ABSTRACT
POLITICAL ECONOMY AND GLOBAL PUBLIC RELATIONS RESEARCH AND PRACTICE
Our goal in this chapter is to refine and expand our understanding of two of the infrastructural variables described in chapter 1-political system and economic development. We do so through the theoretical lens of political economy, which is a domain of scholarship in its own right, further reinforcing the earlier choice of combining these two variables under infrastructure. Political economy is a suitable concept for this analysis because we must not only be able to identify the nature of each of the environmental variables in a country, but also understand the critical relationships among them, before we can understand the complex ways in which they influence public relations. The unique interplay between political system and economic system impacts the public relations process-whether in the corporate, nonprofit, or governmental realm-in profound and identifiable ways.
