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Lobbying for Change

Author: Alberto Alemanno

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2017-05-01

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 178578286X

'We need effective citizen-lobbyists – not just likers, followers or even marchers – more than ever. I have no hesitation in lobbying you to read this book.' Bill Emmott, former editor in chief, the Economist Many democratic societies are experiencing a crisis of faith. Citizens are making clear their frustration with their supposedly representative governments, which instead seem driven by the interests of big business, powerful individuals and wealthy lobby groups. What can we do about it? How do we fix democracy and get our voices heard? The answer, argues Alberto Alemanno, is to become change-makers – citizen lobbyists. By using our skills and talents and mobilizing others, we can bring about social and political change. Whoever you are, you've got power, and this book will show you how to unleash it. From successfully challenging Facebook's use of private data to abolishing EU mobile phone roaming charges, Alberto highlights the stories of those who have lobbied for change, and shows how you can follow in their footsteps, whether you want to influence immigration policy, put pressure on big business or protect your local community.

Lobbying America

Author: Benjamin C. Waterhouse

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0691168016

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Lobbying America tells the story of the political mobilization of American business in the 1970s and 1980s. Benjamin Waterhouse traces the rise and ultimate fragmentation of a broad-based effort to unify the business community and promote a fiscally conservative, antiregulatory, and market-oriented policy agenda to Congress and the country at large. Arguing that business's political involvement was historically distinctive during this period, Waterhouse illustrates the changing power and goals of America's top corporate leaders. Examining the rise of the Business Roundtable and the revitalization of older business associations such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Waterhouse takes readers inside the mind-set of the powerful CEOs who responded to the crises of inflation, recession, and declining industrial productivity by organizing an effective and disciplined lobbying force. By the mid-1970s, that coalition transformed the economic power of the capitalist class into a broad-reaching political movement with real policy consequences. Ironically, the cohesion that characterized organized business failed to survive the ascent of conservative politics during the 1980s, and many of the coalition's top goals on regulatory and fiscal policies remained unfulfilled. The industrial CEOs who fancied themselves the "voice of business" found themselves one voice among many vying for influence in an increasingly turbulent and unsettled economic landscape. Complicating assumptions that wealthy business leaders naturally get their way in Washington, Lobbying America shows how economic and political powers interact in the American democratic system.

The Interest Group Society

Author: Jeffrey M Berry

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1317347595

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This book describes a great change in the interest groups in American politics and includes analysis of the legal limits of non-profit politics. It examines the effects of the new Democratic majorities on partisan lobbying, political action committee spending.

The Business of Lobbying in China

Author: Scott KENNEDY

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0674039491

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Based on over 300 in-depth interviews with company executives, business association representatives, and government officials, this study identifies a wide range of national economic policies influenced by lobbying, including taxes, technical standards, and intellectual property rights. These findings have significant implications for how we think about Chinese politics and economics, as well as government-business relations in general.

Lobbying for Higher Education

Author: Constance Ewing Cook

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780826513175

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Historically, many faculty and administrators in higher education have regarded themselves as above the fray--part of the national interest, not a special interest--and considered lobbying a dirty business unworthy of their lofty enterprise. Now that academia no longer enjoys all the respect and good will that federal policy makers once afforded it, that attitude has changed. The Republican sweep of the 1994 Congressional elections served as a wake-up call for the higher education community. In response, it made a spirited effort to gain attention for its own policy preferences. Lobbying for Higher Education is about how the major higher education associations and the constituent American colleges and universities try to influence federal policy, especially congressional policy. In clear prose Cook explains how the higher education community organizes itself in Washington, how it lobbies, and how its major interest groups are perceived both by their own members and by public officials. The book focuses on the crucial development in 1995-1996 of a new lobbying paradigm, which included the greater use of campus-based resources and ad hoc coalitions. The most engrossing part of its story is higher education's creative response to the policy turmoil and disruption of the status quo that resulted from the shift in congressional party control. The author, Constance Cook, uses sources unique to this project: over 1,500 survey responses from college and university presidents (a 62% return rate) and nearly 150 interviews with institutional and association leaders. Fortuitously, the 1994 electoral upheaval provided her with an opportunity to capture, analyze, and interpret the responses of her subjects in a period of unusually sweeping change. Lobbying for Higher Education is a timely book with an interesting and important story at its core.

Lobbying for Social Change

Author: Willard C. Richan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-05

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1136445153

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This step-by-step guide to lobbying covers it all—from the basics for beginners to specific techniques for experienced lobbyists “You and I may never achieve major public office, but we do not need to in order to affect public policy.” —Author Willard C. Richan To effect social change, any lobbyist’s case must be presented with skill, knowledge, and confidence. This reader-friendly book shows the way. It assumes no prior knowledge of the subject and provides the nuts and bolts of public policy advocacy (lobbying) in non-technical language. Lobbying for Social Change, Third Edition is organized in a way that easily lends itself to use in the classroom as well as by individual or group advocates, and it is packed with clearly presented case material that illustrates the lobbying process in action. This new edition provides updated case material, expanded coverage of electronic media, and two new chapters; one focusing on direct action for fundamental change, and the other presenting a case history of a grassroots lobbying campaign. Part I of Lobbying for Social Change, Third Edition, entitled “The Basics,” will show you how to: assess your political resources set an agenda for action understand whom to lobby—and how to gauge their power, motivation, and ability to effect or impede social change gather and use evidence to support your position Part II, “Practical Applications,” gives you nuts-and-bolts information about how lobbying is done. You’ll learn: how to work directly with policymakers-face-to-face, by mail, by telephone, etc. effective rules for to testifying in a public hearing how to make use of the mass media-writing news releases, participating in panel discussions, what to do when being interviewed (and how to increase your chances of being a repeat guest on talk and news shows), and how to effectively work with print and electronic media, including the Internet ways to take on the system through direct action Part III, “Case History of a Grassroots Lobbying Campaign,” takes you inside an actual campaign (in this case, to amend the impending—at the time—welfare reform bill). You’ll see how a group of five Philadelphia area social workers and one feminist activist started the Delaware County Coalition to Save Our Safety Net—a coalition that would make a substantial impact on the specifics of welfare in the state of Pennsylvania. This new edition of the classic manual for lobbyists is packed with vital information for lobbying in the new millennium. We urge you to consider making it a part of your personal or teaching collection today!

The Social Process of Lobbying

Author: John C. Scott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-05

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1317928245

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Despite a wealth of theorizing and research about each concept, lobbying and norms still raise a number of interesting issues. Why do lobbyists and politicians engage in cooperative behavior? How does cooperative behavior in lobbying affect policy making? If democratic participation is good, why do we view lobbying as bad? Lobbying engenders debate about its effects on the political process and on policy development. Sociologists and other social scientists remain concerned about how norms emerge, the content of norms, how widely they are distributed, and how they are enforced. Political scientists study how interest groups work together and influence the political process. Based on the experience of the author, a former lobbyist, this book looks at the social norms of lobbying and how such norms work in a general framework of other norms and legal institutions in the political process. In developing this argument, John C. Scott claims that: Embedded social relationships and trust-based social norms underpin everyday interactions among policy actors. These relationships and norms have concrete impacts on the policy making process. Social relationships and norms inhibit participation in the political process by outside actors. The investigation is conducted through an innovative theoretical framework, combining existing theoretical perspectives from different disciplines, and using a variety of data and methods, including longitudinal quantitative and social network data, interviews with lobbyists, activists, and policymakers, and anecdotal and historical examples. The Social Process of Lobbying provides refreshingly new empirical evidence and theoretical analysis on how networks of trust are neither all good nor all bad but are ambivalent: they can both improve policy and fuel collusion.

The Business of America is Lobbying

Author: Lee Drutman

Publisher: Studies in Postwar American Po

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0190215518

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Corporate lobbyists are everywhere in Washington. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 represent business. The largest companies now have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them. How did American businesses become so invested in politics? And what does all their money buy? Drawing on extensive data and original interviews with corporate lobbyists, The Business of America is Lobbying provides a fascinating and detailed picture of what corporations do in Washington, why they do it, and why it matters. Prior to the 1970s, very few corporations had Washington offices. But a wave of new government regulations and declining economic conditions mobilized business leaders. Companies developed new political capacities, and managers soon began to see public policy as an opportunity, not just a threat. Ever since, corporate lobbying has become increasingly more pervasive, more proactive, and more particularistic. Lee Drutman argues that lobbyists drove this development, helping managers to see why politics mattered, and how proactive and aggressive engagement could help companies' bottom lines. All this lobbying doesn't guarantee influence. Politics is a messy and unpredictable bazaar, and it is more competitive than ever. But the growth of lobbying has driven several important changes that make business more powerful. The status quo is harder to dislodge; policy is more complex; and, as Congress increasingly becomes a farm league for K Street, more and more of Washington's policy expertise now resides in the private sector. These and other changes increasingly raise the costs of effective lobbying to a level only businesses can typically afford. Lively and engaging, rigorous and nuanced, The Business of America is Lobbying will change how we think about lobbying-and how we might reform it.

The People's Lobby

Author: Elisabeth S. Clemens

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1997-09-02

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 9780226109930

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Clemens sheds new light on how farmers, workers, and women invented strategies to circumvent the parties. Voters learned to monitor legislative processes, to hold their representatives accountable at the polls, and to institutionalize their ongoing participation in shaping policy. Closely analyzing the organizational politics in three states -- California, Washington, and Wisconsin -- she demonstrates how the political opportunity structure of federalism allowed regional innovations to exert leverage on national political institutions.