Basic internet response to everything is that when something essential involves something bad, we should forget the nuance and use slogans "X is BAD".
I want to push back against that. Lobbying is not corruption. All interest groups should have the ability to talk to lawmakers and present their viewpoints. That is essential for good lawmaking. It should be open (and is in the EU) with lobby registers (author uses lobbying as a synonym for corporate lobbying, confusing the issues).
Lobbying easily involves corruption, and that has to be constantly worked against (Qatargate, Cash for Amendments in 2011) for example. Hiring EU lawmakers after they leave the office should have long cooldown limits.
Current problems with EU lobbying: Corporate lobbying is over 60% of registered lobby spending. Civil society interest groups, consumer groups, and labor unions have less money. Revolving doors, astroturfing from foreigin states and corporations, and too much reliance on self-declaration in transparency register.
These can be all solved: mandatory meeting disclosures, declaration of private interests and assets, MEPs should be banned on paid lobbying activities, and long cooling-off periods before MEPs can become lobbyists, independent refinforcement, public annex for all directives and regulation listing interest groups involved.
People should care and make these political issues.
If we define lobbying as using your financial resources and/or political connections (which others lack) to successfully influence policy, then of course it’s corruption. It’s a non-level playing field. Disclosure or transparency do not change this fundamental fact. And it’s an embarrassment to any real idea of egalitarian democracy.
But others don't lack those means. Others always have financial resources and political connections, even if you banned lobbying. Of all the ways people can influence policy, this is the legal one. The other methods are not nearly as civilized.
Also, just to be clear, is the Teachers Union an embarrassment to democracy? Auto workers? Environmental groups? Or are there some forms of lobbying you're okay with as long as your ox isn't gored?
> If we define lobbying as using your financial resources and/or political connections (which others lack) to successfully influence policy
This definition is sloppy. If I buy a tacky "In this house..." sign and place it in my yard, I am using my financial resources to influence policy. Restricting that by law would be a disaster.
I think a better point could be made about the relationship BETWEEN financial resources and political connections. We should seek policies that limit the extent to which financial resources can easily buy political connections. This can be done by placing restrictions on public servants instead of restrictions on the public.
Of course, you're never going to totally remove the connection without totally destroying freedom of association.
Lobbying is the right to petition the government. What you need is a countervailing powers to limit regulatory failure of institutional capture.
Just like the original post, make a definition that mistakes a pathology of the system for its core function (also: structural inequality is not corruption).
If you are a purist and eliminate all resource-backed influence by banning pooling money, hiring researchers, and organizing campaigns to influence lawmakers because "others lack those resources," you effectively ban organized labour unions, consumer watchdogs, civil liberties organizations.
A well-organized national labor union has more leverage than a non-unionized gig worker in the EU. Asymmetry an inequity issue, not corruption. Well organized will trump over those who are not.
Corporations should be able to lobby, but they their lobbying should be limited more heavily.
I would add to limit lobbying money. Information and transparency are fundamental. But knowing that you are being screwed is not the same that avoiding corruption.
> long cooling-off periods before MEPs can become lobbyists
They already earn a public pension. They should be banned for life. Corporations know too well the internal workings of the government what allow them to corrupt it. But cooling-off periods could be a good first step towards that.
"Lobbying is a form of advocacy that legally attempts to influence policy decisions"
I think there's a problem with definitions here. How the general public, especially here in the U.S., tends to think of lobbying is essentially always in the form of monetary value or gifts. In an ideal world, this probably should be banned for fairness reasons. Smaller institutions would always have necessarily less influence and power over policy.
In theory any exchanges of monetary value or gifts should be well documented and must be disclosed. In actuality, it's much harder to document than meets the eye. There are so many ways around it that it's almost worth saying it doesn't exist (admittedly it seems especially egregious in the US but I'm no expert on how its done elsewhere).
But then, at the same time if we conclude that it's hard to document then it's hard to ban it. Its just a slippery slope all around. Institutions must be allowed to petition their government, but making sure that doesn't go too far and lend itself to corruption is difficult to enforce.
So that is likely where the author and the rest of us lead to the conclusion that the eventual result of lobbying as its implemented in essentially everywhere in the world is corruption.
The alternative is that paid government officials and government/EU research institutions supply their research results to lawmakers and refuse to read gray papers from corporations or big civil influence groups. That's all well and good as part of the mix, but on its own, a very narrow viewpoint in a complex society. (The fight over who is nominated to these research jobs becomes even more political.)
Removing possibilities of corruption from MEPs means removing their power and moving it into deeper government bureaucracy where it is harder to spot. Now you have non-elected people who work whole their life in government using more power.
The things about unelected career bureaucrats is that they usually have no legal mechanism for directly benefiting from the outcome of their policy suggestions. They can't even accept lunch from outside groups without facing disciplinary action. I would prefer those people have the power of opinion rather than someone who benefits directly or has a perverse incentive to accept "campaign money" in order to further a change in law.
I don’t disagree with the proposals you suggest, but all that proves is the central point you’re trying to disprove: lobbying, in its current guise, is legalised corruption.
I would usually agree with this kind of reasoning. Yes there is good things too... But also too much abuse that clearly don't go in the interest of the people... So to me yes... It is corruption
As others have already stated, lobbying solves a problem that doesn’t need to exist. It’s absolutely corrupt when you fix a problem with more problems.
If I call my local representative on the phone, or email them, that's lobbying. Am I not allowed to contact those I've elected to represent me?
Now, if you mean I shouldn't be allowed to take my representative on a Caribbean vacation, then we're agreed, because bribery is (or should be) illegal. And yes, I'm including many forms of campaign donation as "bribery".
What do you mean "a problem that doesn't need to exist"? What's the specific problem you are thinking of?
Trade and especially the shared European market required industry input which you might call lobbying. Regulations had to be homogenized to create a level playing field. To attack what matters European law makers needed lobby input. This happens all the time on a smaller scale with trade agreements. Think of the famous chlorine-washed chicken in the US situation. If a country prohibits this their chicken industry might want a for-export exemption when a trade deal with the US is made.
You also have lobbying that could be seen as genuinely good. Insurance companies lobbied for a lot of car safety standards and fire safety standards. (That said I'm libertarian enough that I don't actually see enforcement of standards that protect the occupant by law as positive but most people do)
> Current problems with EU lobbying: Corporate lobbying is over 60% of registered lobby spending.
Ah yes, Europe, famously friendly to business interests. Hence so many large multinational influential corporations domiciled in Europe and being started every day
> Basic internet response to everything is that when something essential involves something bad, we should forget the nuance and use slogans "X is BAD".
> All interest groups should have the ability to talk to lawmakers and present their viewpoints.
"All" is carrying a lot ow weight here. Should we publicly fund interest groups so they can go to Washington? How big or small does the group need to be? Are not I, alone, an interest group?
No. No more lobbying. What we need is a more direct democracy.
or we ban lobbying _and_ we force transparency on meetings, finances and all these problems solve themselves when we investigate them and they're found guilty of corruption.
> Lobbying is not corruption.
Cool story, lobbying is corruption.
>All interest groups should have the ability to talk to lawmakers and present their viewpoints.
Me accidentally paying for a 3 star restaurant for an MEP isn't "talking" to lawmakers. It's buying them off. Total can do it 20 times every day. You can't.
Not sure where in Europe the author lives, but in Germany we absolutely have lobbying, "donations", "connections" and politicians meandering between corporations and public offices that are meant to regulate the same corporations, all without any consequences
yes and bribing politicians was kind of legal in germany till 2024, yes two years ago!
They even bragged till the 90s with how much money the got from industry because it meant they had a better reputation industriewise
edit:: honestly germany is maybe one of the most corrupt countrys in the world because it was not only legal but best practice to work with the professional advise of the industry.
Conflating two things. Actually lobbying is the act of trying to persuade by meeting with a representative. Campaign contributions are also a way of persuading but are separate.
I say this because you could make monetary contributions illegal and lobbying would still be legal and ethical. We talk about campaign contributions as a separate issue and they have been treated in the courts separately.
I agree that putting strict limits on campaign finance is an important battle that is still ahead of us.
Campaign finance is [currently] corrupt. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
100%. Experts need to talk to politicians who don't understand the issue in order to make them understand and make better laws. If we banned anyone from trying to talk to a politician ("lobbying") we would get enormously stupid laws all the time.
Its too simplistic to think that the only form of political signaling that should happen is ... one person one vote as a basis for a mandate to represent peoples interests. Its easy to see how that can lead to a tyranny of the majority situation. There does need to be a path for influence for those with special interests in an area to influence decisions also. I think the arguments usually come down to which types of special interests give which types of standing on an issue.. if we want to say a business working in an industry shouldn't lobby then do we also say that a local environmental group should have a say about some area they are experts on also.. Some things are also put up for general referendum even when they outweightedly affect only a small group.. I think a lot of places had made progress towords finding this balance of steakholder representation.. but now were just slipping back to creptocracy and tyranny eveywhere and forgetting it all.
It's crazy that we need this article. It's just bribery with a single extra step. I never understood how everyone thought this was normal while growing up.
It is normal, at least it's how pretty much all human societies and governments have worked in practice forever. Public education and propaganda have left most of us with the impression that the system is/should be much better and cleaner than it is in practice, because government-issued schoolbooks usually don't spend a lot of time criticizing current government practice.
The man on the street may not understand the problems of companies that manufacture components for e.g. airliners. Those industries probably do need to be able to communicate what's affecting them and the government probably does need to at least consider such things in the overall plan. The question might be: how much do we need to consider it. e.g. Big tobacco - should we care if they die out completely?
Us little guys probably want to hear the contents of those meetings so we can check that they do make sense. Private influencing is dangerous.
We also don't want people going from the Ministry of Defence or the Army straight into working for a defence company - that should be illegal and yet it happens a lot here in the UK.
Civil servants and politicians should get a comfortable pension and be unemployable for 3 years after their term.
The German left party has the stand that billionaires shouldn't exist. At first I thought this is a bit far fetched. But nowadays I think the sentence should go billionaires shouldn't exist in a democracy. Because obviously money is power, for example through lobbying. And these people accumulated a lot of power, which is completely undemocratic.
The ability for a constituent to talk to their elected official about an issue important to them is lobbying. It is the foundation of democracy. It is not corruption.
Contributing to campaigns seems fine. In the end the choice remains in the hands of voters. Politicians with no ties to anything will just go the populist path anyway, which is often worse.
I would take public lobbying anyday over outlawing it like where I live and it being restricted to people who have enough money to do it behind closed doors.
I would take the complete removal of meat-based politicians replaced with open-source AI with transparent training, weights, and a window into its decision/reasoning process open to the public at all times.
Voting for amendments will be implemented as pull requests :)
I would rather have the ability to do it rather than not on pure ideological grounds,furthermore not banning it incentivises transparency, you can see more of where the money is coming from for example in US democrats are funded by more aggregate donors.
Ah, yes, transparency. "I received 250000€ from Renault-Nissan. No particular reason no. They just really like me. We talked. Also please don't pay attention to my upcoming votes and law proposals".
Lobbying is corruption, and it's also pay to play. Noone gets anything good out of it.
Calling it corruption and outlawing it doesn't stop the power of money and elite circles, it rather prevents small aggregate firms from doing it and yes I would rather know if they received such donation from renault for same reason I would want to know if a climate study is funded by oil corp.
This article doesn’t make sense. There’s tons of lobbying in the EU. For example in the Netherlands the culture is very focused on consensus with the public including engaging with industry.
Anyone who is an expert in their field knows that the government is completely clueless and ineffective when it comes to regulating what you do. That’s normal and fine, nobody can be an expert in every situation of every field, including regulators
When experts give feedback to the government, that’s lobbying.
Its interesting to see this comment about a blog article that conflates lobbying with campaign donations and super PACS. Lobbyists certainly make donations - as do many entities - but that isn't what makes them lobbyists.
Who are "they", you mean one commenter you assume is European?
You are right that at the beginning of the 20th century, there was still a lack of democratic structures, in Europe, as well as in the United States of America, where the 19th amendment was introduced in 1920 and the Voting Right Act in 1965.
One nuance I don’t see expressed in TFP is that lobbyists are also knowledge experts, and their input can guide legislation positively. Sometimes, this expertise is too expensive for the government to otherwise obtain.
No, they're an advocacy group, and people like you are useful idiots giving lobbyists an excuse every single time. "Oh but look, if you ban us, you also ban the 'don't kill puppies' group! Wouldn't that be terrible?"
MADD does not pay politicians. MADD does not bring politicians gifts. MADD does not invite them to an expensive restaurant for three hours of one on one. MADD does not do any of the things a lobbyist does that is, for all intents and purposes, corruption.
So you know what ? Yeah, let's silence the don't kill puppies group, if it means that the leeches at the european commission also don't get their ways. "oh but then it will be done secretly" good that means it's officially corruption and we can jail everyone involved.
If I had an opinion on an issue but no dog in the fight; and if I were to explain my opinion to politicians in the hope they might learn from or even share it -- I may well be "lobbying", but I don't believe I'd be corrupt.
Well the problem is that access to politicians (who are supposed to represent you) is almost entirely through lobbyism. If you want anything, you can't afford it - and you definitely can't afford to go against existing lobbyists. It becomes corruption when only certain people have access to a democratic mechanism. It doesn't help that in the US, corporations are people and cash is their speech and you can't do or say anything about it because that would be treasonous.
That’s not what lobbying is, though. If have “no dog in the fight”, you are unlikely to try to influence a politician any which way. Lobbyists appear because someone with money is willing to pay for the lobbyist to apply their talents, and why would they if they had no “dog in the fight”?
Any discussion that is at least slightly explicitly political (as opposed to everything, which is at least implicitly political) is liable to be removed by the mods. It's up to whether they see it and whether it offends their sensibilities in the moment.
Lobbying is teriboe and the explanation cited is good for those unfamiliar.
Also, political ads in the U.S. have become so obnoxious. I don’t know how it is elsewhere.
Ads in the U.S. are personal attacks at the opponents character or lies about them. There is currently an ad about how an opposing politician supports sex change surgery without parent consent. Nothing is believable about the ad - yet somehow it’s not slander or libel.
There are typically two words for every act in English - the positive and negative spin (bribery, lobbying). Lobbying is lobbying because the elites consider it to be within the bounds of fair play. In some sense it isn't bribery because bribery is the act but when it is illegal.
And although lobbying is generally bad public lobbying is a much healthier equilibrium than what a lot of countries do - everyone playing pretend that the government officials are acting out of some sense of noblesse oblige and there aren't powerful interest groups. Humans don't work that way, they've never worked that way and the whole idea that they might is quite likely a propaganda campaign by some very ugly people who would never be allowed to hold power if there was any level of public debate on what they were doing.
There is a huge issue here that alternative approaches must address - if wealthy, powerful people can't get what they want within the system then they'll destabilise the system until they can. The poor and powerless have, over the millennia, proven far too disorganised and unprincipled to stop the wealthy and powerful. It is almost always factional conflicts between wealthy, powerful people that move the status quo around.
It is important that you never look beyond your own borders. Solving every issue from scratch instead of replicating systems that already work elsewhere is great. Is that what you are saying in the context of the article?
Lobbying is corruption.
That is a fair statement.
Of course, the dictionary definition of lobbying is by no means corruption. But it is the thing most easily grafted onto corruption.
Drugs can also function as “medicine.” In the same way, lobbying can “function.” But drugs, like corruption, make things prone to decay.
The beginning of lobbying was very good. Cocaine, too, was very good at the beginning.
The fact that a means can perform a legitimate function does not mean that the possibility of its abuse and its harmful consequences disappear.
Lobbying is, in particular, centered on the asymmetry by which groups with money and organizational power can gain access to policymakers.
So what is the problem? Decisions that are “legal” but morally bad have been produced. Through legal lobbying, a minority group can exert excessive influence over policymaking and cause harm to the majority.
Policymaking does not reflect the interests of various citizens fairly at all.
Lobbying is an essential part of the EU. It’s a regulated activity, with its whole processes. I have no idea why the author believes it’s something Europeans aren’t familiar with
I want to push back against that. Lobbying is not corruption. All interest groups should have the ability to talk to lawmakers and present their viewpoints. That is essential for good lawmaking. It should be open (and is in the EU) with lobby registers (author uses lobbying as a synonym for corporate lobbying, confusing the issues).
Lobbying easily involves corruption, and that has to be constantly worked against (Qatargate, Cash for Amendments in 2011) for example. Hiring EU lawmakers after they leave the office should have long cooldown limits.
Current problems with EU lobbying: Corporate lobbying is over 60% of registered lobby spending. Civil society interest groups, consumer groups, and labor unions have less money. Revolving doors, astroturfing from foreigin states and corporations, and too much reliance on self-declaration in transparency register.
These can be all solved: mandatory meeting disclosures, declaration of private interests and assets, MEPs should be banned on paid lobbying activities, and long cooling-off periods before MEPs can become lobbyists, independent refinforcement, public annex for all directives and regulation listing interest groups involved.
People should care and make these political issues.
Also, just to be clear, is the Teachers Union an embarrassment to democracy? Auto workers? Environmental groups? Or are there some forms of lobbying you're okay with as long as your ox isn't gored?
This definition is sloppy. If I buy a tacky "In this house..." sign and place it in my yard, I am using my financial resources to influence policy. Restricting that by law would be a disaster.
I think a better point could be made about the relationship BETWEEN financial resources and political connections. We should seek policies that limit the extent to which financial resources can easily buy political connections. This can be done by placing restrictions on public servants instead of restrictions on the public.
Of course, you're never going to totally remove the connection without totally destroying freedom of association.
I might just trust a random redditor more...
Just like the original post, make a definition that mistakes a pathology of the system for its core function (also: structural inequality is not corruption).
If you are a purist and eliminate all resource-backed influence by banning pooling money, hiring researchers, and organizing campaigns to influence lawmakers because "others lack those resources," you effectively ban organized labour unions, consumer watchdogs, civil liberties organizations. A well-organized national labor union has more leverage than a non-unionized gig worker in the EU. Asymmetry an inequity issue, not corruption. Well organized will trump over those who are not.
Corporations should be able to lobby, but they their lobbying should be limited more heavily.
> long cooling-off periods before MEPs can become lobbyists
They already earn a public pension. They should be banned for life. Corporations know too well the internal workings of the government what allow them to corrupt it. But cooling-off periods could be a good first step towards that.
I think there's a problem with definitions here. How the general public, especially here in the U.S., tends to think of lobbying is essentially always in the form of monetary value or gifts. In an ideal world, this probably should be banned for fairness reasons. Smaller institutions would always have necessarily less influence and power over policy.
In theory any exchanges of monetary value or gifts should be well documented and must be disclosed. In actuality, it's much harder to document than meets the eye. There are so many ways around it that it's almost worth saying it doesn't exist (admittedly it seems especially egregious in the US but I'm no expert on how its done elsewhere).
But then, at the same time if we conclude that it's hard to document then it's hard to ban it. Its just a slippery slope all around. Institutions must be allowed to petition their government, but making sure that doesn't go too far and lend itself to corruption is difficult to enforce.
So that is likely where the author and the rest of us lead to the conclusion that the eventual result of lobbying as its implemented in essentially everywhere in the world is corruption.
Removing possibilities of corruption from MEPs means removing their power and moving it into deeper government bureaucracy where it is harder to spot. Now you have non-elected people who work whole their life in government using more power.
No politician or party is willing to listen to me since I'm not a 'paying customer'.
Now, if you mean I shouldn't be allowed to take my representative on a Caribbean vacation, then we're agreed, because bribery is (or should be) illegal. And yes, I'm including many forms of campaign donation as "bribery".
Trade and especially the shared European market required industry input which you might call lobbying. Regulations had to be homogenized to create a level playing field. To attack what matters European law makers needed lobby input. This happens all the time on a smaller scale with trade agreements. Think of the famous chlorine-washed chicken in the US situation. If a country prohibits this their chicken industry might want a for-export exemption when a trade deal with the US is made.
You also have lobbying that could be seen as genuinely good. Insurance companies lobbied for a lot of car safety standards and fire safety standards. (That said I'm libertarian enough that I don't actually see enforcement of standards that protect the occupant by law as positive but most people do)
Ah yes, Europe, famously friendly to business interests. Hence so many large multinational influential corporations domiciled in Europe and being started every day
"GOTO considered harmful" :)
Why can’t they pick up the phone or write a letter like the rest of us?
"All" is carrying a lot ow weight here. Should we publicly fund interest groups so they can go to Washington? How big or small does the group need to be? Are not I, alone, an interest group?
No. No more lobbying. What we need is a more direct democracy.
> Lobbying is not corruption.
Cool story, lobbying is corruption.
>All interest groups should have the ability to talk to lawmakers and present their viewpoints.
Me accidentally paying for a 3 star restaurant for an MEP isn't "talking" to lawmakers. It's buying them off. Total can do it 20 times every day. You can't.
Buying the house that a Supreme Court Justice's mother lives in, that's corruption.
These kind of down putting responses make everyone worse.
> paying for a 3 star restaurant for an MEP
Like I said, that's corruption in lobbying, not lobbying. Lobbying is the ability to talk to government officials.
this one is new https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__108e.html
edit:: honestly germany is maybe one of the most corrupt countrys in the world because it was not only legal but best practice to work with the professional advise of the industry.
I say this because you could make monetary contributions illegal and lobbying would still be legal and ethical. We talk about campaign contributions as a separate issue and they have been treated in the courts separately.
I agree that putting strict limits on campaign finance is an important battle that is still ahead of us.
Campaign finance is [currently] corrupt. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Us little guys probably want to hear the contents of those meetings so we can check that they do make sense. Private influencing is dangerous.
We also don't want people going from the Ministry of Defence or the Army straight into working for a defence company - that should be illegal and yet it happens a lot here in the UK.
Civil servants and politicians should get a comfortable pension and be unemployable for 3 years after their term.
Voting for amendments will be implemented as pull requests :)
Do you honestly expect a handful of humans to make decisions for billions?
Or do you expect a million bureaucrats to coordinate efficiently and fairly?
Lobbying is corruption, and it's also pay to play. Noone gets anything good out of it.
Anyone who is an expert in their field knows that the government is completely clueless and ineffective when it comes to regulating what you do. That’s normal and fine, nobody can be an expert in every situation of every field, including regulators
When experts give feedback to the government, that’s lobbying.
MADD [1] is a lobby group but they don’t have influence by donating billions of dollars.
Its makes much more sense to just reverse the changes in lobby rules (Citizens United) than to “ban” lobbying.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Drunk_Driving
MADD does not pay politicians. MADD does not bring politicians gifts. MADD does not invite them to an expensive restaurant for three hours of one on one. MADD does not do any of the things a lobbyist does that is, for all intents and purposes, corruption.
So you know what ? Yeah, let's silence the don't kill puppies group, if it means that the leeches at the european commission also don't get their ways. "oh but then it will be done secretly" good that means it's officially corruption and we can jail everyone involved.
It is illegal under U.S. federal law for corporations to give money to campaigns.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50029630
Also, political ads in the U.S. have become so obnoxious. I don’t know how it is elsewhere.
Ads in the U.S. are personal attacks at the opponents character or lies about them. There is currently an ad about how an opposing politician supports sex change surgery without parent consent. Nothing is believable about the ad - yet somehow it’s not slander or libel.
This is the ad. https://youtu.be/WFISHnLCmms
And although lobbying is generally bad public lobbying is a much healthier equilibrium than what a lot of countries do - everyone playing pretend that the government officials are acting out of some sense of noblesse oblige and there aren't powerful interest groups. Humans don't work that way, they've never worked that way and the whole idea that they might is quite likely a propaganda campaign by some very ugly people who would never be allowed to hold power if there was any level of public debate on what they were doing.
There is a huge issue here that alternative approaches must address - if wealthy, powerful people can't get what they want within the system then they'll destabilise the system until they can. The poor and powerless have, over the millennia, proven far too disorganised and unprincipled to stop the wealthy and powerful. It is almost always factional conflicts between wealthy, powerful people that move the status quo around.
Policymaking does not reflect the interests of various citizens fairly at all.
But it is a bribe. It is not the fault of the people if legislation has been undermined in democracies to suit the rich.
This is a problem pretty much all democracies have, to varying extent.