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Corporate Lobbying

July 21, 2020 | yalepress | Business , Political Science

Lee Drutman —

Over the past four decades, large corporations have learned to play the Washington game. Companies now devote massive resources to politics, and their large-scale involvement increasingly redirects and constricts the capacities of the political system. The consequence is a democracy that is increasingly unable to tackle large-scale problems, and a political economy that too often rewards lobbying over innovation.

Prior to the 1970s, few corporations had their own lobbyists, and the trade associations that did represent business demonstrated nothing close to the scope and sophistication of modern lobbying. In the 1960s and the early 1970s, when Congress passed a series of new social regulations to address a range of environmental and consumer safety concerns, the business community lacked both the political will and the political capacity to stop it. These new regulations, combined with the declining economy, awoke the sleeping political giant of American business. Hundreds of companies hired lobbyists for the first time in the mid-1970s, and corporate managers began paying attention to politics much more than they ever did before.

When corporations first became politically engaged in the 1970s, their approach to lobbying was largely reactive. They were trying to stop the continued advancement of the regulatory state. They were fighting a proposed consumer protection agency, trying to stop labor-law reform, and responding to a general sense that the values of free enterprise had been forgotten and government regulation was going to destroy the economy. They also lobbied as a community. Facing a common enemy (government and labor), they hung together so they wouldn’t hang separately. But as the labor movement weakened and government became much more pro-industry, companies continued to invest in politics, becoming more comfortable and more aggressive. Rather than seeing government as a threat, they started looking to government as a potential source of profits and assistance. As companies devoted more resources to their own lobbying efforts, they increasingly sought out their own narrow interests. As corporate lobbying investments have expanded, they have become more particularistic and more proactive. They have also become more pervasive, driven by the growing competitiveness of the process to become more aggressive.

External events may drive initial corporate investments in Washington. But once companies begin lobbying, that lobbying has its own internal momentum. Corporate managers begin to pay more attention to politics, and in so doing they see more reasons why they should be politically active. They develop a comfort and a confidence in being politically engaged. And once a company pays some fixed start-up costs, the marginal costs of additional political activity decline. Lobbyists find new issues, companies get drawn into new battles, and new coalitions and networks emerge. Managers see value in political engagement they did not see before. Lobbying is sticky.

Lobbyists drive this process. They teach companies to see the value in political activity. They also benefit from an information asymmetry that allows them to highlight information, issues, and advocacy strategies that can collectively make the strongest case for continued and expanded political engagement. Because corporate managers depend on lobbyists for both their political information and strategic advice, lobbyists are well positioned to push companies toward increased lobbying over time.

But what effect has it all had on public policy? Social science research on political influence has found no relationship between political resources and likelihood of success. However, the lack of a direct, statistically significant correlation does not mean that there is no influence. It just means that the influence is unpredictable. The policy process is neither a vending machine nor an auction. Outcomes cannot be had for reliable prices. Policy does not go to the highest bidder. Politics is far messier and far more interesting than such simplistic models might suggest. And almost certainly, the increased competition for political outcomes has made it even more unpredictable.

Sometimes lobbying can be very influential, but its influence is contingent on so many confounding factors that it does not show up reliably in regression analysis. Yet the study of influence is a fundamental question of politics. Rather than looking for vote buying or expecting resources to correlate predictability with policy success, we must think bigger. We must understand the ways in which increases in lobbying activity shape the policy-making environment and how the changing environment may allow some types of interests to thrive more than others. The current political environment benefits large corporations for several reasons, which I will examine here.

The first reason is that the increasingly dense and competitive lobbying environment makes any major policy change very difficult. As more actors have more at stake, every attempt to change policy elicits more calls from more voices. In a political system whose many veto points already make change difficult, the proliferation of well-mobilized corporate lobbying interests, all with their own particular positions and asks, means that there are more actors with the capacity to throw more sand into the already creaky machinery of the multistage policy process. In order for any large-scale change to happen, lobbying generally must be one-sided. To the extent that large corporations benefit from the status quo, a hard-to-change status quo benefits large corporations.

But while the crowded political environment may make legislation harder to pass in general, it also makes the legislation that does pass more complicated (more side bargains). Large companies are more likely to have the resources and know-how to push for technocratic tweaks at the margins, usually out of public view. This contributes to what Steven Teles calls the “complexity and incoherence of our government.” Teles notes that this complexity and incoherence has a tendency to “make it difficult for us to understand just what that government is doing, and among the practices it most frequently hides from view is the growing tendency of public policy to redistribute resources upward to the wealthy and the organized at the expense of the poorer and less organized.” The more complicated things become, the more of an advantage it is for corporate lobbyists looking to influence the out-of-sight, hard-to-understand, but sometimes highly consequential nooks and crannies of the U.S. code.

The increasing complexity of policy also makes it more difficult for generalist and largely inexperienced government staffers to maintain an informed understanding of the rules and regulations they are in charge of writing and overseeing. They typically have neither the time to specialize nor the experience to draw on. As a result, staffers must rely more and more on the lobbyists who specialize in particular policy areas. This puts those who can afford to hire the most experienced and policy-literate lobbyists—generally large companies—at the center of the policy-making process. Increasingly, corporations are not just investing in direct lobbying but also in think tanks and academic research and op-eds and panel discussions in order to shape the intellectual environment of Washington—to make sure that certain frames and assumptions come to mind immediately and easily when policy-makers consider legislation and rules.

From  Congress edited by Benjamin Ginsberg and Kathryn Wagner Hill. Published by Yale University Press in 2020. Reproduced with permission.

Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the program on political reform at the New America Foundation and a visiting fellow at GuideStar USA. Benjamin Ginsberg  is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and chair of the Hopkins Center for Advanced Governmental Studies.  Kathryn Wagner Hill  is director of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins.

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The truth about lobbying: 10 ways big business controls government

What does a tax-avoiding, polluting, privatising corporation have to do to get its way with the British government? "We all know how it works," said David Cameron of lobbying. But do we? Lobbyists are the paid persuaders whose job it is to influence the decisions of government. Typically, they operate behind closed doors, through quiet negotiation with politicians. And the influence they enjoy is constructed very consciously, using a whole array of tactics.

Lobbyists operate in the shadows – deliberately. As one lobbyist notes: "The influence of lobbyists increases when it goes largely unnoticed by the public." But if the reasons why companies lobby are often obscured, it is always a tactical investment. Whether facing down a threat to profits from a corporate tax hike, or pushing for market opportunities – such as government privatisations – lobbying has become another way of making money.

Here are the 10 key steps that lobbying businesses will follow to bend government to their will.

1. Control the ground

Lobbyists succeed by owning the terms of debate, steering conversations away from those they can't win and on to those they can. If a public discussion on a company's environmental impact is unwelcome, lobbyists will push instead to have a debate with politicians and the media on the hypothetical economic benefits of their ambitions. Once this narrowly framed conversation becomes dominant, dissenting voices will appear marginal and irrelevant.

Everybody's doing it, including lobbyists for fracking and nuclear power, public sector reform and bank regulation. It doesn't matter if the new frame relies on fabrication. The referendum on an alternative voting system was not, as anticipated, so much a conversation about the merits of first past the post. No2AV was "very quick off the mark" to make it about cost to the public purse , explains Dylan Sharpe, of the No camp's TaxPayers' Alliance. They led with the claim that switching to AV would deny troops badly needed equipment and sick babies incubators. The Yes camp lost the vote two to one.

2. Spin the media

The trick is in knowing when to use the press and when to avoid it. The more noise there is, the less control lobbyists have. As a way of talking to government, though, the media is crucial. Messages are carefully crafted. Even if the corporate goal is pure, self-interested profit-making, it will be dressed up to appear synonymous with the wider, national interest. At the moment, that means economic growth and jobs.

Get the messaging wrong and you get fiascos such as High Speed 2 (HS2). In early 2011, lobbyist James Bethell of Westbourne Communications was parachuted in to rescue the £43bn project, which had initially been sold by ministers on the marginal benefits to a few commuters. Westbourne reframed the debate to make it about jobs and economic growth. The new messaging focused on a narrative that pitted wealthy people in the Chilterns worried about their hunting rights against the economic benefits to the north. The strategy was "posh people standing in the way of working-class people getting jobs," said Bethell. "Their lawns or our jobs," shouted the ad campaign.

Private healthcare also regrouped after the wrong messages went public. As Andrew Lansley embarked on his radical reforms of the NHS, private hospitals and outsourcing firms were talking to investors about the "clear opportunities" to profit from the changes. After comments by Mark Britnell, the head of health at accountancy giants KPMG giants and a former adviser of David Cameron, hit the headlines in May 2011 – Britnell told an investors' conference that "the NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years" – the industry got a grip. Lobby group The NHS Partners Network moved quickly to get everyone back on-message and singing from "common hymn sheets" , as its chief lobbyist David Worskett explained. The reforms were about the survival of the NHS in straitened times. Just nobody mention the bumper profits.

3. Engineer a following

It doesn't help if a corporation is the only one making the case to government. That looks like special pleading. What is needed is a critical mass of voices singing to its tune. This can be engineered.

The forte of lobbying firm Westbourne is in mobilising voices behind its clients . Thirty economists, for example, signed a letter to the FT in 2011 in support of HS2; 100 businesses endorsed another published in the Daily Telegraph.

Westbourne was also hired in 2011 to lobby against the top rate of tax, although who was behind its "50p tax campaign" remains a mystery. Ahead of the chancellor's annual Budget announcement in early 2012, letters appeared in the press demanding he scrap it. The FT's was signed by 20 economists. The Telegraph's by the bosses of 573 SMEs, described as the "bedrock" of British industry. A quick glance, though, revealed it included five managers from the Switzerland-based banking giant Credit Suisse. The paper's commentary noted the alarm this new call from "ordinary British business" would cause inside government.

4. Buy in credibility

Corporations are one of the least credible sources of information for the public. What they need, therefore, are authentic, seemingly independent people to carry their message for them.

One nuclear lobbyist admitted it spread messages "via third-party opinion because the public would be suspicious if we started ramming pro-nuclear messages down their throats" . That's it in a nutshell.

The tobacco companies are pioneers of this technique. Their recent campaign against plain packaging has seen them fund newsagents to push the economic case against the policy and encourage trading standards officers to lobby their MPs. British American Tobacco also currently funds the Common Sense Alliance , which is fronted by two ex-policemen and campaigns against "irrational" regulation. Philip Morris is similarly paying an ex-Met police officer, Will O'Reilly , to front a media campaign linking plain packaging to tobacco smuggling. It is worth noting that a decade ago the tobacco giant coughed up $1.25bn to the European Commission to settle a long-running dispute over its own complicity in the illicit trade.

5. Sponsor a thinktank

"The thinktank route is a very good one," said ex-minister Patricia Hewitt to undercover reporters seeking lobbying advice. Some thinktanks will provide companies with a lobbying package: a media-friendly report, a Westminster event, ear-time with politicians. "The exact same services that a lobbying agency would provide," says one lobbyist. "They're just more expensive."

In the mid-noughties, a lobbyist for Standard Life Healthcare, now part of PruHealth, worried about how they could get more people to buy private cover without being seen to undermine the NHS. The solution: "Get some of the thinktanks to say it, so it's not just us calling for reform, it's outside commentators ... it does need others to help us take the debate forward." The insurers did turn to thinktanks, including free-market advocates Reform. This has lobbied for more "insurance-based private funding" in the health service. Prudential, the insurance giant behind PruHealth, was Reform's most generous sponsor in 2012, investing £67,500 in the thinktank .

The BBC has also come under repeated recent criticism for inviting commentators from the leading neo-liberal thinktank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), to talk about its opposition to the plain packaging of cigarettes, without disclosing the Institute's tobacco funding. Although the IEA does not disclose who funds it, BAT concedes it has recently paid the IEA £30,000, with more to come this year. Leaked documents from Philip Morris also reveal the thinktank is one of its "media messengers" in its anti- plain-packaging campaign.

6. Consult your critics

Companies faced with a development that has drawn the ire of a local community will often engage lobbyists to run a public consultation exercise. Again, not as benign as it sounds. "Businesses have to be able to predict risk and gain intelligence on potential problems," says ex-Tesco lobbyist Bernard Hughes. "The army used to call it reconnaissance; we call it consultation."

For some in the business, community consultation – anything from running focus groups, exhibitions, planning exercises and public meetings – is a means of flushing out opposition and providing a managed channel through which would-be opponents can voice concerns. Opportunities to influence the outcome, whether it is preventing an out-of-town supermarket or protecting local health services, are almost always nil.

Residents in Barne Barton in Plymouth were asked in 2011 what they thought about a 95-metre, PFI-financed incinerator being sited in their neighbourhood, just 62 metres from the nearest house. Although more than 5,000 people objected, the waste company's planning application was waved through. That's community consultation.

7. Neutralise the opposition

Lobbyists see their battles with opposition activists as "guerilla warfare". They want government to listen to their message, but ignore counter arguments coming from campaigners, such as environmentalists, who have long been the bane of commercial lobbyists. So, they need to deal with the "antis".

Lobbyists have developed a sliding scale of tactics to neutralise such a threat. Monitoring of opposition groups is common: one lobbyist from agency Edelman talks of the need for "360-degree monitoring" of the internet, complete with online "listening posts ... so they can pick up the first warning signals" of activist activity. "The person making a lot of noise is probably not the influential one, you've got to find the influential one," he says. Rebuttal campaigns are frequently employed: "exhausting, but crucial," says Westbourne.

Lobbyists have also long employed divide-and-rule tactics. One Shell strategy proposed to "differentiate interest groups into friends and foes", building relationships with the former, while making it "more difficult for hardcore campaigners to sustain their campaigns". Philip Morris's covert 10-year strategy, codenamed Project Sunrise , intended to "drive a wedge between various anti groups" and "position antis as extremists".

Then there are the more serious activities used primarily when big-money commercial interests are threatened, such as the infiltration of opposition groups, otherwise known as spying. Household names such as Shell, BAE Systems and Nestlé have all been exposed for spying on their critics. Wikileaks' Global Intelligence Files revealed that groups such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International and animal rights organisation Peta were all monitored by global intelligence company Stratfor, once described as a "shadow CIA".

8. Control the web

Today's world is a digital democracy, say lobbyists. Gone are the old certainties of how decisions were made "by having lunch with an MP, or taking a journalist out," laments one. It presents a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.

One key way to control information online is to flood the web with positive information, which is not as benign as it sounds. Lobbying agencies create phoney blogs for clients and press releases that no journalist will read – all positive content that fools search engines into pushing the dummy content above the negative, driving the output of critics down Google rankings. Relying on the fact that few of us regularly click beyond the first page of search results, lobbyists make negative content "disappear".

Another means of restricting access to information is the doctoring of Wikipedia, "a ridiculous organisation," in veteran lobbyist Tim Bell's words. Accounts associated with his firm, Bell Pottinger, have been caught scrubbing Wikipedia profiles of arms manufacturers, financial firms, a Russian oligarch and the founder of libel specialists Carter-Ruck. "It's important for Wikipedia to recognise we are a valuable source for accurate information," says Bell, a master at killing stories. Other edits by lobbyists range from a computer in the offices of payday lender Wonga deleting references to "usury" from its entry, to a computer registered to the American multinational Dow Chemical repeatedly attempting to remove a large section from the company's profile detailing "controversies".

9. Open the door

Without doubt, lobbyists need access to politicians. This doesn't always equate to influence, but deals can only be cooked up once in the kitchen. And access to politicians can be bought. It is not a cash deal, rather an investment is made in the relationship. Lobbyists build trust, offer help and accept favour.

The best way to shortcut the process of relationship-building is to hire politicians' friends, in the form of ex-employees or colleagues. Bill Morgan is a good example. In recent years, he's been backwards and forwards twice between Andrew Lansley's office and health-lobbying specialists MHP. Its clients had "obviously benefited" from Morgan's inside knowledge of Conservative health policy , MHP wrote. They could "look forward to continuing to be at the heart of the major policy debates".

Lobbyists are Westminster and Whitehall insiders, among them many former ministers. "You may remember me from my time as Minister of State for Transport," wrote Stephen Ladyman as he lobbied a potential government client in his new role as a paid adviser to a transport company. "I do indeed and am delighted to hear from you," replied the official. "We would be interested to hear your proposals."He had just opened the door.

10. And finally ...

There is the perception, at least, that decisions taken in government could be influenced by the reward of future employment. It's a concern that has been expressed for the best part of a century. Today, however, the number of people moving through the revolving door is off the scale.

The top rung of the Department of Health has in recent years experienced huge traffic towards the private sector. The department that sees more movement than any other, though, is still the Ministry of Defence. Since 1996, officials and military officers have taken up more than 3,500 jobs in arms and defence related companies . Two hundred and thirty-one jobs were secured in 2011/12 alone.

Government is the arms industry's biggest customer and the MoD's closeness to its suppliers is widely known. It is also gaining a reputation for its disastrously expensive contracts that deliver poor value for taxpayers and often poor performance for the military. More than one commentator has asked whether the two are connected.

A Quiet Word: Lobbying , Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain by Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell is published by The Bodley Head at £18.99.

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• Marcin Michał Wiszowaty 3  

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Lobbying, understood as a form of participation in decision-making process, involving the presentation of positions by various interest groups and other entities, using legal means – has many benefits. This is a phenomenon that has accompanied the democratic decision-making process from its beginnings. Unfortunately, lobbying in public opinion is still assessed negatively and is wrongly confused with corruption. This entry presents the basic features (advantages and disadvantages) of lobbying, its varieties, the history of attempts at legal regulation (and the reasons for the failure of these attempts), as well as elements of optimal legal regulation of lobbying.

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Essential Reading

Bitonti, A., and P. Harris, eds. 2017. Lobbying in Europe. Public affairs and the lobbying industry in 28 EU countries . London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Zetter, L. 2014. Lobbying. The art of political persuasion . Petersfield: Harriman House.

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Wiszowaty, M.M. (2021). Lobbying. In: Cremades, J., Hermida, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Contemporary Constitutionalism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31739-7_82-1

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Lobbying essay.

Lobbying refers to attempts  to influence policy decisions made by elected officials. The term originated in the political systems of the United States and United Kingdom during the 19th century when efforts to influence the votes of lawmakers were conducted  in the entrance hall (or “lobby”) of parliamentary chambers. In business, lobbying is an example of a nonmarket strategy. While market strategies involve decisions such as product  positioning  and pricing, nonmarket strategies  are actions taken by individuals, firms, or special interest groups to influence the political, regulatory, and social environments in which they operate. Some companies and industries have found that lobbying is a crucial aspect of their business, and recent studies have shown that lobbying can effectively influence policy outcomes.

Different Types Of Lobbyists

Different kinds of business actors lobby political decision makers. Individual businessmen and women, for example, can be important contacts  for elected officials. In France, leading business and political figures commonly  make informal  contacts  with each other during their studies at elite graduate schools. Later in life, business leaders can use these contacts  to voice their policy preferences to government  and administrative representatives.

Individual firms—especially large ones—can also participate  in lobbying and  public policy advocacy. Google provides a case in point: with a staff of 12 lobbyists  including  former  communications directors, speechwriters, and policy advisers of the Clinton administration, Google has built a substantial  presence in Washington.

If managers  lack the time, resources,  or contacts to influence public policy decisions themselves, they may delegate the task to an outside lobbyist. For instance,  when it made its controversial  bid to take over the U.S. petroleum company Unocal in 2005, the China National Offshore Company hired the services of the Washington-based lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer  & Feld to establish relationships  and set up meetings with lawmakers.

In some cases, individual companies may feel they have a better chance to influence policy if they lobby as part of a wider group: In this instance,  they may join professional associations. Germany, for example, has a dense network  of special interest  groups  that are organized around specific industrial sectors (such as the German Association of the Automotive Industry),  products  (including  the  Association  of Cigarette Manufacturers),  or markets (such as the Federal Association of Exporting Companies). These groups maintain  political offices in Berlin, establish  strong connections  with officials in the powerful Economics Ministry, and use these to influence policy so that it meets their members’ specific requirements.

When  attempting  to influence general laws, trade associations and individual companies may form nationwide employers’ associations. One such example is the U.S. Chamber  of Commerce,  whose 300 policy experts,  lawyers, and  communicators represent   the interests  of over three  million businesses of all sizes and sectors, hundreds of trade associations, thousands of local Chambers, and more than a hundred American Chambers of Commerce around the world. In the UK, the Confederation  of British Industry (CBI) promotes the general interests of British business by contributing to debates on over 80 policy issues.

As business  has become  increasingly  globalized, supranational   associations  have  emerged  to  represent the interests  of the business community  above the nation-state level. For example, with the increasing number of economic directives introduced by the European  Commission,  it  is estimated  that  15,000 business lobbyists are now active in Brussels. Some, such  as Business Europe  and  the  European  Roundtable  of Industrialists,  represent  private  employers at the  interprofessional  level. Others,  including  the European  Federation  of  Pharmaceutical   Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and the Committee of Professional Agricultural  Organisations  (COPA), represent the interests of specific industries.

Companies,  organizations,  and  private  citizens can lobby policy makers  in numerous  ways. More than  one  method  is frequently  used  concurrently. Lobbyists and policy makers  may meet  informally. In the United States, lobbyists can legally invite policy makers out for dinner, to concerts  and sporting events, and even on trips. For example, when Starbucks began lobbying in Washington,  it flew members of Congress to its Seattle headquarters to introduce them to the company and educate them on its strategy and the coffee industry.

Another  way of lobbying is to participate  in formal  meetings  with  policy makers.  In  some  countries, governments  establish advisory committees  to gain private-sector  input on policy issues. France, for example, has developed an extensive network of consultative organs, including the Economic and Social Council, designed to elicit advice and acquiescence from trade associations.

Companies  often  also  use  written  communications to convey a particular point of view. In this way, Microsoft found letter-writing campaigns to be a useful form of advocacy when several states sued it for anticompetitive   behavior.  Lobbyists  are  now  more than ever using the media to articulate their interests and influence public opinion so that it is sympathetic with their  causes. The internet  also provides  lobby groups with a powerful tool for attracting  the attention  of specific target  audiences  and increasing  the visibility of their specific concerns.

The Influence Of Lobby Groups

Not  all lobby groups  have the  same influence  over policy makers; their ability to shape policy outcomes depends on both internal and external factors. Internally, lobby-group influence depends on financial resources, knowledge, and membership structures. In essence, groups are better placed to influence policy makers if they have large financial resources to fund their  lobbying  activities,  if they  possess  the  often highly technical  expertise  required  by government officials to make policy, and if they possess a homogenous  membership  whose similar interests  make it easier to reach common policy positions.

A major external  factor affecting the influence of lobby groups is the structure  of the political system in which they operate.  In so-called corporatist  systems (such as Austria, Germany, and Sweden), interest groups are guaranteed  a voice in systems of institutionalized  policy making: the representatives  of employer and employee organizations  are invited to participate in negotiations with state officials to reach agreements on policy issues and gain responsibilities for securing compliance with decisions.

Other  countries  (such as the United States or the United Kingdom) do not have such institutionalized lobbying practices. In these pluralist systems, power is  more  widely distributed   among  many  autonomous lobby groups, each representing  the social and economic  forces in the wider society. These groups compete  against each other  to gain the attention  of policy makers. The greater the organized opposition to a lobby group’s policy demands,  the  weaker its ability to shape policy outcomes to the advantage of its members.

The acceptance of lobbying varies across countries. In the United States and the United Kingdom, lobbying has long tended  to be considered  as a legitimate aspect of the political process. In continental  European countries,  however, seeking to influence policy makers  tends  to generate  largely negative connotations: Lobbying is seen as an opaque practice, giving an unfair advantage to those who can afford to carry it out. In response  to these concerns,  the European Commission  launched  an initiative in 2005 to make lobbying in Brussels more transparent.

Bibliography:   

• Gary Andres,  Lobbying  Reconsidered: Under  the  Influence  (Pearson/Longman,  2009);
• Council of Europe, Corruption and Democracy: Political Finances, Conflicts of Interest, Lobbying, Justice (Council of Europe, 2008);
• Andreas Dürr and Dirk de Bièvre, “The Question of Interest Group Influence,” Journal of Public Policy (v.27/1, 2007);
• Justin Greenwood,  Interest  Representation  in  the European Union (Palgrave Macmillan,  2007);
• Scott Kennedy, The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2008);
• Christine Mahoney, Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union (Georgetown University Press, 2008);
• Alan L. Moss, Selling Out America’s Democracy: How Lobbyists, Special Interests, and Campaign Financing Undermine the Will of the People (Praeger, 2008);
• Anthony Nownes, Pressure and Power: Organized Interest in American Politics (Houghton Mifflin, 2001);
• Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Libby Cantrill,  and Patricia Wu, Lobbying (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2007);
• Cornelia Woll, Firm Interests: How Governments Shape Business Lobbying on Global Trade, Cornell Studies in Political Economy (Cornell University Press, 2008).

This example Lobbying Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

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Why Companies Need to Lobby for Climate Policy

Organizations that want to make real progress on sustainability need to build a business case for climate lobbying.

• Climate Change
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Sustainability

MIT SMR/Joshua Sukoff/Unsplash

In recent years, thousands of companies worldwide have made net-zero commitments to meet the urgent challenge of climate change. Many are investing in product and business model innovation or in supplier engagement programs to drive down emissions. But all too often, one of the most powerful tools a company has at its disposal is ignored by corporate leaders who are serious about sustainability: lobbying.

The huge social and environmental challenges we face will not be solved without effective public policy — and business has an indispensable role to play in making that happen. As Alberto Alemanno, founder of The Good Lobby, has argued , “The misalignment between what companies say and lobby for” is possibly the major factor preventing advances on major societal issues. Harnessing the political power of the thousands of companies that have committed to reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions to lobby for stronger climate policies has the potential to be transformative.

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A CEO or CFO might agree in principle that their company should be lobbying for climate action, but allocating serious resources to the effort is where it gets tough. In 2022 alone, the oil and gas industry spent an estimated $124 million on lobbying the U.S. federal government , resulting in, for example, concessions to the industry in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. While exact figures aren’t available, companies in other sectors with much to gain from a successful transition to net zero aren’t investing anywhere near that kind of money in pro-climate action lobbying.

Why not? The World Resources Institute (WRI) has identified seven barriers to business leadership on climate policy, some of which are internal (related to organizational structure or technical capacity, for example) while others are external (the role of trade associations or the threat of a political backlash, for example). During a recent workshop with leaders from companies that already invest in some advocacy on sustainability issues, the Volans team that I’m part of asked participants to rank the barriers based on their experiences. The one that most companies ranked first was “competing priorities.” Here’s WRI’s explanation of the problem:

Climate change is not a top advocacy priority for most companies. Many companies see climate policy as “not in our lane” if they are not major emitters, energy-intensive users, or clean energy producers.

About the Author

Richard Roberts is inquiry lead at Volans, a think tank and advisory firm focused on sustainability and innovation. He works as a strategic adviser and leads Volans’ work on corporate political activity, which focuses on helping sustainable companies use their political influence responsibly and effectively.

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Business Lobbying Essay

The topic – It is usually better to include clarity around the topic as it allows a definite flow of ideas.

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The lobby, in fact , are definitely the attempts made by certain business groups to influence the direction of legislative coverage of a country/state in such a fashion so as to bring benefits to them and safeguard their particular interests. The aim can be achieved by influencing legislators, members of Parliament and create a lobby to bring out and get the favourable regulations passed. A lobbyist could possibly be an individual or possibly a group of individuals working for all their employer or perhaps as a realtor to these people.

Such people can be leaders of work unions, business representatives, lawmakers, bureaucrats, and leading advocates, exercising effect in legal circles or perhaps other private interest teams. India does not have any clear regulation for or perhaps against lobbying, especially when it is about by the name of lobbying. But it can be not legal either. Lobbying has now become a well-established services industry, though known simply by different labels such as pr, external affairs managers, environment management specialists, etc . Numerous established organizations, federations, confederations of market & commerce, etc work as lobbyists to get policies framed in favour of corporates.

Dilip Cherian, a known lobbyist and creator of Ideal Relations, claims that lobbying functions as a bridge between companies as well as the government. He speaks in no eclectic tone, “We help our clients understand the plan environment of the country. We help them determine key players and their positions in the policy area. The key players could be political celebrations, bureaucrats, the central government, panchayat, etc . ” The lobbying sector has been placing its demand for clear and transparent laws and regulations in countries like India where simply no clarity around the issue exists. So , it truly is high time that India decide on making lobbying either legal or illegal simply by framing a detailed and very clear policy.

When you speak in preference of the topic i. e. lobbying should be produced legal in India, the key points could possibly be: 1 . Anytime there have been a few big advances in coverage framing in India favouring corporates in a single or the additional, the issue of the lobby has always come up. If it was Enron – the Dabhol power project in Maharshtra, international investment in corporate sector, big protection purchases, system development now foreign immediate investment (FDI) in variable brand full, all had been shadowed by issue of lobbying. Anyone or the business lobbying for many favour simply cannot do so till the government, legal bodies – Parliament or state legislatures – have never considered a few path to move on. Lobbying might only smoothen the process.

2 . Various chambers of business such as FICCI and CII, National Association of Software and Services Companies, and private organizations like Vaishnavi Corporate Marketing communications owned by Niira Radia and DTA Associates handled by Deepak Talwar will be among top lobby teams. These agencies, however , preserve that they are not really lobby organizations and work to workout influence to engage with the authorities on the insurance plan issues. When so much of lobbying is done by the signed up and legal firms and companies in the guise of some or perhaps other brand and it is a common fact, producing lobbying legal will increase the government’s cash flow by levying good amount of cost and costs on the same.

In which does the sum, being paid out now on lobbying, get – is definitely anybody’s imagine. A transparent legislation will surely solve this ambiguity and loss of income. 3. The US and some European countries have made the lobby legal with specific circumstances like quarterly disclosures about amount spent and the way the same has been spent approximately. This provides essential information and transparency to lobbying procedures.

The furor raised in Parliament within the issue of lobbying simply by Walmart in the USA could show up due to its disclosures. Corporate titans such as WalMart, Pfizer, Dell, HP, Qualcomm, Alcatel-Lucent, Morgan Stanley and Prudential Economical have been loking for the Indian market for years and have put in millions of dollars to obtain their business interest move at a faster pace inside the growing American indian economy. While using potential growth, more and more corporations will indulge lobbyists who can directly connect to politicians and bureaucrats and push all their agenda.

The lobby, whether legal or against the law, will still remain crucial to Indian businesses and politics. Getting rid of it or making it unlawful is not an option. It can be better to help to make business the lobby legal, of course with specific specific condition to ensure visibility. 4. Making lobbying legal will bring forwards open discussions and discussions on every one of the forums.

You’ll be able to understand which option is better. Lobbyists and representatives of their companies will openly engage in such debates with the benefits and drawbacks on the functionality and product. 5. At present, only the section 7 in the Prevention of Corruption Take action may be invoked to call up lobbying against the law.

This section can be not very appear. Think of the money invested on lobbying in a single year. If lobbying is made legal, at least a part of it will find it is way to the government coffer. At present, that forms a part of unaccounted money going into the pockets of politicians, bureaucrats and other influential lot, the expense of which will eventually be restored from the the general public in the country.

6th. Apart from conserving millions of dollars, the nation may see uncontrolled corruption with the intention of lobbying diminishing away. 7. Since India is in the technique of establishing a larger institutional framework, the government requirements creative advices from different experts. As long as lobbying would not lead to ‘policy or regulatory capture’, it should be allowed. eight. The Indian government itself has a main receiving area firm presenting its case with American lawmakers, whilst a number of Of india companies and entities also indulge in the lobby activities in america through their particular respective lobbyists.

At different platforms similar to the UN, World economical summits, in sports, in organizing Olympics, Commonwealth Video games, etc, countries lobby their particular stake. The lobby, in fact , gives more competitiveness and improvement in quality as things are to be explained and outlined in comparison to some other stake holder. India might gain a whole lot by making lobbying legal. At the time you speak up against the topic, the important thing points may be: 1 . The common man of India, who is otherwise reeling under the pressure of corruption and lack of employment, will be remaining penniless once lobbying is manufactured legal.

Each of the majors will lobby for his or her interests throughout the economy, will help the admittance riding the regular man whom hardly earns his bread and rechausser. Those who have good luck and pelf will become better lobbyist and definitely will ensure that their very own interests are generally not compromised. 2 . National passions will be cornered as lobbyists will have one-line motto of watching their own interest and may not at all be concerned with the country’s interest because they will not be from this country. several.

Lobbyists is likely to make corruption legal. Politicians and influential people will still garner their share via lobbyists at the cost of the country. 4. Lawmakers, who happen to be law producers, if affected by lobbyists, may get keen towards offering them, getting oblivious in the national passions. 5. The lobby in protection production and purchases may put national security on the line. 6. India is a vast country and has a wide range of complexities and problems.

The lobbying business has no perception of the variety and the nature of complications. The government may simply bet on the strategies of the lobbyist and that might become damaging in future. six. There is no system in India to bring responsibility to the lobby, and widely reveal the lobbying positions of companies and the money spent. Self-regulation in lieu of a formal legislation is often proposed by market players. In India, no person knows the lobbying position of firms, leave exclusively looking for consistencies in the lobby positions and their impact on problems on eco friendly development.

Rendering it legal is going to add to the issues of Indian businesses. The efforts produced so far in India- The Planning Commission has set up an expert group to go into the processes that comprise the lobby. Arun Maira, member of Organizing Commission, mentioned “We will be considering numerous interests of all of the stakeholders included. This expert group comprises industries and government assistants.

There is an on-going discussion with the industry associations for his or her views. We want lobbying to be transparent and representative. Our company is looking at the best benchmarks pertaining to processes of lobbying in other countries.

However , this is a very large issue plus the final remedy is much down the road. ” However , presented the politics exigencies of framing guidelines and sophisticated nature of polity, this will require the consummate expertise of great statesmen.

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4 How and Why Corporations Lobby

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This chapter describes the contours of modern corporate political engagement and the impressive diversity of both tactics and reasons for being active. Because there is an ever-growing range of strategies and tactics that an enterprising government affairs department could possibly recommend, there is the possibility for an ever-expanding amount of corporate political expenditures. The more companies spend, the more tactics and reasons they list as being important. Looking closely at both tactics and reasons for being active shows how corporate lobbying can expand from a straightforward approach (narrowly focused on working with congressional allies) to a something more expansive—engaging in all branches, leading coalitions, having an active PR campaign, and other wider tactics.

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Three Essays on Lobbying

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Brownstein Tops Law Firm Rivals as Its Lobbying Sets Record Pace

By Justin Wise

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck led rivals in federal lobbying revenue last quarter with $16.2 million, putting the law firm on pace to top last year’s record haul.

The firm credited active House and Senate oversight agendas, issues related to artificial intelligence, and bills such as the National Defense Authorization Act for revenue that topped any quarter in 2023, when it brought in a record $62.6 million.

“People look at Congress and say nothing is happening,” Nadeam Elshami, a policy director at Brownstein Hyatt, said in an interview. “Nothing is further from the truth.”

The performance through March 31 is representative of the lobbying sector, where spending surpassed $4 billion for two consecutive years. Even as the pace of legislation has slowed, issues relating to AI energy and taxes are getting attention from Congress and the business community.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which reported over $50 million in revenue last year, was close behind Brownstein with $13.8 million in first quarter revenue, lobby disclosure forms show. The firm, which earned $240,000 lobbying for Nippon Steel Corp. in its quest to buy United States Steel Corp., said the figures represented its best first quarter ever.

Other firms seeing strong starts to the year included Holland & Knight, which said it posted more than $12 million in federal lobbying revenue for the fourth straight quarter. The firm reported roughly $12.4 million through March, a 15% increase from the same time period in 2023.

Squire Patton Boggs and K&L Gates posted $5.4 million and $4.3 million, respectively, in first quarter lobbying revenue, slight declines from the same period last year. Hogan Lovells reported $2.1 million, a slight uptick from last year’s first quarter.

Tax `Super Bowl’

Election years are historically down periods for lobbyists, as lawmakers shift their focus to campaigning. But recent years show little slowdown in activity on Capitol Hill.

Lobbying spending in the last election year, 2022, reached $4.1 billion, which at the time marked a record, according to Bloomberg Government . Spending spiked to $4.27 billion the year after.

Many businesses are already preparing for the 2025 expiration of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

Negotiations over the law and some of the expiring provisions are shaping up to be the “tax Super Bowl,” said Brownstein’s Elshami, whose firm represents clients including Apollo Asset Management, Sequoia Capital and Exxon Mobil Corp. “We always plan on always being busy,” Elshami said.

The high levels of activity will “continue in the next quarter, especially in areas that Congress must address every year: appropriations and defense,” Akin partner Brian Pomper said in a statement.

Akin is one of several Big Law firms lobbying in Washington on the proposed $14.1 billion sale of US Steel to Nippon— a deal that has garnered opposition from the White House and some Republican and Democratic lawmakers who want the steel corporation to remain in American hands.

US Steel paid a K&L Gates team including former Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) $90,000 to lobby on issues related to the deal. The US steel company also paid $420,000 to Hogan Lovells and $40,000 to Mayer Brown for lobbying work. A team of more than a dozen people at Akin are working for Nippon, according to an April disclosure.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Wise at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Hughes at [email protected]

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California legislators prepare to vote on a crackdown on utility spending

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A crackdown on how some of the nation’s largest utilities spend customers’ money faces a do-or-die vote Monday in the California Legislature.

Californians already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country, in part because of the expensive work required to maintain and upgrade electrical equipment to reduce the risk of wildfires in a state with long, dry summers.

As rates continue to climb, utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric have faced increasing scrutiny from consumer groups over how they spend the money they collect.

Utilities aren’t allowed to use money from customers to pay for things like advertising or lobbying. Instead, utilities must pay for those activities with money from private investors who have bought stock shares.

Consumer groups say utilities are finding ways around those rules. They accuse them of using money from customers to fund trade groups that lobby legislators and for TV ads disguised as public service announcements, including some recent ads by PG&E.

A legislative bill would expand the definitions of prohibited advertising and political influence to include things like regulators’ decisions on rate-setting and franchises for electrical and gas corporations. It would also allow regulators to fine utilities that break the rules.

“It’s always fun to be able to give away other people’s money and use other people’s money to try to advance their own interests,” said state Sen. Dave Min, a Democrat who authored the bill. “But for a regulated industry like (investor-owned utilities), I would submit that that’s not good policy.”

The bill faces fierce opposition from utilities and some labor unions that fear it would prohibit union members who work for utilities from lobbying.

The bill had a public hearing last week in a committee, but it failed to pass after multiple Democrats, who hold large majorities in both legislative chambers, did not vote. The committee is scheduled to hear the bill again Monday. If it fails a second time, it likely won’t pass this year.

Min said he has accepted amendments to address lawmakers’ concerns, including allowing a grace period for utilities to correct errors and require that any money collected from fines be put into the state’s general fund. Still, he said it was “50-50” whether the bill would survive Monday’s vote.

PG&E opposes the bill because it said it would take away the power of state regulators to examine utility companies’ costs and decide whether it is “just or reasonable” for customers to pay for them.

Plus, PG&E lobbyist Brandon Ebeck said it’s appropriate for customers to pay for the company’s membership fees that go to various industry associations because they benefit customers. He noted those groups coordinate emergency response and wildfire training. When the war in Ukraine started, the Edison Electric Institute — a national association representing investor-owned utilities — sought to find surplus equipment that could be sent to Ukraine.

“There’s a lot of benefits to customers,” Ebeck said.

Consumer groups argue the current rules for utilities “incentivizes them to see what they can get away with,” said Matt Vespa, an attorney with the advocacy group Earthjustice.

Those groups and Min point to as much as $6 million in TV ads PG&E paid for to tout its plan to bury power lines to reduce wildfire risk, a plan that some consumer groups opposed because it increased customers’ bills .

The ads first aired in 2022 and feature CEO Patti Poppe in a company-branded hard hat while saying the company is “transforming your hometown utility from the ground up.”

The utility recorded the expenses for those ads to come from a customer-funded account that is dedicated to reducing wildfire risk, as first reported by the Sacramento Bee . PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said the company has not yet asked regulators to review that expense. The California Public Utilities Commission will decide whether customer funds can pay for the ads.

Paulo noted state regulators allow utilities to use money from customers to pay for safety communications on television.

“Our customers have told us they want to know how we are investing to improve safety and reliability,” Paulo said. “We also use digital and email communications, but some customers do not have internet or email access, so we use methods including television spots to communicate with all of our customers.”

Some consumer groups say the ads have crossed the line.

“Only at PG&E would (Poppe’s) attempts at brand rehabilitation be considered a ‘safety message,’” said Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network. “This blatant misuse of ratepayer funds is exactly why we need SB 938 and its clear rules and required disclosures for advertising costs.”

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An NPR editor who wrote a critical essay on the company has resigned after being suspended

FILE - The headquarters for National Public Radio (NPR) stands on North Capitol Street on April 15, 2013, in Washington. A National Public Radio editor who wrote an essay criticizing his employer for promoting liberal reviews resigned on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, a day after it was revealed that he had been suspended. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — A National Public Radio editor who wrote an essay criticizing his employer for promoting liberal views resigned on Wednesday, attacking NPR’s new CEO on the way out.

Uri Berliner, a senior editor on NPR’s business desk, posted his resignation letter on X, formerly Twitter, a day after it was revealed that he had been suspended for five days for violating company rules about outside work done without permission.

“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems” written about in his essay, Berliner said in his resignation letter.

Katherine Maher, a former tech executive appointed in January as NPR’s chief executive, has been criticized by conservative activists for social media messages that disparaged former President Donald Trump. The messages predated her hiring at NPR.

NPR’s public relations chief said the organization does not comment on individual personnel matters.

The suspension and subsequent resignation highlight the delicate balance that many U.S. news organizations and their editorial employees face. On one hand, as journalists striving to produce unbiased news, they’re not supposed to comment on contentious public issues; on the other, many journalists consider it their duty to critique their own organizations’ approaches to journalism when needed.

In his essay , written for the online Free Press site, Berliner said NPR is dominated by liberals and no longer has an open-minded spirit. He traced the change to coverage of Trump’s presidency.

“There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed,” he wrote. “It’s frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.”

He said he’d brought up his concerns internally and no changes had been made, making him “a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love.”

In the essay’s wake, NPR top editorial executive, Edith Chapin, said leadership strongly disagreed with Berliner’s assessment of the outlet’s journalism and the way it went about its work.

It’s not clear what Berliner was referring to when he talked about disparagement by Maher. In a lengthy memo to staff members last week, she wrote: “Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions. Questioning whether our people are serving their mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning.”

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo revealed some of Maher’s past tweets after the essay was published. In one tweet, dated January 2018, Maher wrote that “Donald Trump is a racist.” A post just before the 2020 election pictured her in a Biden campaign hat.

In response, an NPR spokeswoman said Maher, years before she joined the radio network, was exercising her right to express herself. She is not involved in editorial decisions at NPR, the network said.

The issue is an example of what can happen when business executives, instead of journalists, are appointed to roles overseeing news organizations: they find themselves scrutinized for signs of bias in ways they hadn’t been before. Recently, NBC Universal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde has been criticized for service on paid corporate boards.

Maher is the former head of the Wikimedia Foundation. NPR’s own story about the 40-year-old executive’s appointment in January noted that she “has never worked directly in journalism or at a news organization.”

In his resignation letter, Berliner said that he did not support any efforts to strip NPR of public funding. “I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism,” he wrote.

David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder

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NPR Suspends Editor Whose Essay Criticized the Broadcaster

Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, said the public radio network’s liberal bias had tainted its coverage of important stories.

By Benjamin Mullin

NPR has suspended Uri Berliner, the senior business editor who broke ranks and published an essay arguing that the nonprofit radio network had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage.

Mr. Berliner was suspended by the network for five days, starting Friday, for violating the network’s policy against doing work outside the organization without first getting permission.

Mr. Berliner acknowledged his suspension in an interview with NPR on Monday , providing one of the network’s reporters with a copy of the written rebuke. In presenting the warning, NPR said Mr. Berliner had failed to clear his work for outside outlets, adding that he would be fired if he violated the policy again.

Mr. Berliner’s essay was published last week in The Free Press, a popular Substack publication.

He declined to comment about the suspension. NPR said it did not comment on personnel matters.

The revelation of Mr. Berliner’s punishment is the latest aftershock to rattle NPR since he published his essay. Employees at the public radio network were taken aback by Mr. Berliner’s public condemnation of the broadcaster, and several have said they no longer trust him because of his remarks. Mr. Berliner told The New York Times last week that he did not reach out to the network before publishing his essay.

After Mr. Berliner’s essay was published, NPR’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher, came under renewed scrutiny as conservative activists resurfaced a series of years-old social media posts criticizing former President Donald J. Trump and embracing progressive causes. One of the activists, Christopher Rufo, has pressured media organizations into covering controversies involving influential figures, such as the plagiarism allegations against Claudine Gay, the former Harvard president.

NPR said on Monday that Ms. Maher’s social media posts were written long before she was named chief executive of NPR, and that she was not working in the news industry at the time. NPR also said that while she managed the business side of the nonprofit, she was not involved in its editorial process. Ms. Maher said in a statement that “in America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen.”

Several NPR employees have urged the network’s leaders to more forcefully renounce Mr. Berliner’s claims in his essay. Edith Chapin, NPR’s top editor, said in a statement last week that managers “strongly disagree with Uri’s assessment of the quality of our journalism,” adding that the network was “proud to stand behind” its work.

Some employees have begun to speak out. Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor for standards and practices, took issue with many of Mr. Berliner’s claims in an interview with The Times on Tuesday, saying Mr. Berliner’s essay mischaracterized NPR’s coverage of crucial stories.

Mr. Cavin said NPR’s coverage of Covid-19, one of the lines of reporting that Mr. Berliner criticized, was in step with reporting from other mainstream news organizations at the time. The coverage, he said, attributed the origins of the virus to a market in Wuhan, China. He also defended NPR’s coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, another area Mr. Berliner focused on, noting that Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the issue, concluded that Russian state actors had made attempts to sway the election.

Mr. Cavin also pointed out that NPR had no way to verify early articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop after the story broke but pursued follow-up stories examining the situation. Mr. Berliner wrote that NPR had “turned a blind eye” to the story about Mr. Biden’s laptop.

“To somehow think that we were driven by politics is both wrong and unfair,” Mr. Cavin said.

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact Ben securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or email at [email protected] . More about Benjamin Mullin