The volume, sophistication, and reach of lobbying make it a defining force in contemporary societies. At the same time, institutions across countries, levels of government, and international arenas have responded with rules that recognize lobbying as a legitimate means for non-state actors to wield political influence. The Oxford Handbook of Lobbying and its Regulation offers a foundation for understanding this topic at a moment when the practice and oversight of political influence are expanding worldwide.Structured around a conceptual roadmap of the 'five Ws—who lobbies, where influence is targeted, when actors intervene in the policy cycle, and how and why political and legal systems regulate these activities—the volume takes on the challenge of untangling the complexity of interest representation. The chapters examine how lobbying has expanded across sectors, venues, and stages of decision-making, involving actors ranging from global corporations and consultancy firms to NGOs and citizen-lobbyists, and creating new opportunity structures for influence. The chapters show how regulatory frameworks shape and are shaped by these lobbying structures, highlighting significant cross-national and organizational variation as well as pointing out persistent blind spots and new challenges. Bringing together leading scholarship, this Handbook offers an authoritative and informed starting point for anyone seeking to understand and advance the study of lobbying and its regulation.

Governments worldwide are developing sunshine policies that increase transparency in politics, where a key initiative is regulating lobbyists. Building on the pioneering first edition, this book updates its examination of all jurisdictions with regulations, from the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Australia. Unlike any book, it offers unique insights into how the regulations compare and contrast against each other, offering a revamped theoretical classification of different regulatory environments and situating each political system therein. This edition innovatively considers different measurements to capture the robustness of lobbying laws in terms of promoting transparency and accountability. And, based on the authors’ experience of advising governments globally, it closes with a no-nonsense guide on how to make a lobbying law. This is of value to policymakers seeking to introduce or amend regulations, and lobbyists seeking to influence this process.

Pandemic policies have been the focus of fierce lobbying competition by different social and economic interests. In Viral Lobbying a team of expert authors from across the social and natural sciences analyse patterns in and implications of this ‘viral lobbying’. Based on elite surveys and focus group interviews with selected groups, the book provides new evidence on the lobbying strategies used during the COVID 19 pandemic, as well as the resulting access to and lobbying influence on public policy. The empirical analyses reach across eight European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom), as well as the EU-level. In particular, the book draws on responses from approximately 1,600 interest organisations in two waves of a cross-country survey (in 2020 and 2021, respectively). This quantitative data is supplemented by qualitative evidence from a series of 12 focus groups with organised interests in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands conducted in spring 2021.

The volume, sophistication, and reach of lobbying make it a defining force in contemporary societies. At the same time, institutions across countries, levels of government, and international arenas have responded with rules that recognize lobbying as a legitimate means for non-state actors to wield political influence. The Oxford Handbook of Lobbying and its Regulation offers a foundation for understanding this topic at a moment when the practice and oversight of political influence are expanding worldwide.Structured around a conceptual roadmap of the 'five Ws—who lobbies, where influence is targeted, when actors intervene in the policy cycle, and how and why political and legal systems regulate these activities—the volume takes on the challenge of untangling the complexity of interest representation. The chapters examine how lobbying has expanded across sectors, venues, and stages of decision-making, involving actors ranging from global corporations and consultancy firms to NGOs and citizen-lobbyists, and creating new opportunity structures for influence. The chapters show how regulatory frameworks shape and are shaped by these lobbying structures, highlighting significant cross-national and organizational variation as well as pointing out persistent blind spots and new challenges. Bringing together leading scholarship, this Handbook offers an authoritative and informed starting point for anyone seeking to understand and advance the study of lobbying and its regulation.

Governments worldwide are developing sunshine policies that increase transparency in politics, where a key initiative is regulating lobbyists. Building on the pioneering first edition, this book updates its examination of all jurisdictions with regulations, from the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Australia. Unlike any book, it offers unique insights into how the regulations compare and contrast against each other, offering a revamped theoretical classification of different regulatory environments and situating each political system therein. This edition innovatively considers different measurements to capture the robustness of lobbying laws in terms of promoting transparency and accountability. And, based on the authors’ experience of advising governments globally, it closes with a no-nonsense guide on how to make a lobbying law. This is of value to policymakers seeking to introduce or amend regulations, and lobbyists seeking to influence this process.

Pandemic policies have been the focus of fierce lobbying competition by different social and economic interests. In Viral Lobbying a team of expert authors from across the social and natural sciences analyse patterns in and implications of this ‘viral lobbying’. Based on elite surveys and focus group interviews with selected groups, the book provides new evidence on the lobbying strategies used during the COVID 19 pandemic, as well as the resulting access to and lobbying influence on public policy. The empirical analyses reach across eight European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom), as well as the EU-level. In particular, the book draws on responses from approximately 1,600 interest organisations in two waves of a cross-country survey (in 2020 and 2021, respectively). This quantitative data is supplemented by qualitative evidence from a series of 12 focus groups with organised interests in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands conducted in spring 2021.