Towards a framework for action and discourse: A case study of the Spanish Office for Public Affairs before the Covid-19 crisis

Abstract

This paper explores some of the learnings that the Office of Public Affairs (OPA) of the Baha’i community of Spain gained in its efforts to contribute to public discourse in national spaces since 2014. In 2008, the International Governing Body of the Baha’is —the Universal House of Justice— said that, as the community expanded at the grassroots, it would be drawn further and further into the life of the surrounding society^[1]. In that same letter, an invitation was extended to apply the approaches, methods and instruments emerging from the sphere of the expansion and consolidation of the Bahá’í community — a framework that had crystallized as early as 2005^[2] and endowed that area of action with coherence—  to a diverse range of areas which will need to be addressed in order to contribute to social progress. This paper draws on the experience of the OPA in order to illustrate the operation of the framework in a field of action distinct from the expansion and consolidation of the Bahá’í community where that framework materialized first. This other field is the contribution to national discourses, in particular in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The OPA’s experience lends support to two interconnected hypotheses: first, as actors align more and more with the framework for action, their efforts to contribute to social change become more effective; and second, organizations committed to learning, building capacity and long-term progress might be in a better position than other organizations oriented only towards action to respond to conditions of uncertainty and to sudden and unexpected crises (like Covid-19).