Lobbying

Development of Lobbying Research and Theory

Even though lobbying has always been a fixture of virtually all groups and governments, only in the past 100 years has it been recognized by scholars as a fundamental, prominent, and crucial part of policy making. Studies of lobbying did not occupy a major place in American political science until after the work of David Truman (The Governmental Process, 1951). The increased academic interest in lobbying in the United States from the 1960s onward was also due to the advocacy explosion, first in Washington, D.C., and later in the American states, as more and more interests and interest groups began to lobby and expanded their range of lobbying techniques.

Yet as late as the mid-1950s, many scholars saw lobbying and lobbyists as a purely American phenomenon—a product of the separation-of-powers system and not an aspect of parliamentary systems. In Anonymous Empire, Samuel Finer showed this to be an erroneous view of British politics, and work on lobbying in other parliamentary systems followed. As late as the 1970s, however, many texts on the politics of countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and Australia did not include the terms lobbying, lobbyist, or even interest groups (or pressure groups as they were often called) in their indexes. Even today, these terms do not appear in many treatments of the politics of developing and reemerging democracies, such as those in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Despite the late development of academic interest in lobbying and lobbyists, extensive research and some theories now exist. The lessons and characteristics of this research can be summed up in the following six points:

• 1.
  While there are thousands of studies, mainly case studies, from around the world, there is no general theory of lobbying and lobbyists. Even so, there is general agreement among scholars on the other five points.
• 2.
  There are three interrelated factors, in particular, that shape the lobbying environment in a place: the degree of political pluralism or [Page 1459]authoritarianism, the structure of governmental institutions regarding centralization or fragmentation of the policy process, and the political culture.
• 3.
  Lobbyists exist in all political systems but take on different guises in different systems.
• 4.
  The last 40 years or so have seen the use of an increasing range of lobbying strategies and tactics, not only in developed pluralist democracies but also in developing democracies and even authoritarian systems.
• 5.
  Largely because of the popular belief that lobbying and lobbyists benefit existing powerful interests at the expense of the rest of society and because of corruption scandals associated with lobbying activity, lobbying and lobbyists are held in low regard around the world. Ironically, however, and especially in democracies, hundreds of millions of citizens belong to interest groups.
• 6.
  Because of the potential for abuse and for undermining the goals of authoritarian regimes, the regulation of lobbying and lobbyists has been an aspect of public policy around the world.

The Nature of Lobbying

When two or more people get together, particularly in large groups and in countries, they want to influence others largely to secure economic, political, or other benefits for themselves, their group, or society as a whole. This is the motive for lobbying and why it has always been a central part of human society.

...