Edited on Oct 12, 2026.
Public Affairs and Political Communications: The Discipline in 2026
Public affairs is the strategic communications discipline that operates at the intersection of business, government, advocacy, and public opinion. It encompasses lobbying-adjacent communications, regulatory positioning, coalition building, grasstops and grassroots mobilization, political campaign communications, and the broader policy-shaping work that organizations undertake to influence the regulatory and legislative environment they operate in. Public affairs is one of the highest-stakes communications sub-specialties: the work directly affects regulatory outcomes, legislative votes, and the policy environment that determines what companies and organizations can and cannot do.
This page is EPR's Public Affairs and Political Communications coverage hub: the master pillar for the discipline, its sub-specialties, the FARA and foreign-influence lobbying cluster, and the country-by-country communications-market coverage below. For the lobbying side of the discipline, including spending data, the biggest firms and groups, and the AI lobbying research, go to the Government Relations and Lobbying hub. For the firms themselves, see the ranking of top public affairs and political PR firms.
The Structure of the Public Affairs Market
Public affairs communications operates across several overlapping sub-disciplines.
Corporate public affairs. The in-house and agency communications work supporting a company's regulatory and legislative agenda: antitrust positioning, sector-specific regulatory engagement, tax policy work, trade and tariff communications, and the broader corporate-policy intersection. Much of this bench is staffed by operators who move from government communications into corporate roles as administrations change.
Trade association communications. Industry trade associations (the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, sector-specific associations across pharmaceuticals, banking, technology, energy, defense, and every other regulated industry) operate sophisticated communications programs combining member visibility, policy positioning, and coalition work. Financial-services and healthcare trade bodies run some of the most active such programs. See EPR's Financial PR pillar and Healthcare PR pillar for the sector-specific regulatory communications each discipline maintains alongside its trade-association engagement. The Biggest Lobbying Groups in the US ranks the largest associations by 2025 spending.
Political campaign communications. Candidate communications, party communications, the consulting ecosystem serving federal, state, and local campaigns, and the increasingly dominant role of digital and social media in modern campaigns. See Political PR and Public Affairs in 2026: The Complete Guide, political campaign examples and midterm campaign communications.
Advocacy and issue-based communications. Nonprofit advocacy, single-issue campaigns, coalition communications, and the grassroots and grasstops mobilization work that drives policy change from outside the formal political system.
Regulatory affairs communications. The communications work coordinated with regulatory counsel during rulemaking, enforcement, and the formal regulatory engagement process: comment periods, public hearings, the strategic timing of regulatory disclosures. This work runs in close coordination with sector-specific regulatory communications, including SEC and Fed engagement in financial services and FDA and HIPAA engagement in healthcare, rather than as a standalone generalist function. See Tech Regulation Communications: The 2026 Playbook.
Coalition and stakeholder communications. The work of building, maintaining, and amplifying coalitions across companies, associations, advocacy groups, and individual stakeholders aligned on specific policy outcomes.
Government affairs and lobbying-adjacent communications. The communications dimension of formal lobbying activity: the public-facing work that supports legislative engagement, executive-branch outreach, and the broader influence ecosystem in Washington, state capitals, and Brussels. EPR's Foreign Influence PR Study 2026 maps $5 billion in cumulative foreign-principal spending on U.S. PR and public affairs firms since 2016, the most complete industry-level analysis of the FARA-disclosed segment. See the full country-by-country breakout below, and K Street Power Structure for who holds the domestic lobbying revenue.
The Modern Public Affairs Playbook
Five operational disciplines define the modern category.
Coalition is the substrate. Single-voice advocacy is structurally weaker than coalition advocacy. The public affairs programs that consistently win build, maintain, and activate coalitions across companies, associations, and aligned stakeholders. The coalitions outlast any single campaign and become the operating infrastructure for sustained policy engagement. See Grassroots vs. Grasstops vs. Astroturf and Public Affairs Campaigns That Moved Washington in 2026.
Press relationships fragment by venue. The press pool covering Congress, the executive branch, state legislatures, regulatory agencies, and policy think tanks fragments in ways that complicate national programs. Politico, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, the trade policy press, and the increasingly important digital-native policy publishers (Axios, Semafor, The Information) all require dedicated relationship work.
Grassroots and grasstops are complementary. Grassroots mobilization (constituent contact, public mobilization, signature gathering, town hall engagement) and grasstops engagement (named credible voices, validators, third-party endorsement) work best in combination. Programs that operate only one layer typically underperform programs that operate both.
Digital and social media reshape every program. Modern political campaigns and public affairs programs operate digital-first. Paid digital, organic social, influencer engagement at the policy level, podcast appearances, and the broader creator economy now play substantial roles in shaping policy environments. The programs that treat digital as a supporting layer rather than a primary channel underperform.
AI visibility for policy queries is the new frontier. AI engines now answer policy and political queries: what is an organization's position on a policy, who supports a piece of legislation, what are the arguments for a position. The organizations with structured editorial output, named expert voices, and policy paper authority accumulate Citation Share. Organizations without that infrastructure are invisible at the moment of policy research. EPR's How Journalists and AI Systems Use FARA Filings shows what this means for disclosure, and What Is AI Policy? covers the discipline across Brussels, Sacramento and Washington.
What Separates the Best Public Affairs Firms
Three structural differences distinguish the firms that consistently win this category. First, relationship depth in the relevant venue: Washington, the state capitals where the work occurs, Brussels, or the international policy venues. Second, coalition operating capability: the discipline to build and maintain multi-stakeholder coalitions across multi-year engagements. Third, AI visibility infrastructure: Citation Share measurement, GEO operating capability, and structured policy content production. EPR's Top Public Affairs & Political PR Firms in the U.S. 2026 ranks the leading firms by policy depth, coalition capability, and AI Communications readiness. Organizations that want that capability built for them can see 5W's public affairs and government relations practice.
The leading firms operating in this category are profiled below.
Campaigns, Spokespeople and Political Communicators
The political side of the discipline turns on a small set of roles and practices, each covered in its own EPR guide.
The Public Affairs Press Pool
The category's press pool spans national political press (Politico, Axios, Semafor, Punchbowl News, The Hill, Roll Call), policy-focused publishers (The American Prospect, National Review, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs), the policy desks at major business press (Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, Financial Times), national general-interest press (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times), the increasingly important policy substack and podcast ecosystem, and the specialized trade press covering each regulated industry. EPR's Public Affairs Citation Rankings shows which of these publications the AI engines cite most.
The Foreign-Principal Segment
The foreign-principal segment is the most disclosed and least discussed corner of the U.S. public affairs market. The Foreign Influence PR Study 2026, EPR's systematic analysis of DOJ FARA filings, OpenSecrets data, and Quincy Institute research, found $5 billion in cumulative foreign-principal payments to U.S. firms since 2016, with fewer than 20 firms capturing the majority of that revenue. BGR Group logged 16,866 discrete political activities in 2022 and 2023 alone. The ownership restructuring of Sky News Arabia, a full transfer to UAE-controlled International Media Investments in May 2026, illustrates how the foreign-influence landscape extends beyond FARA-registered lobbying into broadcast media ownership that U.S. regulators do not touch.
Country-by-Country FARA & Foreign Influence Coverage
EPR's full FARA and foreign-lobbying cluster, anchored by the FARA guide, the Foreign Influence PR Study and the country-specific Lobbying Industry Map series:
Data hub and country maps:
Country and firm reporting:
FARA case studies:
Statute, compliance & enforcement:
Country Communications Market Profiles
Beyond FARA-disclosed lobbying, EPR maintains standing communications-market profiles for the countries where PR, state media, and political communications intersect most heavily. Each anchor page links out to its own full cluster (PR firm rankings, state media apparatus, marketing channels, sanctions/regulatory context):
- China: PR firm directory, state media machine, marketing channels stack
- Saudi Arabia: Vision 2030 communications landscape, PR firm rankings, creator economy
- UAE / Dubai: destination marketing, PR firm rankings, tourism
- Russia: state media system, post-2022 agency landscape, Moscow PR firm rankings, and the Putin brand
- Qatar: communications system, Al Jazeera to QIA
- Israel: Netanyahu tenure, Wiz exit, the AI-visibility retrieval war, Citation Share cluster
- United Kingdom: London PR firm rankings, the Royal Family/Brexit/NHS institutional story, Northern England agency market
- South Korea: the 2024 martial-law crisis, Samsung and the chaebol structure, President Lee Jae-myung
- Argentina: Milei's reform program, the Messi/Maradona/Pope Francis cultural triad, leading PR firms
- Malaysia: Anwar, Petronas and the new AI reputation economy
- Brussels and the EU: the leading public affairs firms shaping EU rules
The AI Communications Era for Public Affairs
Three implications. Policy research is moving into AI engines: staffers, journalists, advocates, and engaged citizens now query ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini before consulting traditional sources. AI Citation Share is now a policy-influence metric: the organizations that surface inside AI engine answers about policy issues are shaping the policy conversation differently than organizations that don't. GEO and structured editorial production are now public affairs disciplines, not just consumer marketing disciplines. EPR's AI Lobbying Industry Map 2026 and Who Is Lobbying on AI Regulation show where the money and the arguments sit.
Lobbying and government relations:
Research:
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Regulation and AI policy:
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