Professional Lobbyists Research Articles

Finally Statehood! Utah's Struggles, 1849–1896

Finally Statehood! Utah's Struggles, 1849–1896

Specializing in Politics: Effects of Specialization, Social Capital, and Human Capital on Corporate Lobbying

ABSTRACT Corporate lobbyists play a vital role in the Corporate Political Activity process. They act as a mediator between corporations and politicians when firms engage in lobbying activities. Firms value professional lobbyists for their connections in Washington and their knowledge of the political process. While previous Corporate Political Activity research on lobbying has focused primarily on the amount of money firms spend on lobbying, including antecedents of lobbying and outcomes, very little research has examined lobbyists’ individual differences and how those influence important outcomes. In this paper, we examine how lobbyists’ specialization and experience as both a lobbyist and a former politician can influence the number of bills lobbied on passed into law. Using a sample of corporate lobbyists who were hired by S&P 500 firms, we look at 8,630 lobbyist’s careers from 2005–2016. We find that lobbyists lower in specialization are more likely to lobby on bills which are eventually passed into law than highly specialized lobbyists. We also find that social capital moderates the relationship between specialization and lobbying effectiveness. These results suggest that while corporate political activity spending is important, both scholars and firms should also understand who firms are hiring to lobby for them and how differences in lobbyist specialization might influence firm effectiveness in the nonmarket arena.

Lobbying in the UK: Towards Robust Regulation

Abstract This article argues that the transparency regime regulating the activities of lobbyists in the UK and the devolved administrations fails to address the core problems of political lobbying and should be replaced. This is particularly important following Brexit because the regulatory landscape will change significantly in the years to come. The Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 establishes a registry-based system of regulating lobbyists seeking to communicate with the government in Westminster. The Scotland (Lobbying) Act 2016 establishes a similar system, with calls for a lobbying register in Wales also growing. Analyses of existing laws reveal several flaws with those registry-based systems resulting in inadequate levels of transparency. To remedy the shortfall and to get transparency right, this article argues for two changes. First, a more robust register for professional lobbyists premised on greater transparency that is harmonised for Westminster and the devolved administrations. Secondly, the creation of a centralised public website acting as the official forum for advocacy tied to specific legislative proposals.

Influence of Interest Group Lobbying in India : Case for the Washington Style Business of Persuasion

Lobbying, even dyed-in-the-wool, and having acquired the status of an independent service industry in India, greatly steered in unstructured and opaque surroundings. The lobbying phenomenon at present in India is neither legal nor illegal. Of late, though several entities, including the interest groups, have lobbied for statutory foundations for this territory, their endorsement did not succeed. The present study traced and analyzed the socio-political environments of lobbying in India. It presented the policy implications and necessitated the essence of systematically studying lobbying from the rational perspectives qua a preconceived notion, as has been the approach at present in India. The paper attempted to identify the provenance of a new environment of business persuasion exactly on the lines of the Western societies in India. Further, the study demystified the masquerading techniques of the strategies adopted by the lobbyists to influence policy making. The article presented the raison d'être for regulating the lobbying industry in India. Besides, it also traced the evidence of presence of professional lobbyists in India. The paper highlighted, in brief, the institutional efforts made so far towards a new beginning of regulated lobbying in India.

Tobacco control partnership capacity: An overview and comparison of 18 European partnerships.

INTRODUCTIONIn most countries, public health partnerships exist to advance national tobacco control. We assessed characteristics related to tobacco control partnership capacity across Europe.METHODSWe developed a tool to assess partnership characteristics related to their theoretical capacity to influence policy. The tool was based on an existing framework in the literature, which we adapted for the tobacco control field, through an expert panel, insights from the literature and pilot tests. The tool consists of three dimensions: resources (8 items), member characteristics (2 items), and organizational characteristics (8 items) and was administered to 18 European partnerships across 17 European countries in 2019.RESULTSWhereas several characteristics likely related to tobacco control partnership capacity were highly prevalent across European partnerships, some were not. Of all 18 partnerships, 5 did not include professional lobbyists, 7 did not have access to national information on tobacco industry presence and lobbying, 9 had no influence on national research agendas, and 7 did not maintain working relationships with the relevant Minister or Secretary of State. Furthermore, 5 of 18 partnerships had no agreement on roles and responsibilities of member organizations, and 6 had no agreement on how credits are divided across member organizations. A leadership figure was absent in 6 of 18 partnerships.CONCLUSIONSThis study confirms that tobacco control partnerships vary greatly in the extent to which they possess characteristics associated with their ability to advance tobacco control. There is much room for improvement of European tobacco control partnerships.

An ethics for the lobbying profession? The role of private associations in defining and codifying behavioural standards for lobbyists in the EU

The regulation of lobbying activities nowadays represents an internationally recognized standard of good governance. Such measures usually consist of mandatory public registers of lobbyists, meant to increase scrutiny and account-holding over the activities of lobbyists in the political and policy arena. In parallel to public regulation, industry-led initiatives have proliferated in recent years, in the form of private codes of conduct sponsored by professional lobbyists’ associations. However, existing research on lobbying regulation has largely ignored these developments. The article addresses this research gap. It proposes that codes of conduct developed by practitioners’ associations should be assessed through a professional ethics framework and tests this approach in a case study of the European Union (EU). Findings shows that, although the relationship between professionals and the beneficiaries of their services is central to the ethics of any profession, the codes of conduct developed by the EU associations neglect lobbyists’ obligations towards those whose interests they represent. Having been created in response to the threat of public regulation, these private codes sought to reassure the EU institutions of lobbyists’ integrity, leading to a narrow interpretation of ‘ethical’ lobbying as not exercising a corrupting influence over public officials or the public decision-making process.

Toward a Professions-Based Understanding of Ethical and Responsible Lobbying

Responding to calls for more substantive studies into ethical and responsible lobbying, we analyze data collected over a 5-year period in Brussels to explore how individual lobbyists understand the ethical dimensions of their work. Mobilizing insights from the sociology of the professions, we expose an emerging lobbying professionalism and unpack practitioners’ understandings of what being a professional lobbyist entails, focusing in particular on their espoused values of transparency and honesty. While expectations to lobby more transparently and honestly stem from political institutions, we find individual lobbyists—acting as conduits—attempt to disseminate these expectations by setting limits that incite their clients to embrace what policymakers consider professional lobbying practice. Our study contributes to corporate political activity (CPA) scholarship by providing a professions-based understanding of ethical and responsible approaches to lobbying. We provide new insights into contextual and individual-level factors behind the emergence of such approaches, and elucidate implications of lobbying professionalism for business and European Union (EU) governance.

‘For us climate action never dies’: a legislative process analysis of environmental movement tactics in Oregon

ABSTRACT In this article, I discuss how environmental groups in Oregon have intervened in the legislative process in the last 5 years to advocate for climate policy. Methodologically, I draw on 76 interviews with Oregon legislators, state staff members, professional lobbyists, and environmental leaders, as well as participant observation and archival research. I describe how environmental groups work to influence policymaking by: (1) recruiting and positioning legislative champions on environmental committees, (2) building relationships with legislators and following the conventions of the arena (interactional decorum, incremental timeline), and (3) shoring up legislator’s commitments by framing climate policy as an ‘economic engine.’ I argue that relationships between environmental leaders and political elites are a key mechanism in the progression of the cap and invest bill through the legislative process and the development of the 2020 executive order on climate. However, subtle forms of polarization like bipartisan norms within unified governments remain a significant barrier to achieving policy goals on climate.

Is your playing field unleveled? U.S. defense contracts and foreign firm lobbying

AbstractResearch SummaryPrior research in political strategy shows that political capital is critical in achieving desirable nonmarket strategy outcomes. Less attention has been paid to the fact that firms vary in their ability to acquire political capital. Foreign firms, which typically suffer from the liability of foreignness, have difficulty acquiring and strengthening political capital in a host country. Drawing on the literatures on political capital, the liability of foreignness, and certification, I argue that relying on outside political capital—that is, hiring outside lobbyists—helps foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) achieve better nonmarket outcomes, thanks to outside lobbyists' certifying role as political insiders. Empirically, the study examines U.S. Department of Defense weapons‐system prime contracts awarded to 20,301 U.S. and foreign‐owned defense contractors from 1998 through 2006. This study has theoretical and practical implications for studies on political capital, international business, and nonmarket strategies.Managerial SummaryPolitical capital is assumed to be critical in nonmarket strategy to achieve positive firm outcomes, particularly in industries where political and regulatory players play an important role. However, due to certain industry or firm characteristics, some firms are at a disadvantaged position in acquiring and consolidating the political capital they need. In this research, I argue that one of the factors creating such disadvantage is foreignness. The results indicate that for those foreign firms with a liability of foreignness, relying on outside lobbyists is beneficial to overcome the disadvantages and to achieve better nonmarket outcomes because outside professional lobbyists can ease information flows between political and regulatory players and foreign firms through their trustworthiness as political insiders.

Lobbying in Polish law and practice

This article presents both the legal regulations concerning lobbying in Poland and an evaluation of lobbying practices. It refers to the results of the sociological research conducted among the members of the Polish Parliament, professional lobbyists and journalists who cover parliamentary issues. The research was conducted in cooperation with the Stefan Batory Foundation’s Anti-Corruption Programme from May to July 2008.

Clean money, dirty system: Connected landowners capture beneficial land rezoning

We use a unique regulatory event that occurred in Queensland, Australia, from 2007 to 2012, to examine the predictive power of landowner relationship networks and lobbying behaviour on successfully gaining value-enhancing rezoning. A State authority, the Urban Land Development Authority (ULDA), took planning control away from local councils in selected areas in order to increase the speed and scale of development in those areas, in the process increasing land values. Using micro-level relationship data from multiple sources, we compare the relationship-network characteristics of landowners of comparable sites inside and outside the ULDA areas, finding that ‘connected’ landowners owned 75% of land inside the rezoned areas, and only 12% outside, capturing $410 million in land value gains out of the total $710 million from rezoning. We also find that engaging a professional lobbyist is a substitute for having one’s own connections. Scaling up from our sample of six rezoned areas to the hundreds of rezoning decisions across Queensland and Australia in the last few decades, suggests that many billions of dollars of economic rent are being regularly transferred from the general population to connected landowners through political rezoning decisions.

Enactment of mandatory pharmacy technician certification in Kansas

The successful enactment of mandatory pharmacy technician certification in Kansas is described. In 2004, Kansas began requiring registration of all pharmacy technicians with the state board of pharmacy. Registration identified individuals working as pharmacy technicians but did not require any specific education or certification. In September 2012, the Kansas Board of Pharmacy created a task force of key stakeholders including pharmacists from multiple areas of practice, the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy, organizational leaders from the Kansas Council of Health-System Pharmacists (KCHP) and Kansas Pharmacists Association, and professional lobbyists. The goals of this task force were to research practices of technician certification in other states and to make recommendations to the state board of pharmacy on how Kansas could accomplish mandatory technician certification. The task force outlined the steps needed to achieve legislation that could be supported by the members. These topics included the creation of a technician trainee category, grandfathering certain technicians who had been practicing for a designated period of time, state board-approved exemptions, training requirements, age and education requirements, continuing-education requirements, and pharmacist:technician ratio. The recommendations were finalized at the August 2013 Kansas Pharmacy Summit, and the proposed legislation was introduced and passed during the 2014 legislative session. KCHP members learned many valuable lessons about advocacy and the legislative process with this initiative, including building relationships, working with legislators, and working with other professional organizations. The formation of a task force led to the successful passage of a bill granting the Kansas Board of Pharmacy the authority to issue regulations regarding mandatory pharmacy technician certification.

Interest Group Conflict Over Medicaid Expansion: The Surprising Impact of Public Advocates

We examined the potential economic, policy, and political influences on the decisions of the 50 US states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. We related a measure of relative state progress toward Medicaid expansion updated to 2015 to each state's economic circumstances, established policy frameworks in states, partisan control of state government, and lobbyists for businesses, medical professionals, unions, and public interest organizations. The 9201 lobbyists working on health care reform in state capitols exerted a strong and significant impact on Medicaid expansion. Controlling for confounding factors (including partisanship and existing policy frameworks), we found that business and professional lobbyists exerted a negative effect on state Medicaid expansion and, unexpectedly, that public interest advocates exerted a positive effect. There are 3.1 million adults who lack coverage because they live in the 20 states that refused to expand Medicaid. Although political party and lobbyists for private interests present significant barriers in these states, legislative lobbying on behalf of the uninsured appears likely to be effective.

K Street on Main: How Advocacy Cost and Competition Cultivate a Professional Lobbying Elite

We develop and demonstrate evidence for a theory of how interest groups hire lobbyists. Interest groups are frequently faced with the decision of how best to represent their interests in government: should they hire professional, hired gun lobbyists or instead call upon current employees to conduct government relations? We suggest that institutional constraints increase the cost and competitive nature of lobbying, leading interest groups to abandon the use of in-house advocates in favor of professional contractors. Relying on the fact that contractors represent multiple clients at a time, and using an original data set compiled from state ethics documents and registration lists from 1988 to 2013, we find support for our theory. Specifically, we demonstrate that groups turn to contract lobbyists when regulatory compliance costs are high, when legislatures are unprofessional, and when small legislative chambers are responsible for representing large swaths of the economy. This study is the first to advance a theory of interest group hiring decisions, and it informs a long-standing debate on the effects of lobby laws on state interest communities. Finally, it uncovers a representational challenge stemming from the recent emergence of a professional lobbyist class in many American states.

Professional lobbyists as representative claim-makers. The cases of Poland and the Czech Republic

Abstract This article looks at the ways in which political representation is used as a symbolic resource of legitimacy by those acting as intermediaries between the private and the public sectors- professional lobbyists. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Michael Saward, the article puts forward an analysis of whether, how and in relation to whom, lobbyists claim to be representatives so as to acquire a recognized position in the policy-making process. Representative claim-making by lobbyists matters, we argue, because it is an indicator of the status afforded by the public to private actors in politics. In the Czech and Polish cases, even though the invisible character of lobbying practices seems to limit the range of roles lobbyists can adopt in front of the general public, lobbyists mobilize representation as a resource both directly and indirectly when having to justify their involvement in public decision-making

Teaching public policy advocacy by combining academic knowledge and professional wisdom

Lobbying is a well-established occupation and has attained a professional status in the United States and other democracies in the world that can be taught in the university setting. This article discusses what lobbying skills can be learned in a university setting, and second what subjects are and should be included in the curriculum of public affairs and lobbying courses. From over 20 years’ experience at American University’s Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute (PAAI) in Washington DC and for the last 12 years in the European Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute (EPAAI) in Brussels, we know ethical lobbying skills and knowledge can be taught effectively in a university setting. With the help of professional lobbyists, we have taught technical skills, professional norms and ethics, and strategies and tactics of advocacy to over 1000 students, since the founding of PAAI in 1992. Effective lobbying strategies, tactics and ethics can be taught and learned with a combination of rigorous academic research and applied/practical wisdom from professional advocates. From our program we have launched hundreds of PAAI graduates into successful advocacy careers. The underlying approach in PAAI is ‘The Campaign Mindset’, an operational theory of change in advocacy and the policy process. Our curriculum instructionally mirrors the content and process that a comprehensive advocacy campaign would embrace, from conception through implementation, to conclusion. Specifically, our curriculum content is organized into six general interrelated and at times overlapping modules. The modules reflect the conceptual building blocks that are typically used in a major advocacy campaign. However, many important topics and tools critical to advocacy action plans are also discussed within each module. The PAAI Modules are: Political Environment Assessment for Strategy and Action Plan Development and Management; Direct Lobbying; Communications Strategy, Message Development and Execution; Coalition Building; Building and Using Grassroots and Grasstops Support; and Understanding and Operating Within the Ethical Laws, Rules and Norms Pertaining to all Aspects of Advocacy. We have integrated professional lobbyist mentors into PAAI who have helped keep the curriculum up-to-date (for example, especially social media) and essential in placing our students in the advocacy profession.

Learnable skills, or unteachable instinct? What can and what cannot be taught in the lobbying profession

In this article, we make the case that there is a critical set of knowledge, skills and abilities that can be taught to pre- and early-career lobbyists at the graduate professional training level. We acknowledge that, as with any profession, there are intrinsic personal qualities and life experiences that improve the ability of lobbyists to represent their clients and contribute to the policy process. Yet, we also identify three basic areas of lobbying in the literature that can structure a curriculum to prepare prospective professional lobbyists to be effective and ethical advocates for their clients’ interests. First, recent research on interest group politics and lobbying can offer students and practitioners insight into the structure and dynamics of lobbying communities. Second, the literature highlights three useful kinds of knowledge – political process, substantive policy and analytic – that can be systematically taught. Third, the consensus among political scientists that lobbying plays primarily an informational role implies that students should master oral and written communication strategies for effective advocacy. And finally, best practices in building and maintaining relationships with stakeholders in the policy world can be modeled. We then recommend a curriculum that offers training in these areas through a combination of seminars, simulations and a practicum experience that may be delivered in person, online or through a hybrid course.

Clean Money in a Dirty System: Relationship Networks and Land Rezoning in Queensland

We use a unique regulatory event that occurred in Queensland, Australia, from 2007- 2012, to examine the predictive power of landowner relationship networks and lobbying behaviour on successfully gaining value-enhancing rezoning. A State authority, the Urban Land Development Authority (ULDA), took planning control away from local councils in selected areas in order to increase the speed and scale of development in those areas, in the process increasing land values. Using micro-level relationship data from multiple sources, we compare the relationship-network characteristics of landowners of comparable sites inside and outside the ULDA areas, finding that 'connected' landowners owned 75% of land inside the rezoned areas, and only 12% outside, capturing $410 million in land value gains out of the total $710 million from rezoning. The marginal gains to all landowners of becoming connected in our sample were $190 million. We also find that engaging a professional lobbyist is a substitute for having one's own connections. Scaling up from our sample of six rezoned areas to the hundreds of rezoning decisions across Queensland and Australia in the last few decades, suggests that many billions of dollars of economic rent are being regularly transferred from the general population to connected land owners through political rezoning decisions.

Lobbying Regulations and Political Equality in the American States

Laws that regulate the conduct of professional lobbyists in statehouses across the nation are one attempt to ensure that citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. Do states with stricter lobbying regulations actually display more egalitarian patterns of political representation? Using public opinion measures from the National Annenberg Election Surveys and data on state policies, this article first demonstrates that state policy decisions are consistently more proximate to the opinions of affluent citizens. I then evaluate the relationship between the stringency of state lobbying regulations and representational equality across the states and find evidence that states with stricter regulations weigh citizens’ opinions more equally in the policymaking process. These findings suggest that lobbying regulations can play an important role in promoting greater political equality.

The Seven Deadly Virtues of Lobbyists: What Lawyer Lobbyists Really Do

The perception of lobbyists as a corrupt, antidemocratic force for dishonest governance is rooted more in myth than fact. Lobbyists are adaptive, forward-thinking expert advocates who are vital to a healthy, self-correcting representative democracy. Good lobbyists achieve results by building consensus. They give voice to and empower those who seek to petition the government. While existing laws are more than adequate to address, punish and discourage corruption, more can be done to assure transparency and to address the problem of unfair influence by expanding the access of the less advantaged to professional lobbying. Any attempt to improve lobbying should also focus on the rapidly changing nature of the profession in an increasingly complex, global policy arena, in which increasingly people engage with the government electronically. Moreover, understanding the links between fund raising by lobbyists and governance is a rich subject for further study. A starting point to consider reforms and improvements is to have a better understanding of what lobbyists actually do. They have “seven deadly virtues”: First, lobbyists are an important source of information and analysis for government decision-makers. Second, lobbyists inform their clients about how the government works. Third, lobbyists hold each other accountable. Fourth, lobbyists hold government accountable. Fifth, good professional lobbyists comply with the rules. Sixth, they make sure others comply. Seventh, lobbyists are uniquely qualified to bridge partisan divides and find solutions to difficult problems. In sum, for those interested in practicing at the intersection of law, politics, and business, lobbying is an honorable and worthwhile profession. It is also an opportunity for lawyers young and old to make a real difference.