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In the context of the general funding scarcity in the nonprofit sector, this paper aims to inquire into the governance challenges facing nonprofit aid organizations in a donor–recipient partner relationship. In particular, the authors focus on the challenges of commercial diversification as the espoused alternative to aid-funding.

A qualitative design was deployed to collect and analyze data collected from interviews conducted in three case organizations in an aid development partnership.

The various responses at the organizational level are presented as well as analyses of the inter-organizational aspects. All organizations have responded strategically to reductions in funding from state/government and other aid sources by attempting to diversify commercially yet at the same time maintain dependency on aid-funding. This entailed tensions between the logics of the market and mission. These tensions are manifest not only within the organizations but also in the relations between them.

Analyses of the twin-track strategies have highlighted that maintaining aid dependency and resource diversification have different and conflicting relational prerequisites and require diverse and conflicting internal capabilities. The paper develops a conceptual framework for capturing the governance challenges of this strategic dilemma and concludes that the choices of pursuing continued aid-funding and seeking new commercial opportunities are invariably mutually exclusive.

This chapter will situate the global paradigm shift toward Post-Education-For-All (Post-EFA) not only in the policy trends in the field of international education development, but also in the academic context of international relations and comparative education.

The chapter highlights three dimensions which characterize the paradigm shift; namely, discourse on norms, diversifying actors, and the changed mode of communication and participation in the global consultation processes. The existing formal structure of the EFA global governance is based on multilateralism which recognizes sovereign nation-states, representing national interests, as the participants. However, such an assumption is eroding, given that there is a growing number of state and nonstate actors who influence decision-making not only through conventional formal channels, but also informally. Urging the revision of theories of multilateralism, the chapter introduces the attention given to nontraditional donors and horizontal networks of civil society actors in this volume.

The introduction also shows that that the widening basis of participation in the global consultation processes on post-EFA and advanced communication technology have changed the ways in which discourse is formulated. While the amount and the speed of exchanging information have been enhanced and different types of actors have been encouraged to take part, it also obliges scholars to adopt innovative methods of analyzing discourse formation.

The chapter also demonstrates the importance of the focus on the Asia-Pacific region, which is composed of diverse actors who often underscore Asian cultural roots in contrast to Western hegemony. By focusing on the discourse, actors, and the structure through which the consensus views on the post-EFA agenda were built, the volume attempts to untangle the nature of the post-EFA paradigm shift, at the global, Asia-Pacific regional, and national levels.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of public relations, conceptualized as a strategic management function, in foreign policy making, and implementation. This research study emphasizes the relational perspective and seeks to examine its applicability to the practice of public relations in foreign policy settings.

This qualitative research study was based on in-depth interviews with nine individuals who were in charge of public relations aspects of a particular foreign policy issue in Latvian government institutions. The examined foreign policy issue was development cooperation.

The research findings revealed that public relations contributed to the strategic management of the foreign policy process to a certain extent. Public relations built and cultivated relationships, researched and scanned environments, built communities around a foreign policy issue, facilitated dialogic encounters and socialized foreign policies. However, the public relations function was not involved in the entire strategic management process: analysis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Although the relational perspective may be applicable to foreign policy settings and relationships that are cultivated by public relations practitioners in these settings bring outcomes on three different levels – national, organizational, and personal – this study found that public relations is not the only function that deals with relationships between an organization and its key publics.

This research study investigated two areas that are little explored in the public relations research literature: the strategic management role of public relations in government institutions and public relations contributions to policy, especially foreign, making.

This chapter highlights the characteristics of Asia through the analysis of policy-related documents by five donor countries, namely Japan, South Korea, China, India and Thailand. It will also examine the roles played by regional bodies such as the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and ASPBAE (the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) as the horizontal channels influencing aid policies in respective countries. Together with the analysis of the national and organizational policies, the regional process of building consensus on the post-2015 agenda is examined, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific Regional Education Conference (APREC) held in August 2014.

The analysis reveals that the region has two faces: one is imaginary and the other is functional. There is a common trend across Asian donors to refer to their historical ties with regions and countries to which they provide assistance and their traditional notions of education and development. They highlight Asian features in contrast to conventional aid principles and approaches based on the Western value system, either apparently or in a muted manner. In this sense, the imagined community of Asia with common cultural roots is perceived by the policymakers across the board.

At the same time, administratively, the importance of the region as a stage between the national and global levels is recognized increasingly in the multilateral global governance structure. With this broadened participatory structure, as discussed in the chapter ‘Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’’, the expected function of the region to transmit the norms and requests from the global level and to collect and summarize national voices has increased.