Lobbying. An indicator for democratic governance?

Résumé ou Introduction

Accessibility of the policy-making processes for third party agent’s increases countries level of democratic governance. Ideally chances to influence officials should not depend on wealth of the interest group. However common ways to impact government decisions include professional lobbying (Rowbottom, 2010, p.79). Professional lobbyists are accused of influencing public policy formation for self-serving purposes by means of not only knowledge transfer but also offering financial support to the targeted government official or political party. Government officials choose which people to meet with and receive advice from. This subjective choice gives varying opportunities that result in decision-making power to different interest groups (Rowbottom, 2010, p. 78). The public’s confidence in how public policies are being formatted has been shaken by repeated reports on lobbyist’s corruption. In recent years the regulation of lobbying has become a major challenge for modern liberal democracies world-wide. Democracies, relying on trust and support of their citizenry are threatened to loose legitimacy due to professional lobbying. The question this paper examines is in how far lobbying needs to be recognized as an indicator for democratic governance and whether it is measurable as such. At first characteristics and the scope of lobbying shall be defined to provide the necessary framework for further discussion of the topic. Second, when assessing democratic governance empirical measures for indicators are essential components of analysis. Therefore the measurability of lobbying shall be addressed in the second part of the paper. Third, approaches to regulate lobbyist profession to ensure higher levels of democratic governance shall be examined. Lastly, the case of the European Union shall be analyzed to exemplify successes and loop-holes of the existing regulatory measures and conclude about the importance of lobbying as an indicator when examining the democratic process.