paxton, 2020). Within agonism identities are fated to contend with the other identities upon which they depend for articulating their differences, with the question becoming not will this happen, but how might it best happen (Connolly, 1993). Contemporary agonism thinkers are anxious to find ways to deepen democratic cultures by preventing any trend that solidifies existing hegemonic power relationships. Both classical and contemporary agonism also accept that hegemonic power is both inevitable - and necessary - for social progress. Hegemony here is understood as the non-coercive domination or leadership embedded in all social and organisational relationships, where subordinated groups may consent to power structures that may, or may not, serve their material interests (Mumby, 1997).

This paper synthesises agonistic perspectives on hegemonic power strategies into PR theory. It argues the value of a conceptual continuum between expansive and neutralising communication strategies, with the incorporation of expansive strategies offering a potential mechanism for fusing functional organisational interests with the requirements of agonistic democracy.

In developing an understanding of strategic options for hegemonic leadership within PR theory, the components of articulation, legitimacy, and autonomy are introduced and applied. Articulation refers to the linguistic and symbolic mechanisms through which PR practice constructs and shifts social realities, enabling hegemonic formations (see ¹ on “formations” and “coalitions”) to coalesce around shared values while remaining adaptable to equivalence and difference in social relationships. Legitimacy is required for fostering trust and pragmatic acceptance of organisational influence and leadership. Autonomy reflects the degree of agency accorded to publics within coalitions, relating to the extent to which their voices shape, rather than merely support, the agendas and policies of organisations.

To better understand the continuities and divergences between established PR theory and agonistic democracy theory, the next section explores how some widely applied PR theories varied in their dispositions towards civic activism. Where civic activism is understood as publics coming together to influence attitudes or policies through proactive issue engagement and advocacy.

Trends in attitudes towards civic activism in PR Theory

Contemporary PR theory has been on a journey. An initial guiding imperative in the late 20th Century was the need to ethically distance the new academic field from historical associations with propaganda, where public opinion is openly directed by elites (Moloney and McGrath, 2019). Early model building was influenced by PR’s own legitimacy problem as an acceptable subject in higher education, and was initially dominated by functionalist paradigms that theorised PR — and posited its legitimacy — by seeking alignment with the perceived needs of senior management elites.

Within the early functionalist paradigm PR proves its worth by reducing the economic costs of litigation or government regulation by neutralising threats from what were termed strategic publics. Reducing levels of civic activism that targeted organisations, would, it was argued, reduce external environmental barriers to management autonomy. The mode of recommended communication was tactical engagement, informed by game theory, with publics expressing dissensus, to locate win-win compromises (Grunig et al., 2002). The theory problematically constructed empowered civic participation as a reputational threat, rather than something to be fostered as a democratic good.

The contentious positioning of Excellence/two-way symmetrical communication as both strategically and ethically superior to all alternatives (Grunig et al., 2002) prompted debate and responses from both critical and functionalist writers. Within functionalist publications this centred on whether expedient win-win compromises with activist publics was always the best strategic response. Contingency Theory emerged as a “refinement of the normative theory of excellence” (Cancel et al., 1999: 173). That distinction is important as it locates Contingency Theory alongside Excellence as seeking two way communications with publics, not for public empowerment, but as a strategic option chosen on the criteria of what “…will be effective in achieving departmental and organizational objectives” (Cancel et al., 1999: 173). Contingency Theory proposed a continuum of stances towards publics, ranging from pure conflict or advocacy to pure accommodation (Cancel et al., 1999). Contingency Theory did acknowledge that accommodation of one position may mean one public gains at the expense of others (Cancel et al., 1999). Recognising that on many issues consensus across all stakeholders is not realistically attainable, shifted underpinning assumptions in PR theory, if only partially, toward some assumptions underpinning agonistic approaches.

With its expansion the field saw the development of approaches that emphasised dialogic approaches to modelling communicative relationships, for example, Taylor and Kent (2014). Their approach diverged from the functionalists by positing the ethical necessity of organisations seeing publics as composed of individuals, who should be treated as civic equals, and not as strategic objects (Kent and Taylor, 2002). This entails an orientation to value sharing and mutual understanding that was argued to be more ethical than functionalist approaches as it would mitigate power dynamics as publics would become co-creators of discourses and policy (Taylor and Kent, 2014). The dialogic paradigm represented a rewiring of the animating motives of communication strategy, in which “organizational goals are secondary to achieving understanding and being open to new possibilities” (Taylor and Kent, 2014: 389). This required shifting PR’s grounding in management discourses towards more philosophical frameworks to guide roles and practitioner identities. Taylor and Kent (2014) in this regard nominated Etzioni’s (1994) communitarianism and its emphasis on obligations to support societal well-being. Dialogic theory suggested communicators could participate in dialogue with the intention of furthering the interests of their organisation, while at the same time being influenced themselves by the engagement with publics (Taylor and Kent, 2014).

Another branch of the dialogic paradigm to note has been the incorporation of the work of Habermas. Habermas has been used to explore ethical relativism, coorientation, consensus oriented PR, reconnecting PR to the lifeworld of family and culture and to discourse ethics (Burkart 2007; Holmstrom 1997; Leeper 1996; Meisenbach 2006; Pearson 1989). This immediately made the agonistic critique of Habermas and deliberative approaches necessary and valuable for PR theory, for instance, much of Mouffe’s (1993) theorising is grounded in a critique of Habermas. PR theory grounded in Habermas shifts the focus of dialogue toward both organisations and publics contributing their knowledge to discover solutions that have the strongest levels of consensus. Habermas centres his approach on the pursuit of rational consensus as a means to resolve conflicts, while Mouffe rejects the possibility of a universal consensus, arguing instead that all agreements are inherently hegemonic and exclusionary (Davidson, 2016).

The emerging agonistic dimension in PR Theory

As with trends toward dialogic approaches in other academic fields, the move to theories that privileged the needs of civic society to, at least, being equal to those of management elites, enabled, possibly made inevitable, a moves towards incorporating agonism. Agonistic approaches problematise any tendency within dialogic paradigms to suggest consensus seeking is a normative goal (Mouffe, 1993). Incorporating elements of postmodernism into PR was one enabler of the agonistic perspective, as it concluded practitioners should reorientate from consensus to exploring tensions in organisational relationships with publics, in doing so drawing upon social differences as a creative resource, and challenging the notion that not seeking consensus through communication was somehow unethical (Holtzhausen, 2000; Kennedy and Sommerfeldt, 2015). The beginning of the explicit incorporation of agonistic democracy theory is exemplified by Davidson (2016) positing the value of agonistic theory for PR by applying it to critique the assumptions underpinning Habermasian deliberation and two-way symmetrical communication, and “showed the potential of the agonistic perspective for PR theory building in general” (Hoffman et al., 2020: 15).

Contemporary agonism diverges from the approaches that have informed the dialogic paradigm in PR as it contends that its communitarian underpinnings (i.e. Etzioni, 1994) have underestimated the depth of plurality and division within postmodern democracies. Refusal to recognise that these divisions are too deep to ever be fully resolved may lead to PR responding by ignoring or suppressing difference and dissensus (Davidson, 2018). Mouffe (2013) termed this as radical negativity — that no social order can exist beyond division or without power relationships, as every order must exclude other possibilities. These exclusions were termed as constituting the outside by Laclau and Mouffe (2001). The outside is a space with fluid boundaries where alternative discourses may evolve into challenges to organisational legitimacy to exercise leadership power, or even to continue to operate. Once that assumption is accepted into theory building, it becomes a logical error for any communication theory, or strategy, to believe a consensus can be found that does not exclude some publics. As Mouffe argued, such a consensus would require the impossibility of creating an “us” without at the same time creating a corresponding “them” (Mouffe, 1993). Agonists contend that Habermasian rules based dialogues are not a solution to this problem, because no matter how ethical the conduct of the dialogue, there has to be a moment of decision on what to do, and it is at this exact moment that a new hegemonic arrangement comes into existence (Mouffe, 1993). Within this approach, responsible PR will seek to nurture the ability of publics, especially those who are marginalised by existing hegemonies to prevent these relationships becoming permanently naturalised as unchallengeable common sense (Connolly, 1991; Davidson, 2016).

Examples of agonistic theory’s incorporation into PR theory are noticeable in writing by scholars in the rhetorical tradition. Ihlen and Heath (2019) have argued the justifications of shifting from a strategic-functional view, to a more ontological, specifically agonistic view of PR. While Davidson (2018) applied agonistic principles to problems in aligning rhetoric and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Hoffman et al. (2020) revealed tensions between epideictic rhetoric and claims that Corporate Political Advocacy (CPA) represents a more agonistic approach to communication. Agonistic cooperation has been synthesised with Heath’s (2001) concept of concurrence as guiding orientation to rhetorical exchanges (Davidson, 2020), and agonism has been applied in articulating how cancel culture, as a form of dissensus might act as impetus for rhetorical wrangles to better understand and ameliorate social issue divisions (Hobbs and O'Keefe, 2024).

The agonistic ethos has also drawn significant attention on how it can be incorporated into dialogic approaches. For example, agonistic approaches to dialogic communication (Ciszek and Logan, 2018), how agonistic forms of deliberation have been applied to stakeholder dialogue (Brand et al., 2020), to organisational listening (Capizzo and Feinman, 2022), and modelling PR responses to intractable situations (Capizzo, 2022). The limits of consensus oriented dialogue on the issue of the management of natural resources have been argued (Hallgren et al., 2018), while Weder (2022) has suggested the embracing of dissent, combined with an orientation toward environmental sustainability may yield a positive role for PR in constructive social change.

The agonistic paradigm has been incorporated by prominent figures in the field. Heath has increasingly incorporated agonistic concepts into his work on the rhetoric and PR (Heath, 2022), and Taylor, developing the dialogic model, applied agonism to look more critically at how organisational engagement is performed, and the productive uses of dissensus when applied to public consultations (Taylor et al., 2023).

One key concept in agonistic democracy theory that has been less well discussed in the PR literature is that of hegemony. The next section begins this paper’s incorporation of the agonistic conception of hegemony into PR theory.

Further expanding agonistic PR Theory

Incorporating the concept of hegemony

In wider strategic communication research the term hegemony has tended to have been used to denote domination through consent, characterised as “noncoercive relations of domination in which subordinated groups actively consent to and support belief systems and structures of power relations that do not necessarily serve — indeed, may work against — those group’s interests” (Mumby, 1997: 344). It has tended to be a pejorative term, something you wish to distance yourself from . Yet in agonistic theorising hegemony is assumed to be embedded into all social and organisational relationships, as all agreements on policy or values are hegemonic in nature. We should not assume all hegemonies are equally valid or indeed, equally troubling. We can draw on our (personal and divergent) values to evaluate some hegemonies as being more desirable than others, after all, as the author of this paper I would support the statement that: “…a democratic society in which there is accountability is a form of order and it is a better form of order than an authoritarian regime” (Mouffe quoted in Carpentier and Cammaerts, 2006: 4).

Hegemonic formations, the networks of groups, processes, practices and beliefs that underpin hegemonic power - require a building of social-cultural connection through ideology and values. Organisations are not able to take leadership positions within a hegemonic formation through economic power alone, it requires roots in civil society and a grounding of legitimacy through shared ideology and values (Levy and Newell, 2002). Mumby (1997) usefully suggested that communication theory’s focus on hegemony as solely domination or resistance misses Gramsci’s (2000) original conception which assumed any hegemonic scenario would include the dynamics of both power and resistance, meaning organisations and publics are simultaneously engaged in acts that support some elements of a consensus and contesting other parts. Hegemonic formations hold within them networks of organisations and publics with shared values/ideology and their existence denote divisions and separating lines from other organisations and publics. These lines that are always changing in that publics can move to and from formations (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). PR operates in an environment of multiple spaces, identities and struggles for influence. Key to attempts to influence shifting discourses and hold influence within hegemonic formations/coalitions is the concept of articulation.

Articulation

Articulation is particularly relevant to PR as it emphasises the centrality of the strategic use of language in the social construction of reality and social relationships. For example, see how Ciszek and Rodriguez (2020) apply articulation theory as a methodological framework for exploring discursive contestations in campaigns, and the role of floating signifiers and their link to wider hegemonic struggles.

Articulation as a concept draws on Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) contention that social identities and relationships are not solely grounded in class and economics, but are instead discursively constructed. The process of articulation is where language and symbols feed into discourses that shape and construct social relationships. To illustrate how articulation can drive shifts in identity and dominant ideology/values through establishing a relationship among elements such that their identity is modified (DeLuca, 1999), we can draw upon Hall’s (1985) writing on the rearticulation of the meaning of “Black” in Jamaica. Challenging colonial hegemony and its significations of Jamaica with dispossession or incompetence, new articulations created new meanings and associations where unity, positive recognition of “Black experience”, solidarity, “soul brothers”, and reggae emerged to form the components of a transformed articulation of “Jamaican-ness”. Both Hall and Laclau and Mouffe saw articulation as a process that is constantly open to change and reconfiguration. They diverge on the extent to which empty signifiers — broad inclusive concepts such as freedom, that diverse groups will agree upon as being desirable — provide temporary stability to hegemonic formations, but all definitions to some extent or other see the process of articulation as a joining of parts to make a unity (Slack, 1996)

Articulation is central to the construction and contestation of hegemonic formations, as it is a process around which diverse groups and their demands coalesce into coherent coalitions. Mouffe (1993) has highlighted the role within articulation of affect and passion as catalysts for civic participation. That participation is often a result of mobilised passions that create collective identities. Applied to PR, articulation within hegemonic coalitions, sees organisations’ relationships with publics as a tense balancing act between equivalence and difference. There are connections based upon ideology/values, but the coalition is always precarious and contingent. The coalition can never be fully whole and closed, which leaves open the prospect of new articulations that will lead to new networks of organisations attaining hegemonic leadership (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001).

The next section applies these key concepts from agonistic democracy theory into conceptualising the expansive-neutralising continuum of strategies available in the exercise of hegemonic communicative power.

Expansive and neutralising strategies

Hegemonic coalitions are not accidental. We can assume all organisations develop communicative strategies to support achieving their founding objectives. In this pursuit, all organisations are cognisant of the importance of legitimacy (see the section on Legitimacy as a component of Hegemony an expanded discussion on the meaning of legitimacy), all wish to exert influence over policy, practices and how governments regulate their sector. Applying the conceptual framework of hegemonic power, this paper now posits two broad strategic approaches that may be deployed to create, or challenge, hegemonic formations. It applies Mouffe, who contended there were two types of strategy:

...if hegemony is defined as the ability of one class to articulate the interest of other social groups to its own, it is now possible to see that can be done in two very different ways: the interests of these groups can either be articulated so as to neutralise them and hence to prevent the development of their own specific demands, or else they can be articulated in such a way as to promote their full development leading to the final resolution of the contradictions which they express (Mouffe cited in Martin, 2013: 27).

I propose here that this expansive-neutralising continuum can be applied to the strategic options applied within PR when seeking to exert communicative power through interactions with the diverse interests of an organisation’s stakeholders.

A neutralising communication strategy entails relationship management and influencing of publics and stakeholders to mitigate potential conflicts and challenges to legitimacy. This approach recognises addressing the interests and concerns of publics or stakeholders as essential in preventing these from escalating into mobilised activism and demands that conflict with an organisation’s objectives. At this end of the continuum there is a preference toward neutralising potential opposition or dissent by recognising stakeholder needs - but only insofar as any accommodation does not prevent attainment of predetermined management goals.

An expansive communication strategy seeks hegemonic legitimacy by fully engaging with and developing the interests of publics. It promotes the creation of shared spaces where demands are not only acknowledged but also actively fostered through a more inclusive and participatory approach. In doing so, it aims to build a coalition with clearly articulated policy objectives that align organisational and stakeholder/public interests, with the goal of securing social or economic benefits for all parties involved.

Organisations joining coalitions and partnerships with issue stakeholders presents a potential problem with how we differentiate between the two types of strategy. Both expansive and neutralising strategies are likely to seek alliances and empower allies within their respective coalitions, so the presence of some empowerment of allies is not solely within one or the other, but they differ in their ethos and understanding ultimate objectives will assist any analysis.

Accordingly, expansive strategies seek to broaden the social base of their coalition by deliberate incorporation of a wide range of publics, identities and demands. Using the articulation of diverse voices to develop a coherent project for change, fostering autonomy by enabling publics to express their identities, needs and demands within shared dialogic spaces. Empowerment within this strategy is not just about strengthening the coalition’s allies but also about expanding the scope of who can be considered an ally by transforming antagonistic relationships into agonistic ones. This strategy nurtures autonomy in a transformative manner, aiming to reshape organisational relationships with publics more inclusively.

Neutralising strategies will also frequently seek to empower allies, however, this strategy is more concerned with consolidating power within an existing configuration of social relationships, and to minimise the potential for conflict and dissensus both within and outside the coalition. The strategy will use shifting alignments with publics to defend or strengthen an organisation’s hegemonic leadership position, without necessarily broadening the coalition’s membership in a transformative way. The empowerment of allies in this strategy is more about defending the existing hegemonic formation. Neutralising strategies may support the autonomy of allies only to the extent that it serves to maintain the coalition’s dominance and helps manage dissent.

At a broad level autonomy relates to possessing the agency to follow one’s own values and self-understanding of rationality to make decisions. Holding agential autonomy would be denoted by a sense that any single public or organisation’s decisions and behaviours can be directly attributed to them as an agent (Darwall, 2006). The significance of autonomy, particularly for evaluating the impacts of expansive strategies, will be further expanded in the Section on Autonomy and Empowerment of Publics, but first we need to expand and recognise the role of legitimacy as a component of holding, or losing, hegemonic leadership.

Legitimacy as a component of hegemony

To further develop the expansive-neutralising continuum it is useful to draw upon how organisational legitimacy has been conceptualised. Legitimacy sits within the broader concept of hegemony. Legitimacy is interrelated but more narrowly focused on the acceptance of the competence and authority of those who hold power. There are synergies with concepts such as licence to operate or the permission to be heard, but I suggest, Suchman is the key scholar whose approach is relevant because it provided a framework to examine how organisations seek trust and credibility but also navigate complex social expectations and power dynamics within democratic contexts. Suchman’s definition of legitimacy is thus adopted for this paper: “Legitimacy is a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.” (Suchman, 1995: 574). Suchman’s definition fits well as it recognises that an organisation’s legitimacy sits within wider hegemonic formations and is socially constructed through discourses. This discursive power is more broadly dispersed now that social media has reduced the levels of direct influence enjoyed by PR practitioners and journalists, and in online spaces organisational legitimacy is frequently challenged on values or norms (Holmgreen, 2021). A social-constructivist approach to legitimacy suggests a process involving multiple actors at multiple levels, involving contestation of positions and values, to cocreate “social order”, with assumptions of equifinality - that no clusters of organisational attributes or behaviours are inherently more likely to be successful than others (Suddaby et al., 2017). Social order here can certainly be accepted as being akin to hegemonic formations, and equifinality akin to Mouffe’s radical negativity.

Suchman’s influential work on legitimacy also holds synergies with the framework being proposed in this paper, as Suchman was keen to argue that when considering why organisations seek legitimacy, an important dimension is “the distinction between seeking passive support and seeking active support” (Suchman, 1995: 574). This differentiation between strategies that seek passive acquiescence or to mobilise active support from stakeholders is clearly relevant when developing a model of expansive or neutralising communication strategies. If an organisation simply seeks to be left alone and not be drawn into contested issues, the threshold for legitimacy is easier to achieve. In contrast, if an organisation strategically seeks publics to be actively aligned with them — in a competitive issue struggle where other organisations and publics are aligned in rival coalitions — it needs, in perception at least, to show that membership of the coalition holds tangible value. This value might be material, but it could also be to affirm values and identities (Suchman, 1995). If we should expect mobilisation of publics to be a feature of both expansive and neutralising strategies, we also need to factor in that both strategies require legitimacy to enable other organisations and publics to accept an organisation’s intellectual and moral leadership positions within a coalition. The strategies will diverge in their disposition towards the autonomy of activist publics, and if their interests are articulated only insofar as they support the objectives of the existing coalition (neutralising), or articulated so as to promote their further development through synthesis into a coalition’s existing goals (expansive) (Mouffe cited in Martin, 2013). This dimension is developed further in the next section.

Autonomy and empowerment of publics

Autonomy

Both expansive and neutralising strategies may seek coalition partners, who they will seek to empower. A key characteristic of a neutralising strategy is that it will only empower publics who align with pre-determined management goals and values. Whereas, an expansive strategy will be open to exploring both equivalence and difference with publics, in a dialogic process informed by an agonistic ethos, that will make it open to formulating goals that are a fusion of organisational and stakeholder needs. This fusion is not akin to the kind of temporary tactical accommodation of activist demands found in Contingency Theory, or to a symmetrical communication style mixed-motives win-win compromise from Excellence Theory (which after all, by definition would be seeking to de-energise civic activism), but instead, represents a rearticulation of meaning and relationships, alongside a much deeper commitment to the policy demands that have been co-created with coalition partners.

This further suggests the significance of autonomy as a key concept for differentiating between expansive and neutralising strategies, and likewise for evaluating their impacts. Take for illustrative example, one way a more powerful organisation might seek to empower a coalition partner is to use its PR capabilities to leverage journalistic media attention to an issue or event. Sometimes, this takes the form of a partnership between a corporation and a civic society group. Such activity is ostensibly benign, it may positively represent an organisation on a journey towards higher levels of social responsibility, although the impacts on the autonomy of the less powerful partner can be more problematic. Here we can draw on Willems’ (2024) study of corporations seeking partnerships with feminist groups. Willems found that the feminist activists hope for partnerships that will result in organisations integrating social justice principles into their employment practices and to assist in challenging structural inequalities. The activists were disappointed by their dealings with corporate communicators. Willems termed the nature of the relationship as “constrained feminism”, where activists prefer partnerships with corporations to promote social and cultural change. Yet, they often find themselves settling for short-term publicity and funding boosts. This constrained relationship is due to corporations’ preference for initiatives that attract mainstream media or online attention, cherry picking the causes most suited to this purpose (Willems, 2024). This illustrates the utility of the concept of autonomy in assessing intent and impact. In Willems’ study the partnerships are perceived by activists as potentially restricting their power — or autonomy — to define issues on their own terms. Their concerns in these scenarios is that they only generate publicity and debate if they align with the predetermined objectives of the corporate partner, thus reducing the potential for these coalitions to engender transformative social and cultural change. The autonomy of the hegemonic organisation is protected, and the autonomy of the civic society activists endangered. There is a further potential structural impact upon the autonomy of civic society activists, if we consider the many multiple other partnerships simultaneously seeking media coverage or online attention, the impact at scale of issues articulated with signs and symbols designed to align with the predetermined objectives of the dominant partners. Through these practices, we can see how it is possible for hegemonic formations to structurally engage with, and then influence at a societal level, the discourses that are important to disempowered groups.

Empowerment

Expansive communication strategies require a deliberate integration of co-creation, agonistic dialogue, and forms of stakeholder empowerment that nurture the autonomy of all coalition partners. PR scholars seeking democracy friendly approaches tend to converge toward similar conclusions. For example Hurst et al. (2020), Demetrious (2013) and Hodges and McGrath (2011). Hurst et al. (2020) identified pro-social approaches to securing a social licence to operate are characterised by organisations engaging with a wide variety of stakeholders, and a willingness to pool their power to work together to secure mutual benefits — as opposed to a more neutralising pro-self approaches which are episodic and hold predetermined outcomes in any engagements with stakeholders. For Demetrious (2013), a public communication ethos requires rejecting approaches driven by organisational self-interest that attempt to neutralise and exclude articulations outside of the hegemonic formation, instead programme objectives need to build publics’ capacity to participate and for organisations to be open to new ideas, alternative articulations and discursive formations. Hodges and McGrath (2011) proposed the characteristics of a model, whereby PR acts as agent for social transformations. This would require practitioner knowledge of setting communication goals of publics gaining more control over their own lives, plus a commitment both to internal culture changes and to joint campaigns with stakeholders to influence public policies. Likewise, campaign evaluation proposals from specialists in communication for social progress emphasise the importance of publics being the agents of their own change, enabled through a process of dialogue leading to collective action. One influential evaluation framework gives prominence to: information equity; collective self-efficacy (i.e. is the campaign improving perceptions that coming together can effect change); sense of shared ownership; and social cohesion — the extent to which there is equivalence between coalition members and desire to remain in the coalition (Figueroa et al., 2002).

The application of a proposed conceptualisation of expansive-neutralising continuum should not be understood as meaning PR programmes or campaigns are either wholly one or the other. If we visualise the two strategies along a continuum, at one end we might say we have highly expansive strategies, and at the other, highly neutralising. Along the scale strategies will partially, or strongly, lean towards one end of the scale or the other. Over time many organisations may take isolated actions that lean towards expansion, and others that lean towards neutralising, and it will require an assessment of the strategy as a whole over a period of time to understand its true intentions.

To summarise, highly expansive strategies are likely to feature the use of deep dialogue grounded in agonistic ethos. These will co-create shared policy demands, demands that the organisation holding a leadership position must genuinely and openly campaign for to be considered expansive. There will be a concern to empower stakeholders so that all coalition partners enjoy increased autonomy. There will be a strict commitment to Responsible Lobbying where there is transparent reporting of how lobbying aligns to social responsibility commitments. A strong commitment to transparent, non-hypocritical or non-symbolic CSR will be an indicator of leaning towards expansion, but is not evidence of an expansive strategy solely in of itself. Highly neutralising strategies will be characterised by use of shallow dialogue (Davidson, 2016) with any policy demands pre-determined by management elites. The strategic priority will be to seek increased autonomy for management elites, even if that means, in certain situations, suppression of the autonomy of dissenting stakeholders. Elements of participatory engagement, and processes of alignment of organisational values with CSR commitments may mitigate the intensity of the neutralising lean.

Conclusion

This paper contributes to the theoretical development of agonistic PR by synthesising concepts from theories of hegemonic power into PR theory. In doing so, it has proposed a continuum between expansive and neutralising communication strategies. The paper contends that no PR theory can validly claim to eliminate hegemonic power, dissensus and exclusions to the outside. If we accept the need for theory to incorporate hegemony, then agonistic democracy theory offers a framework that can incorporate this reality and seek to build democracy-friendly ways to respond to deeply polarised societies.

The explicit connection of hegemonic forms of power to communication strategy, and the positing in this paper of an expansive-neutralising continuum further question the ethical validity of previously dominant functionalist paradigms in PR. Theories such as Excellence and Contingency are inseparable from their founding assumptions that PR should function as an antidote to the “problem” of civic activism. As Demetrious has argued, these theories undermine key tenets of citizenship by urging PR to proactively block the development of active civic participation: “the “two-way symmetric” model promotes pluralistic ideals that advantage business, and at the same time works to marginalise activism further” (Demetrious, 2013: 23). Within specialised areas of practice, such as CSR and issues management, traditional functionalist goals have been to reduce environmental activism as it is constructed as being in opposition to corporate autonomy (Capizzo and Luisi, 2024).

Within the dialogic paradigm, Taylor and Kent (2014) rejected the distinction between advocacy and accommodation in communication strategies, arguing that persuasion is present in all forms of PR. This would suggest accommodation indicates recognition by an organisation that, in the short-term at least, is not able to persuade sufficiently to reduce dissensus or criticism. Nonetheless, shows of good will or perceptions of reasonable behaviour enhance reputation which will assist in publics being receptive to future attempts to persuade. This can be understood as a neutralising instinct, but also reminds us of the relevance of integrating legitimacy-seeking into theorising hegemonic power strategies.

Functionalist hopes that legitimacy can be attained by symbolic alignments with social expectations, are on shaky ground, when social expectations are rapidly shifting, and where there is growing polarisation between publics. Classic examples of the symbolic statements would include social media posts to celebrate events such as International Women’s Day that are absent of any content relating to policy demands (Willems, 2024). Furthermore, legitimacy from past reputation is becoming increasingly unstable. Palazzo and Scherer (2006) used the example of anti sweatshop activism in response to globalisation of supply chains. Organisations might not be directly responsible for exploitation and abuse of workers, but they were increasingly being seen as structurally connected to such injustices, and therefore holding some culpable responsibility, and this connecting of organisations to wider structural inequalities will also apply to civil rights, the environment and the power relationships between groups and identities (Palazzo and Scherer, 2006). Likewise functionalist strategic public engagements to understand how much accommodation is required (Theunissen and Wan Noordin, 2012) also risk losing legitimacy with publics who expect more substantive responses.

The continuum is developed by drawing upon critical perspectives that challenge functionalism on several grounds, notably its emphasis on neutralising civic activism. It builds on the assumption that PR, particularly within larger organisations, serves to foster reputation and legitimacy as part of the communicative foundation stones for establishing or maintaining hegemonic leadership. Rather than merely managing reputation or neutralising conflict, the expansive approach empowers PR to actively engage with publics in ways that support democratic cultures and inclusivity. Expansive strategies offer an alternative to previous functionalist approaches that viewed civic activism as a problem to be managed. Instead of positioning PR as a buffer against civic activism, the agonistic approach promotes PR as a facilitator of civic participation. Thus, the continuum presents an invitation to recast functionalist approaches by integrating democratic values. Expansive strategies are not proposed as the only acceptable approach, more so the understanding the expansive ethos is available (and always has been) for adoption, which raises critical questions as to why an organisation would routinely lean towards a fully neutralising approach. Neutralising strategies are situationally and ethically justifiable in temporary time-limited contexts such as crisis communication, and in certain types of organisation, such as emergency services or regulators where for some of their functions they operate within legal restrictions, where neutral delivery of information is a clearly understood public service. In day-to-day communications clearly not every engagement with stakeholders needs to be part of efforts to build coalitions. Many small organisations and businesses do not possess the communicative power or resources required to take a leading role in expansive coalitions. However, an over-reliance on a neutralising approach, across all PR practice, will at an aggregate level contribute to a weakening of democratic cultures. Contingency, pragmatism, crisis and complexity may often explain why a neutralising strategy will be preferred at any given instant in time, but to exercise the highest forms of social and civic responsibility organisations, this paper argues, should be proactively seeking opportunities to shift towards a more expansive ethos.

Agonistic engagement and co-creation of campaigns may enhance what Suchman (1995) termed influence legitimacy, that is to say, legitimacy gained by bringing in publics to decision making forums, accepting stakeholders’ standards of performance and ethics as their own, and enabling publics to set policy demands. This influence legitimacy would be amplified if also associated with instances of successful campaign coalition influence on policy, as it would indicate a confirmation of influence legitimacy (Suchman, 1995). Indeed, it has been argued that being open to critical deliberation and co-creation is now a primary source of social acceptance (Palazzo and Scherer, 2006). Future research on mutual influence could productively explore intersections between the expansive-neutralising continuum and networked activism frameworks such as the one proposed by Sommerfeldt and Yang (2017), particularly in understanding how coalitional dynamics evolve across issue cycles, and on integrating evaluations of the impacts of coalition membership on the autonomy of marginalised publics.

Finally, this paper recognises that expansive strategies may be easier to adopt in PR practice within organisations, such as NGOs, charities, civic institutions or in social entrepreneurship. Because these types of organisations frequently hold participation and/or empowerment within their mission statements. For larger commercial organisations and corporations this approach is a challenge to previous functionalist understandings of PR practice, and we can recognise there are genuine practical challenges within internal working cultures animated by profit seeking. Nonetheless, it is a challenge that should be presented.