Abstract
Corporate interests’ access to the UK Cabinet Office shows that corporate political activity in the UK is common, involving lobbying by large numbers of businesses from a wide range of industrial sectors—albeit with considerable sectoral variation. Firm size appears to be the most deterministic variable—larger firms enjoy significantly more access to government than small and medium-sized firms. However, most lobbying is undertaken by domestic firms—multinational firms, despite their size, may concentrate their lobbying on supranational institutions. Associations representing smaller businesses are also underrepresented. The patterning and behaviour of corporate political activity in the UK—largely unregulated—mirrors that of jurisdictions where it is more regulated and monitored; inviting either a reappraisal of the impact of regulation on lobbying or a consideration of why UK lobbying, unfettered and relatively invisible, behaves in an identical manner.
Highlights
Understood using frameworks originally designed to understand relations between the state and interest groups generally [1] [2] [3], recent research has identified a range of corporate-specific factors influencing businesses’ motivations for engaging in corporate political activity (CPA) [4] [5] [6]
Passed as part of wider efforts to clean-up British politics in the wake of the 2009 expenses scandal, requiring professional lobbying organisations engaged in accessing senior politicians and civil servants to register with the newly created Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists and to disclose the names of their clients
The research uses data released as part of the Open Data Initiative (ODI) providing details of meetings between the Cabinet Office and large numbers of corporate and non-corporate interests during 2014-15
Summary
Understood using frameworks originally designed to understand relations between the state and interest groups generally [1] [2] [3], recent research has identified a range of corporate-specific factors influencing businesses’ motivations for engaging in corporate political activity (CPA) [4] [5] [6]. According to Dowding [7] CPA has increased considerably over the last 20 years and yet the practice remains controversial [6] [8]. In addition to being controversial much lobbying remains invisible—and relatively under-researched [8]
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