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The aim of this research is to contribute to the understanding of how commercial diplomats lobby for public procurement contracts. The institutional environment has ramifications for the manner of lobbying and for the practice of commercial diplomacy. This research brings together these streams of literature, and a conceptual model is developed. By means of an in-depth, single-case study, investigating the lobbying activities of EU diplomats in Indonesia, the study aimed to illustrate the model and draw the list of lobbying activities applicable for commercial diplomats. The findings reveal that in a weak institutional development environment, the diplomats focus on informational lobbying and rely heavily on their networks. If the decision-making powers are decentralized, the diplomats target more decision-makers. If diplomats do not have an access to decision-makers then ‘voice’ lobbying is applied. If the decision-makers are not elected, the diplomats do not engage in constituency-building lobbying. The findings illustrate the plausibility of the introduced conceptual model. They also suggest that domestic factors, such as interest in the host country, priority status of the host country and historical bilateral ties can positively influence the lobbying activities of the diplomats as well.

In 1993, Congress eliminated the business deduction for lobbying. The disallowance extends to dues paid to tax-exempt trade and labor associations when those organizations conduct lobbying activities. Associations are required to notify members regarding the portion of their dues that is non-deductible or pay a flat 35% tax on their lobbying expenditures. This study examines the factors considered by associations in making the pay-or-notify decision, looking for evidence that associations consider the marginal tax rates of their members to insure that the party with the lowest marginal rate pays the tax. Data is obtained from the IRS and is supplemented by data collected in a mail survey. The evidence suggests that associations do not necessarily attempt to minimize the total tax cost to all parties. This study identifies a situation where non-profit firms might fail to implement an optimal tax planning strategy, and where the absence of a competitive market allows this inefficiency to persist.

In Finland the use of public relations (PR) agencies and consultants in political decision making has increased in the last two decades. The development of the Finnish political realm has been similar to that of other Nordic countries where the PR industry has built a strong linkage to the political sphere. The present study analyses how Finnish PR consultants with a political background use and attempt to influence the news media as part of lobbying processes to advance their clients' causes. The chapter is based on 11 interviews with PR consultants that were conducted during November 2018. The main findings indicate that Finnish PR consultants consider the news media and journalists as an important part of lobbying. The media and journalists are considered supportive or alternative forums for advocacy and political debate. PR consultants use the media strategically to establish relationships and networks with journalists, and to advocate long-term political decision making and agendas. Overall, the study indicates that Finnish PR consultants want to be active political interpreters, who together with their clients engage in shaping the political agenda and discourses. This is done by taking advantage of previous political experience and networks, constructing the political agenda for media communication, organising a network of media representatives to influence and finally by framing political messages to the media.

The research of lobbying within public relations scholarship is a small but emerging field, having hitherto been largely the reserve of political science. While there is rightly interaction between the two disciplines, lobbying is a communicative act with a clear human element, usually involving (and in some cases, required by law before it is deemed to be lobbying) face to face interactions between actors, namely lobbying practitioners and those with influence and power such as politicians. This chapter contains the findings of a survey of professional lobbyists working in Scotland. The survey seeks to gain a better understanding of the profile of Scottish lobbyists, and to understand if there is any change in their practice as a result of the lobbying transparency legislation which was introduced shortly before the study commenced. The survey was conducted by online questionnaire and completed by 71 respondents between September 2019 and February 2020. The study finds that lobbyists in Scotland are predominantly male, have at some point been active in party politics and that there has been little behaviour change since the introduction of lobbying transparency regulation. It also finds that non-commercial interest groups are the largest group in Scottish lobbying, but only slightly. This study adds to the literature of lobbying practice and lobbying regulation and aims to create a better understanding of the relatively young Scottish lobbying sector. It therefore provides a basis from which to conduct further studies in Scotland and other jurisdictions.

Digital transformation, and the use and pervasiveness of social media in particular, have changed society. Politicians and political institutions increasingly use social media channels; hence political communication is changing as well. Continuous availability through smartphones and other devices has not only led to more information exchange between political and public actors, but also lobbyists, who classically communicate remotely, are also starting to respond to these changes and use tools such as Twitter, Facebook and the like. Against this background, this study provides insights into the effects of digital transformation, especially social media, on lobbying in Germany. Data were gathered from 15 interviews and seven focus groups with lobbyists and political decision makers in Berlin. The analysis shows that digital lobbying operates within a novel logic, due to the public context of social media. It is the human element that becomes the decisive factor in digital lobbying due to the social aspect in social media. Accordingly, investigating digital lobbying is critical to establish implications for theory and for practice.

Extant work on lobbying primarily focuses on who is lobbying and is lobbied as well as strategies of how to exert influence. More fundamentally, we address (1) what drives firms to engage in lobbying activities at all and (2) what factors determine the alignment of corporate lobbying. More concrete, we investigate why and also how firms do lobbying. Another intention is to further anchor this highly relevant instrument of business practice in the scientific discourse of strategic management.

It turns out that the dynamic, systemic, cognitive, and holistic rationale of the competence perspective is a very strong contributor of fresh thoughts to the debate on lobbying as a strategic means. We adopt this perspective by specifically making use of the Competence-based Theory of the Firm (CbTF) in order to scrutinize this issue in theoretical terms. Especially path-dependent developments when building and leveraging a firm's resources and competences as well as resource/competence specificity cause organizational inertia and limited adaptability to changing environmental conditions. Instead of passively adapting to changing environmental conditions, lobbying activities directly aim at entrepreneurial and goal-oriented attempts to exert influence and to steer changes in the relevant business environment, basic conditions underlying every market process, or institutional migration paths at points of inflection. Acknowledging their discretionary potential to act, agents seek to achieve a strategic fit between market requirements and the output they are able to render based on their competences by using the lever of manipulating their environment.

Empirically, propositions are derived and validated with an integrated set of qualitative empirical methods applied in the German healthcare system between 2004 and 2008.

This paper develops a typology of argumentation strategies used in lobbying. Unlike in other strategic communication functions such as crisis or risk communication, such typologies have not been proposed in the sub-field of public affairs.

The article synthesises the strategic communication, political communication and policy studies literature and employs exchange theory to explain the communicative-strategic exchange in public affairs. It showcases its explanatory potential with illustrative examples from Big Tech lobbying.

The paper describes that categories of argumentation strategies that a public affairs professional will choose are based on the contingency of the issue, policy objective and lobbying objective. The descriptive typology will require empirical testing to develop further.

The paper describes how public affairs professionals influence public policy through their argumentation strategies, which sheds light on the usually opaque activities of lobbying.

The proposed typology is the first of its kind for the field of public affairs. Beyond, it contributes communication-scientific insights from a rhetorical tradition to strategic communication research and other social science fields where lobbying is studied, e.g. policy studies.

Reviews a variety of academic and practitioner opinions on different types and definitions of lobbying and the purposes for which it is used, ranging from government relations to marketing communications. Distinguishes between what is termed loud lobbying, typically a highly visible media relations campaign providing an information subsidy to carefully targeted media, for marketing purposes; and quiet lobbying, discreet use of links with legislators, in order to encourage or block legislation. A model is given to aid clarification. The distinction is illustrated using examples of loud and quiet lobbying, including a case study of the campaigns for and against resale price maintenance (RPM). This shows Asda’s lobbying campaign to have been essentially a key element of the company’s marketing strategy. Concludes that the objectives of a lobbying campaign are crucial in determining whether loud or quiet lobbying would be more appropriate.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the interdependencies between trade and environment policies, as they get jointly determined in a political‐economy model of a small open economy. In theoretical literature, government is usually modeled as benevolent. In real economies, however, it is not a pure social welfare maximizer. Lobbies have stakes in the specific policies, and they negotiate with/bribe the government over the latter's policy stance. The influence of industry lobbying on both trade and the environment policies at the political equilibrium is the focus of the paper.

Concepts from non‐cooperative game theory are used to incorporate a Nash‐bargaining game between the industry lobby and government. Government is not benevolent. Campaign contributions help win elections and provide incentive to distort policies to attract lobby contributions. Several situations are modeled. Given a politically set environment policy, tariffs may be zero in view of the free trade agreements. Or, a sequential game is modeled where environment policy is set to maximize social welfare, given a politically determined trade policy. Alternatively, in the full political equilibrium, government and lobby bargain simultaneously over tariff and the environmental tax.

Lobbying implies that government may trade‐off one policy for another. When only environment policy is politically manipulable by the lobby, pollution tax is lower than the Pigouvian tax. If, instead, the lobby can influence trade policy only, government provides protection to domestic import‐competing sector. In a sequential game, the trade policy outcome does not change, but pollution tax is always higher than the Pigouvian level, even with the environmental lobby absent. With both the policies political, the government “concedes” and offers positive tariff protection, but, not on environment policy; that is, imposes a pollution tax higher than the Pigouvian level.

The paper provides useful insights into how, under the influence of special‐interest politics, and bargaining between the government and lobbies, the trade and environment policies interact with each other. In comparison with the existing literature on this issue, it derives several stronger and (apparently) counter‐intuitive conclusions.

This paper aims to prepare executives to pilot a US lobbying effort within the bounds of the US Federal law. Lobbying law may be thought of as the “regulation of regulation”, as it defines the ground rules for those wishing to have a direct impact upon all other regulatory systems. The article outlines what the US lobbying law requires, what it forbids and, perhaps most important, what the law does NOT regulate.

The paper takes the full spectrum of US laws and regulations relevant to lobbying – including the Internal Revenue Service Code (tax code), the Federal Election Campaign Act, the Ethics in Government Act, the internal rules of both the House and Senate, the US Criminal Code and the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act – and organizes them into a single 2 × 2 matrix, explaining what all parties must do as well as what they must not do. Via this approach, the rules that govern the “marketplace” for lobbying in the USA are explained. The competition to shape US government policy transpires within this marketplace.

Few activities the executive may engage in carry the potential payback of a well-executed lobbying campaign: empirical estimates range to returns on investment in the thousands of per cent. But the uninitiated may easily step over the line and invite both legal and public relations (PR) nightmares.

Effective lobbying can afford a corporation or industry a lasting competitive advantage. Every well-rounded business strategy should include such a component, and every well-rounded executive should be capable of performing in this arena. A solid grounding in the legal matrix forming the boundaries of this activity is a prerequisite for effective performance.

The paper organizes and outlines lobbying law in a fashion digestible by executives without legal training. It is of value to anyone wishing to engage in lobbying activities targeted at the US Government.