Abstract
In our societies, lobbying is often referred as a negative activity, used by powerful companies to promote their interests at the expense of citizens. From a historical point of view, lobbies were groups of interest that used to stand in the « lobbies » of the British parliament in the early 1830s. This proximity with the political power led to a reputation of manipulation and corruption. Still, lobbying today is also used in other contextes such as citizen and non-governmental organization pressure towards public authorities. As a consequence, lobbying can be motivated by general interest as well as private interests.
The very idea of lobbying indeed is to bring a fact to somebody's attention. In other words, in this conception of lobbying, there is no idea of influence or manipulation implied. Due to the development of democracy amongst the western countries, lobbying has become a widely spread practice all over the world. For many years now, transparency is at stake since lobbying has been singled out as a way to by-pass democracy. Considering these observations, one may wonder : what is good lobbying today?
Extract
[...] Because of this, legitimate lobbying should only be allowed when it serves the general interest. B. How to define public interest? Yet, it is sometimes difficult to make a difference between private interests and public ones. In the case of the Panama Canal, private companies were eager to influence political decisions in order to make profit. In the other hand, the whole continent benefited from a dynamic economic growth thanks to the new possibilities of business. In this context, one may say that defining public interest is a difficult question, and might not even me possible since private and public interest can be melt. [...]
[...] This would guarantee a form of equity between all kinds of lobbying. III. ?based on engagement and transparency: what if communication was the new lobbying? A. Transparency, the condition for fair lobbying? One may say that such a trend is actually happening. Whenever NGO or public reports highlight the attempts of big companies to influence decisions, these companies suffer from bad reputation. In today's information society, reputation and fame plays a great part as intangible assets for companies. As a consequence, they aim at avoiding public scandal and. [...]
[...] In the case of the French and the European Parliaments, meetings are organized before the official opening of the parliamentary session. As a consequence, lobbyists have to be ready on various topics and aware of the probabilities of these topics to be discussed in the coming months or weeks. In order to do so, campaigns have to be organized to match the calendar and increase chances that the actions taken stay relevant and focused. From that point of view, good lobbying is also largely a matter of timing. [...]
[...] In this perspective, one may say that some examples of lobbying cannot be considered as good lobbying. Being close to the political power is not as natural for international companies as for citizens. Lobbying thus seems easier for companies that can exploit their dominant position and point out that they bring jobs and wealth to the countries. Studies have shown that many oil companies were investing huge amounts of money to prevent and soften any legislation regarding the climate change1. [...]
[...] Even though pleading interests has always existed in history, democratic systems have given lobbying a new impulse. The 20th century has shown various forms of lobbying, many of which may now seem excessive or anti-democratic. The information society progressively forced companies and NGO to change their strategies in order to be efficiently heard, so much that lobbying now seems to be diluted into communication strategies. This evolution should be underlined as an important one: pleading one's interest now requires taking public opinion into account because online information helps modifying quickly opinions and trends. [...]
