THE EDUCATIONAL ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL LOBBYISTS’ ASSOCIATIONS

While many entities are offering lobbying courses the certificates and/or degrees they deliver are not a licence to practice nor do the entities that issues them have the ability to de-certify a lobbyist for either malpractice or illegal conduct.

Our profession needs to get its house in order and education and certification should be our first order of business. The challenge for the leaders of our profession is to develop a training requirement that is affordable and effective. Equally, it is a challenge to the European institutions to work with us to accomplish this goal.

The availability of a certificate in lobbying is not as compelling a feature as it might be if associations were sanctioned by the European institutions to provide a certificate after the successful completion of an approved curriculum taught by approved faculty members. The European institutions should develop a process to certify those universities and organizations, including professional lobbyists’ associations who would be approved to teach the courses. By providing the educational requirement for lobbyists with the imprimatur of the European institutions and coupling it with an examination, ‘graduates’ would be able to use their accomplishments as a tool for professional advancement as well as touting their expertise to prospective clients. Those entities accredited to offer the curriculum would naturally compete with each other both to increase revenue but also to acquire a reputation as being the best.

It is difficult for professional lobbyists’ associations to take their educational programmes to their next level without the active support of the European institutions coupled with the infusion of money needed to develop the curriculum for each of the subjects, line up and compensate qualified faculty, provide quality control, and deal with such administrative matters as student registration and payment. Since the European institutions is unlikely to give a monopoly to any entity in particular, professional lobbyists’ associations would also need to expand their marketing efforts to compete with the large universities and for profit-entities that would also be certified to offer the curriculum.

As daunting as these obstacles are, this competition for the delivery of essential educational courses would be a welcome development that can only strengthen the lobbying profession.

The only way in which lobbying can achieve greater public legitimacy is for the industry to make progress towards greater professionalization. That encompasses a wide agenda- including more transparency and accountability, effective professional associations, a greater willingness by lobbyists to educate the public about the virtues of interest representation, the articulation of a common set of professional norms and values. One crucial element in the professional edifice is certainly the development of recognised higher education courses and qualifications and the need to develop a consensus as to what a lobbying curriculum should contain, and how academic content and experiential learning can be balanced.