I thank the joint committee for its kind invitation to present my work, which is co-authored with Professor Gary Murphy of DCU and Dr. John Hogan of DIT. We are about to publish a book on the regulation of lobbying, in which we make global comparisons. International observers will probably notice that some of the countries with lobbying regulations have established them since the 1980s — in the 1990s or the 2000s. We have received funding from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. We are grateful to the council for allowing us to do this work.
I will start by giving the committee a simple definition of lobbying. I do not need to discuss it in great detail with those present, who are involved in political and economic activities. We define lobbying as an act of individual groups, each of which may have varying and specific interests, that attempts to influence a decision taken by public officials at a political level. A key aspect of this idea is that lobbying involves an attempt by private actors to influence public actors. Such attempts may involve direct communication with government officials, offers of presentations, draft reports or something as simple as a telephone conversation. All of this is underpinned by the idea that lobbying is a central and legitimate part of the democratic process. There is nothing wrong with lobbying. It should be accepted as something that exists in democracy today. We know it exists. Lobbying helps to inform political actors when they take decisions. From that perspective, it can be suggested that there are two forms of lobbying — that done through consultancies and that done in-house. Lobbyists may come from the corporate world, non-governmental organisations, trade unions, religious organisations and think tanks.
The concept of lobbying as an attempt to influence has been pretty well established. Therefore, we need to consider what we mean when we talk about the regulation of lobbying. The idea is that political systems have established rules that lobby groups have to follow when they try to influence government officials. If one does not comply with the mandatory regulations, one can be penalised. I will mention some examples of rules that can be established when lobbying is being regulated. In most political systems that have regulations, the first and most common rule provides that lobbyists have to register with the state before contact can be made with a public official. During the registration process, the lobbyist is required to indicate what exactly he or she intends to influence, in terms of ministries or specific legislation that may be considered by government or parliament. I will refer to the various lobbying and regulatory systems. In some cases, lobbyists have to file individual or employer spending reports to reveal how much money is being used on their lobbying activity. Throughout all systems, a list of registered lobbyists is generally publicly available to enable citizens to see who is lobbying who and on what proposal. A somewhat contentious dimension of this issue is that provision is often made for a cooling off period, to avoid the revolving door phenomenon. This means that a person who leaves the world of politics has to refrain from entering into a lobbying profession for a period which can range, according to the legislation, from six months to — in the case of Canada, at federal level — five years.
I make it clear that the regulation of lobbying is not about preventing corruption. Generally speaking, all established democratic systems already have laws to prevent corruption. The objective of lobbying registration is to create transparency in the political process so people know who politicians and high-level civil servants are talking to. Accountability in the political system is ensured on that basis. In the late 1800s, the United States became the first country to establish lobbying laws at state level. It followed that up with federal laws in the mid-1940s. All of its states currently have lobbying laws, which also exist at federal level. Germany enacted legislation in this area in the 1950s and Canada followed suit in the 1980s. The European Parliament provided for the regulation of lobbying in the mid-1990s. Four political systems had established lobbying regulations by the end of the 21st century. That number has more than doubled in the past decade. Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Taiwan and Australia introduced lobbying legislation in the 2000s. The most recent countries to do so were France and Israel.
In our comparative analysis, we try to take all of the different political systems with lobbying regulations and ask how they compare with each other. One way to analyse this is to take a series of questions, as drawn up by the US Centre for Public Integrity, do a textual analysis of the different forms of legislation that exist and, on a scale between one and 100, determine where each of the jurisdictions with lobbying legislation fits in. We use eight different parameters to that end — the definition of a lobbyist; the procedures for individual registration; whether spending disclosures are required on the part of individuals and employers; whether everything can be done electronically on the Internet; whether clear public access to a registry exists; whether the rules are enforced by independent regulators; and the revolving door provisions. We try to do two things on that basis — to ascertain where the different jurisdictions with lobbying rules are placed on this scale and, on the basis of the scale, to ascertain whether there are qualitative similarities between the different types of systems. In the latter case, we have come up with a hypothesis in which there are three different types of regulatory environments in the world of regulated lobbying. It is a pretty simple classification.
The three types of system are those which are lowly regulated, those which are medium regulated and those which are highly regulated. I will set out the differences between them. When designating which of the three systems applies, we consider whether certain factors are in place. Are there tight rules on individual registration? Are rigorous standards applied when lobbyists are asked to provide a certain amount of information when registering? In highly regulated systems, individual lobbyists have to provide a great deal of information about themselves. In lowly regulated systems, they have to give few details. Very few spending disclosures, if any, are required of lobbyists in lowly regulated systems. The system of spending disclosure is very robust in highly regulated systems. Another of the distinguishing features is each system's degree of public access, in terms of citizens being able to see the full details of each of the lobbyists. Lowly regulated systems do not have very robust rules with regard to the revolving door phenomenon, whereas highly regulated systems do.
I understand that a copy of table 4.3 on page 109 of our book, Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison, was forwarded to the committee last week. I will set out some of the ballpark figures. We generally find that the American jurisdictions in the US, including the federal level since 2007 when the latest round of reforms took place, have highly regulated systems. This means they have tighter rules when it comes to registering. The Canadian federal system is a medium regulated system, as are the systems in Hungary, Lithuania, Taiwan and Australia. The system used in the European Parliament and the voluntary registry system of the European Commission are lowly-regulated systems. It would be of direct interest to the joint committee to know where the developments are at European level. To be fair, the European Parliament was one of the first institutions to invoke this legislation in 1996, but it works more as a door-pass system. Therefore, if a lobbyist wished to talk to somebody outside Parliament, he or she does not have to register. If one goes through the doors, however, one does have to be registered. Many people have criticised this as being more of a door-pass system.
In 2008, the Commission started with what is referred to as a voluntary registry scheme. The idea at Commission level has been that self-regulation is sufficient and that lobbyists should not have to follow any rules when it comes to registering. With that in mind, they made this voluntary initiative in 2008. It is difficult to assess the statistics of how effective it has been. No one has ever come to a firm number as to how many lobbyists are active in Brussels. It ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 but the academic position is that it is 15,000. I do not know if anyone really knows the number. What we can say though is that, as of this morning, of the apparent 15,000, some 2,729 had registered. We do not know if that is a high or low percentage. However, if one was to take the 15,000 number as a guide, it is a relatively low percentage. Of these, we can see that professional consultancies make up the smallest number of those who are registered, whereas the largest number comprises in-house corporate lobbyists and trade associations. More than half the registries belong to different companies that will be pursuing lobbying activity in Brussels. There are also different NGOs and think tanks.
One of the criticisms we have made in our work, which is based on talking to Commission officials, as well as interviews and surveys, is that there is a political will to have a mandatory registry at Commission level. Why is that? There is no penalty if one does not register and, effectively, if there is no penalty there is no incentive to register. The European Commission did think about having a mandatory system, but decided not to have one. It is still thinking about whether or not to have it, but from what I understand I do not think it will.
