Lobbying: the dark side of politics?

The panel at the CAGE event in Brussels

Last week I gave a presentation on 'Lobbying: the Dark Side of Politics' at the University of Warwick's EU in office in Brussels on behalf of CAGE (Centre for Analysis of Global Economy). My presentation drew on my forthcoming 'Pocket Politics' book for Manchester University Press on the topic.

I started by pointing out that the freedom to associate is at the heart of liberal democracy and the existence of a large number of associations is a sign of a healthy civil society. Autocracies either prohibit such associations or they live a perilous existence.

Lobbies can help to avoid poorly designed policies by giving decision-makers perspectives and information they would not otherwise have, and this is particularly helpful for implementation.

However, it is important to retain a balance, although as someone said in discussion the difficult question is what that balance should be?

One thing that has to be guarded against is big business dominance, although some in discussion thought that the real risk of dominance these days was from hi tech businesses such as Amazon and Google which were almost beyond control, despite the efforts of the EU competition commissioner.

Smaller businesses are an important source of innovation and employment. One discussant argued that they were well organised in Brussels today. However, I discussed the difficulties that the emerging biocontrols industry had faced because of its lack of knowledge and resources compared with established large synthetic chemicals companies.

The need for a pluralistic political balance is one justification for regulation, but it also helps to protect the reputation of the industry. In this connection I discussed the recent Bell Pottinger affair, although that offered an example of successful self-regulation.

In many ways the EU was ahead of the curve in regulating lobbying, although there were still deficiencies. In discussion it was pointed out that there was little regulation of lobbying the Council and the whole 'trilogue' process between Commission, Council and Parliament was opaque.

In order to restore balance, the EU funds NGOs to the tune of €1.2bn in 2015, although much of this was for the delivery of development aid.

Considerable upheaval had been caused earlier in the year by the initiative of Markus Pieper (an EPP MEP from Germany) to reject funding for NGOs that oppose the 'strategic, commercial and social security objectives' of the EU. It was opposed by the Greens and the Social Democrats. The report was shelved and there is to be a special review by the Court of Auditors.

A commentator from the audience wanted to make a distinction between sectoral groups and advocacy groups. However, I think that the categorisation of the former as 'bad' and the latter as 'good' is an over simplification.

The general issues that needed to be borne in mind were:

• The legitimacy of the EU as a democratic polity
• Citizen engagement and confidence in the institutions
• The need for a balanced range of perspectives
• The reputation of lobbying