Governmental Communication. A comparative view of Great Britain and Mexico

Abstract

In this article I present a comparative analysis of governmental communication in Great Britain and Mexico, considering three processes: the logic of governmental communication, the management of communication tasks and the structure and dynamics of the communication office. With this, I seek to answer the following question: have government communication strategies developed in Britain and Mexico since the eighties successfully performed the persuasion and accountability functions that contemporary democracy requires from them? The comparative analysis shows that in two political systems that are so different as those of Great Britain and Mexico one can find similarities that are due to the trend towards greater professionalization and the standardization of the persuasive and informative tasks of governmental communication. The comparison also indicates which communication policies have been effective when applied to the specific contexts of each country. In the two cases, the gradual transformation of the offices —which for years followed a more informative logic— was replaced by a dramatic change in the definition of communication at the end of the XX century. As a result, the way in which policies are presented and communicated to the media became even more important than their economic and social content.