CHANGING THE PERCEPTION OF LOBBYING

Lobbying is not a well-known activity. The awareness of the driving forces of democracy and the daily life of the legislative sphere is low. When individuals are confronted with lobbying, they usually have a bad perception of what this is about. Lobbying has a very bad reputation and the concept is frequently associated with words such as manipulation, corruption, bribery, and so on. The rare occasions the public hear about lobbying is in the media. There is crisis everywhere and scandals sell so media rather pick up on bad stories concerning lobbyists instead of good ones.

Lobbying has rarely been perceived to be a force for good. But without lobbying, the interests of a very large group of people would be lost in the process of law-making. Lobbying enforces the democratic debate and is an important component of a healthy democracy. Lobbying is a good thing, if it is practiced in an ethical way. Lobbyists are able to provide legislators with independent research to protect the interest of the public, presented in a very digestible way.

Criticized or praised, effective or ineffective, whether it is well done or not, even with adverse effects, the lobby activity has been present in the life of every society under whatever name. There were always individual or common voices that tried to change something that they did not like using arguments or personal influence.

It’s essential to understand what lobby is about, because this activity involves a serious documentation and solid research. The most effective lobbying activities are those that provide both arguments and scientific and technical elements for taking the decision or change certain policies and as long as we use it for a good perception in a right way and we have nothing to hide, practicing lobby is a respectable job

Remedy

The lobbying industry should offer a free advisory service to small groups who, for whatever reason, need to enter the political arena. Every practitioner could offer a free consultation covering such advice as: the background to a policy, how to frame an argument, the relevant decision-makers, what activity to take along. Perhaps professional recognition would depend on this sort of thing being made available. In turn, each agency and in-house team could be tasked with providing a certain number of hours of support per month. In the age of the internet, this would be easy to set up and run. And what is more, this simple step would be a start on the long road to redressing the imbalance of power in our political system.