Consultant Lobbyists and Public Officials: Selling Policy Expertise or Personal Connections in Canada?

Abstract

Recent research suggests that there are two different types of lobbyists: those specializing in providing access to their personal connections with public office holders, and those specializing in a particular policy sector. This article advances this research by examining the actual behaviour of consultant lobbyists with data gathered from the Canadian Lobbyist Registry. Specifically, we probe two questions. First, using four indicators found within the literature, we investigate whether the behaviour of consultant lobbyists reflects the well-connected generalist or the issue specialist lobbyist. Second, we examine moving public office holders to see whether administrative officials – who make greater use of technical information – or politicians and partisan advisors – who are more interested in partisan/political information – are more likely to continue to be contacted by consultant lobbyists who contacted them in their previous position. Our results suggest that a more nuanced understanding of lobbying is required. While the majority of activities by consultant lobbyists are consistent with providing expertise to policymakers, a sizable minority of lobbyist activity is consistent with selling access to public office holders. Yet even here, our second analysis suggests that personal relationships may also involve the provision of expertise.