You don’t know Jack: Principals, agents and lobbying

Lowery, David; Marchetti, Kathleen

doi:10.1057/iga.2012.15

Cited by 40 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In line with this official discourse, several scholars take for granted that European associations are 'super-conducting transmitters' (Lowery and Marchetti 2012) linking the issues of concern of national CSOs -and their constituencies -to EU officials. But the role of ENs in the 'legitimacy building' of the EU is also broadly discussed in the literature.…”

Section: National Civil Society Organisations European Network and mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Legitimacy Of European Networks: Perspectives From Belgian Civil Society Organisations

Defacqz

2018

JCER

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This article identifies how Belgian civil society organisations (CSOs) legitimise their European networks (ENs). European networks are understood as European umbrella associations gathering together national CSOs and representing them at the EU level. This article unpacks the concept of organisational legitimacy by empirically analysing Belgian CSOs' discourse about their ENs. EU institutions consider ENs as appropriate organisations to link the European policymaking process to the requests and opinions expressed by national CSOs and their constituents. Existing studies draw negative conclusions about the transmitter role of ENs and highlight the malfunction of the accountability channel and an unfair representative balance among members. This empirical analysis qualifies these two arguments. The results show that Belgian CSOs legitimise their ENs in two ways: the function they hold in Brussels and their efficiency. ENs are thus not legitimised as accurate transmitters between national CSOs and European officials but as efficient champions of general political objectives, to which Belgian CSOs broadly adhere. These results are based on an inductive qualitative analysis of interviews with staff from five Belgian environmental CSOs.

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Section: National Civil Society Organisations European Network and mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Legitimacy Of European Networks: Perspectives From Belgian Civil Society Organisations

Defacqz

2018

JCER

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“…Practitioners experience how their organizations are evaluated. At the same time, public affairs practitioners are agents of their organization, the principal, on whose mandate they must operate (Lowery and Marchetti, 2012). Acting from core organizational interests, public affairs practitioners must perform a balancing act in order to build social capital and increase public acceptance.…”

Section: Strengthening the Knowledge Base For Public Affairsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An emerging domain of knowledge is about the nature of the relationship between the practitioner as an agent and the organization as its principal (Lowery and Marchetti, 2012). What kind of arrangement for delegation and accountability serves best to avoid drift away from the organizational interest base?…”

Section: The Home Base: Learning For Securing Autonomy Loyalty and Omentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At present, there is wide variation in the educational background of practitioners, and professionalization requires that the best of the different worlds of background are brought together in a more systematic approach to learning. When speaking of professionalization, the international literature on interest representation often refers to organizational development and the build-up of lobby equipment as such, including investment in in-house lobbyists or public affairs practitioners (Maloney, 2007;Lowery and Marchetti, 2012;Klüver and Saurugger, 2013). Individual skills development must be seen in such organizational context.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The moving stages of public affairs in the Netherlands

Timmermans

2015

Int Groups Adv

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The Dutch system of interest representation in which lobbying and public affairs take place is dense, but has long given privileged access to traditional types of stakeholders. Changes in politics and society however put this semi-open system under pressure, and this is the context in which public affairs practitioners must operate and create and use windows of opportunity. In the past 15 years, views from within the field on competencies and skills for further professionalization point to the importance of knowledge about content and process, but recognition of the need for a systematic approach to such knowledge construction came more recently. This contribution presents three key components of a body of knowledge on which a learning program for the professionalization of public affairs can be based. It contains the outward look from a strategic perspective, the conditions for building and maintaining social and political capital, and an internal view on the organization as the home basis of the public affairs practitioner, where external and internal accountability must be brought in balance. A university-based program on public affairs must be interdisciplinary, with a core of systematic knowledge development, methods and tools for use and reflection on the normative front at which practitioners operate. Program development also connects closely to questions of accreditation and licensing -the formalization of professionalization through which quality control and public acceptance must be improved. Program development and formal status definition for public affairs not only are connected, they also must, in the coming years, be addressed together in a structured scholarly-professional engagement. Lobbyists: The Image Between Ideal Type and StereotypeLike the ideal husband, the good cop and the celebrated politician, there is the ideal lobbyist. A splendid package of personal characteristics can make someone a good

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“…Individual lobbyists are often ignored in the study of lobbying influence, though it is logical that the type of lobbyist that an interest group employs is a key to influence (Lowery and Marchetti, 2012). 1 Transaction cost theory suggests that interest groups engaged in highly competitive core domains will manage their human resources -their lobbyists -very differently than those active in peripheral domains.…”

Section: Core and Periphery In Washington Lobbyingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The two worlds of lobbying: Washington lobbyists in the core and on the periphery

2014

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For decades, political scientists have had two divergent views on lobbyists in Washington. On the one hand they focus on the privileged access of a few groups in balkanized issue niches, and on the other they observe highly inclusive lobbying campaigns where hundreds of lobbyists vigorously compete for policymakers' attention. Not surprisingly, these disparate observations lead to contradictory conclusions about lobbying tactics, relations with relevant policymakers and the nature of interest group influence. In this article, we make a simple, yet novel, empirical observation: these seemingly incongruent observations of lobbying at the micro level are not inconsistent when we uncover the structure of lobbyists' interactions at the macro level. That is, both views are correct, depending on the policy context. Using data from 248 543 Lobbying Disclosure Act reports filed between 1998 and 2008 -which consists of 1 557 526 observations of 32 700 individual lobbyists reporting activity in 78 issue areas -we reveal that the Washington lobbying community has a fundamental and stable core-periphery structure. We then document how the empirically derived core-periphery mapping is a superior way to differentiate bandwagon or niche policy domains. As transaction cost theory suggests, we find that policy domains in the core have more in-house lobbyists and more revolving door lobbyists. And, on average, lobbyists active in core domains represent a greater diversity of interests and tend to be policy generalists. The converse is also true. Highly specialized contract lobbyists drift toward those sparsely populated domains in the periphery where they may focus on obscure policy minutiae, relatively free from public scrutiny. Our findings have important implications for the study of lobbying and interest representation. In Washington, there are really two worlds of lobbying. The first world, where most lobbying attention is directed, is one in which we see a great deal of interconnectedness and interest diversity. The second world, home to an overwhelming majority of policy domains, cultivates niche lobbying and policy balkanization. That these two worlds exist simultaneously is precisely why observers fail to agree on what 'typical' or 'average' lobbying is. We believe that this is why the political science literature on

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You don’t know Jack: Principals, agents and lobbying

Cited by 40 publications

References 49 publications

The Legitimacy Of European Networks: Perspectives From Belgian Civil Society Organisations

The Legitimacy Of European Networks: Perspectives From Belgian Civil Society Organisations

The moving stages of public affairs in the Netherlands

The two worlds of lobbying: Washington lobbyists in the core and on the periphery

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