Second-stage lobbyism : fundamental basics of an understudied lobbying approach
Bienek, Philipp (2019)
Bienek, Philipp
2019
Yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2019-05-13
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-201905171775
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-201905171775
Tiivistelmä
Analysing the lobbying situation of social movements and groups advocating for public interests, it can be seen that a majority of actors lack necessary financial resources, the capability to mobilise a sufficient number of contributors in relation to the society they aim to represent, and experience low levels of responsiveness by the contacted decision makers and politicians. Compared with narrow interest groups representing industry sectors or professions, public interest groups face competitive disadvantages or even discrimination which causes underrepresentation of relevant social, ecological, and humanitarian issues. As this situation has already been present throughout the last decades and does barely differ within different countries, the question needs to be raised, whether the application of current lobbying strategies is the best way to overcome this unfavourable setup or if there are more promising means to do so.
In this thesis, the author will develop and establish a new lobbying approach labelled ‘second-stage lobbyism’. The main idea of this strategy is to ‘lobby the lobbyist’ (second stage) instead of focusing on political decision makers (first stage). This enables even small interest groups to use the resources and political power of the target – the actor to be lobbied – to promote their own agenda. The elaborated model is based on simple spatial analyses and considers a variety of features of relevant theories and works within the fields of lobbying, collective action, and game theory. Key elements to successful second-stage measures are changing preferences on topics throughout time within a society. They allow interest groups to attract their potential second-stage targets by presenting (un)favourable potential scenarios such as market outcomes and thereby influencing their future lobbying activities. To illustrate the relevance of these changes of preferences for the developed model, empirical data compiled by the World Values Surveys from 1981 until 2014 on six selected countries will be analysed and interpreted with regards to ‘second-stage lobbyism’.
The overall results underline that an enhancement of public interest groups’ strategy repertory is needed to gain more political influence and public attention. If applied correctly, ‘second-stage lobbyism’ is a valuable and powerful tool which can help to trigger and achieve the transformation of the currently unfavourable lobbying situation of social movements. Nonetheless, this lobbying strategy is still in its early stages of development and requires further research – theoretical and empirical.
In this thesis, the author will develop and establish a new lobbying approach labelled ‘second-stage lobbyism’. The main idea of this strategy is to ‘lobby the lobbyist’ (second stage) instead of focusing on political decision makers (first stage). This enables even small interest groups to use the resources and political power of the target – the actor to be lobbied – to promote their own agenda. The elaborated model is based on simple spatial analyses and considers a variety of features of relevant theories and works within the fields of lobbying, collective action, and game theory. Key elements to successful second-stage measures are changing preferences on topics throughout time within a society. They allow interest groups to attract their potential second-stage targets by presenting (un)favourable potential scenarios such as market outcomes and thereby influencing their future lobbying activities. To illustrate the relevance of these changes of preferences for the developed model, empirical data compiled by the World Values Surveys from 1981 until 2014 on six selected countries will be analysed and interpreted with regards to ‘second-stage lobbyism’.
The overall results underline that an enhancement of public interest groups’ strategy repertory is needed to gain more political influence and public attention. If applied correctly, ‘second-stage lobbyism’ is a valuable and powerful tool which can help to trigger and achieve the transformation of the currently unfavourable lobbying situation of social movements. Nonetheless, this lobbying strategy is still in its early stages of development and requires further research – theoretical and empirical.