The public relations are an administrative duty, of management and of communication, in permanent matter thanks to which, a private or public organization aims establishing, maintaining or at promoting trust relationships based on the knowledge and the mutuel understanding of this organization and its public, internal and external, the whole in the interest of the public.
The public relations are defined as a set of techniques of communication intended to give an image favorable to a person or a public or deprived organization, to develop a trust relationship, of regard and adhesion between a company, a brand, etc..
This communication is made in a way more personalized and less directly directed towards the sale contract (or of political decision) that publicity, propaganda or the lobbying, while intervening by the means of relay (such as the journalists).
The public relations can intervene in support of the relations presses, or conversely to generate relations presses.
I would like to focus more on lobbying. In France, the political system does not integrate the lobbying practice. It is true that the History separates the French vision from the lobbies of that in the United States. While going back to the modern bases of the two States, one finds, however, the same hostility towards any shape of intermediate bodies. In France, this hostility will involve a series of legislative texts which, during the Revolution, will declare out the law any shape of corporation or intermediate body, whatever their motivations or their objects. It will be necessary to await the law Waldeck-Rousseau in 1883 and, especially, the law of 1901 on associations to cure this prohibition. In the United States, James Madison devotes several pages of the Federalist to these questions, but arrives at the conclusion that the formation of factions belongs to the human condition and that it returns to the “modern government” to limit the possibly harmful effects of them.
Without falling into the historical determinism, these divergent traditions - one founded on the refusal of principle, the other on a more pragmatic vision - undoubtedly make it possible to understand realities always very different on the two sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, in the United States, there exists since 1946 a legislation on the participation of the lobbies in the political life, forcing those to declare their activities and to be registered on a public register. The rules were regularly reinforced since, even if to each presidential election of the calls to new reforms are launched. In France, there does not exist such a regulation, probably not “to regularize” or institutionalize the participation of the lobbies in the political life. Discussions on this subject take place regularly, but they succeeded, for the time being, with no formal regulation.
