Lobby

The English word lobby , when it did not mean “the enclosure in field where the animals before being are gathered sent to the slaughter-house” . (English Dictionary Webster) literally “hall meant” or “corridor” , by in particular evoking the corridors of the American Congress with Washington and those of the House of Commons with London, where various representatives of groups made up and their lawyers seek to meet the members of Parliament or their assistants and conseillers.
De there comes the expression Lobbying and the current direction from the word lobby which evoke the efforts of lobbies made up (Association S, Entreprise S possibly Multinationale S, Chambre S, Syndicat S, Fédération S, Filière S professional, ONG (governmental organizations), clubs of reflection, consultancy, lawyers…) for putting forward their point of view near the elected and Institution S, or to influence the course of the political decisions either in their favor, or to defend an external cause (social, environmental, humane.).
On speaks about clientelism to characterize the elected officials or Political parties which répondrent easily positively with the pressures of the lobbying.
Une extreme and illegal form of the lobbyng being the Trading of favors. To define the “lobbys” whereas an inflation of terms or concepts describes the same phenomenon is delicate. Nuances exist however. And the concepts of “ lobby”, “ lobby ” or “ lobby ” also evolve/move in time and according to the contexts (national, of die, etc). We define the “lobbys” as “of the entities which seek to represent interests of particular sections of the company in order to influence the political processes”.
Le term “ lobby ” can be regarded as a version anglophone of the term “ lobby ”, and synonymous with “ lobby” (however more négativementconnoté). Some elements can support this definition;

These groups can be classified according to certain characteristics. They are organized, nongovernmental or representative of another government. they seek to influence the process of political decision, without seeking to control.
Le principal process of influence is the information exchange, as well factual as subjective, with an aim of influencing the attitude, the positions or the decisions of the public authorities. Such an influence is not one-way and necessarily does not take place against the will of the political decision makers. The man or the political group can also seek to establish relationships to the lobbys to obtain more useful informations with decision making, or to influence these lobbys, by associating them for example with their action.

A constant innovation seems to characterize the organization of these groups (with in particular the use of the Internet). The traditional pyramidal form, where certain fixed and well identified groups would prevail an organisational hierarchy of the lobbys, would erode today with the profit of a more flexible organization, in networks, reflecting the fluctuation of the lobbys, in a less hierarchical system and proposing the novel methods of co-operation ad hoc or “abstract” which would be based on simpler exchanges of information.

Lobbys and European Union

Since 1986, the EU saw multiplying around it lobbys in all the fields. This growth was expressed as well in the number of European lobbys, i.e. of European Federations of various national groups working towards the same ends or bases, as in the increase in the Europeanization of traditionally national lobbys opening offices in Brussels.
Les quantified sources varies considerably, but the Commission estimated into 1992 that nearly 3000 lobbys worked around it. Greenwood in 2003 counted some as for him approximately 1500. 70% of the lobbys would represent companies (on basis individual or collective) and of the economic sectors, 20% would represent trade unions and groups defending of the broader interests (ecology, consumers, youth,…). 200 organizations would represent as for them conglomerates of areas, areas, cities, communities of communes.

Five factors could explain the importance which the European institutions for these many groups have;
Trois is directly related to the process of European integration and would partly explain the importance of the groups representing of the economic interests:

- the creation of the Single European market,
- the transfer of the capacities towards the European institutions in the successive treaties and
- change of the procedures of decision making in favor of the European Parliament.

Another factor refers to the Re-distributive functions of the EU through specific allowances, subsidies, support programs and of development. To the four preceding factors the actions are added which the Commission or the European Parliament could carry out in specific fields. One can think for example of the action of the Commission Delors (1985-1995) for the development of the European social dialog: 60% of the representatives groups of the companies or the sectors of the economy were born before 1980, whereas the majority of the emergent lobbys known as public as from the years 1990.

However, two currents seem to be opposed in the scientific debate explaining the growth of the lobbys in Brussels. The first forward met the bond between the increase in the decisional powers of the Community and the development of the lobbies, while the second insists on the anticipation of the groups or the progressive effect of drive.

The action of the lobbying, as for it, is delimited by the structures of occasions political available to the lobbys. We understand here by “ structure of occasion political ”: “ the whole of variables among which we distinguish the institutional occasions, i.e. competences and the accessibility of the institutions (…) in the field considered; political occasions in a strict sense, i.e. orientation of the public policies (…) and their prospects for evolution, which can also take the form of a threat for the interests; and finally media occasions, according to the degree of publicity or contrary to confidentiality of the economic situation. ”

The capacities of class action suit of each lobby, as for them, are determined by several variables:
“They are obviously function of the resources financial, legal, of the degree of information and accumulated know-how.
Elles also depends on the organisational structures: concentrated, segmented, or diffuse. ”

Civil society, lobbys and managements and labor: which differences?

The concept of “civil society”

An abundant scientific literature evokes the concept of “civil society”, with roots far in the history of the social sciences. The various authors grant at the same time different origins and variations to him.

Jürgen Habermas estimates that the civil society such as made up in the free companies and pluralist forms subdivisions taking place even public spaces inside. They are a median level of interaction between the authorities or public authorities and the Citoyen S. They form: “ a fabric of a great complexity, ramified in a multiplicity of arenas which overlap, as well international as national, regional, municipal or subculturelles; articulated, on the bottom, following from the functional points of view, the central themes, the political sectors, etc… , generators of more or less specialized public spaces ”

Public spaces and civil society play a role-key in the formation of the opinions citizens and the general will at Habermas. They are the essential mediators, and reflect for it the evolution which seems well to take the contemporary policy. They support the participation and the implication of the citizens in the definition of the rules which structure any company, and make it possible to appreciate the free and pluralist character of a democratic company .
Pour Habermas, this fact is central at our time, and is integrated fully in the report that: “ the democratic deficits are felt each time the circle of the people who take part in the democratic decisions does not recut the circle of those which undergo the consequences of these decisions . ”.
Le new Contract social, if he wants to be to be guaranteeing idea of autolegislation (according to which the recipients of the laws must also be able to look themselves like their authors), must make civil society, interacting in public spaces, of the interlocutors privileged as them constitute the base and the substance of the emergence of the modern forms of deliberative democracy and policy.

Mutatis-mutandis , Linz and Stepan also recognize at the civil society a determining role for the democratic consolidation: “ If a State exists and that it functions, five other conditions interdependent and likely to be reinforced mutually must also exist or be carried out so that a democracy is consolidated. Firstly, the conditions of the development of a free civil society and activates owe beings joined together. ”
Bien sure this proposal of Linz and Stepan applies more immediately to the States carrying out a transition towards a free and democratic political system. Nevertheless this problematization makes it possible to conceive that the civil society is in the middle of the free and democratic political systems contemporary. It as makes it possible to conceive as a company freely and democratically made up which would refuse with these new interactions taking place in public spaces between the policies on the one hand, and the organized citizens on the other hand, would remain deaf with the new evolutions which are not other than the fruit of the practice and the experiment that the citizens of the democracy made since his historical advent.

How and around which collective or individual actors the civil society they are subdivided and are structured?

We make well there vis-a-vis a fundamental question. The diversity of the actors structuring, subdividing the civil society, and taking part in the constitution of public spaces is at the very least consistent: associations, governmental organizations, companies or contractors, managements and labor, lobbys or pressure, think tanks, research centres or researchers, media, movements collective citizens (petitions, strikes, demonstrations,…), etc

However, all these actors, weighing of an unquestionable voice inside public spaces, do they constitute all the civil society?

Krishan KUMAR thinks that this concept of civil society does not mean anything any more in contemporary terms. This concept would be a resurrection drawn from social philosophies of Hegel, Marx or Gramsci which one would not see any more the reasons which push us to employ it, nor the particular value that would cover. The policy precedes the civil society, and this complex fabric of various and varied associations, of groupings of citizens or personalities morals in various forms, would not have any importance once defined or categorized as they all belong to two vaster units: the policy and the company. But this categorical refusal is it really justified whereas sciences have the duty to establish concepts enabling us to approach in an objective way what appears to us with the first abstract and incoherent glance?

Habermas as for him, excluded by nature from the concept of “civil society” the organized economic interests and managements and labor. If one can include/understand the motivations inherent in such a proposal, the formation of the associative fabric which characterizes the evolution of our contemporary companies cannot, according to us, being included/understood like the single expression of the civil society. The companies, the organized economic interests, managements and labor also take part them in the civic and democratic life of the free society. They are not by nature different.

And while reflecting there well: When the political arena defines legal frameworks who force the action of the entities morals, isn't it intellectually founded and acceptable only to define the regrouping or the political action of these entities like belonging fully to the civic and democratic sphere of activity?

If a clear distinction is to be operated between political parties and civil society, the distinction between groups of economic interests, managements and labor and civil society is not inevitably obvious. Such a distinction must above all be based on the nature of the system of representation of the interests existing in a given company. Pluralist nature, supporter of corporatism or néo-supporter of corporatism of a given political system seem more strongly to determine the way in which lobbys, managements and labor and civil society are separate.

Pluralism, corporatism and néo-corporatism, which differences for the representation of the interests?

Sabine Saurugger proposes the fact that the studies concerning the place of the lobbys in the policy-making were inspired a long time by American work resulting from the theory of the international relations and were located in the pluralist paradigm. David Truman then Robert Dahl established the large theoretical bases of them and pluralism is indicated: “As a system of representation of the interests in which the constituent groups are organized in a variable number of categories multiple, voluntarily made up, competing, deprived of hierarchical and autodéterminées organization (by the type or the field of interest); categories which are not especially authorized, are recognized, subsidized, not created or controlled by the State in some manner that it is in the choice of the leaders or the articulation of the interests and who do not exert a monopoly of representation in their respective categories. ”

The pluralist system would be thus a system in which the organized lobbys are made competition to try to influence the political decisions. The company is driven by a system of consultations of the interests (not treated on a hierarchical basis and multiple) concerning the whole of the fields referring to the sphere of the public action of the State. No group would have the possibility, more or less durable, to monopolize the contacts with the decisional spheres. Pluralism is a theory, presenting a general system of representation and connotes a political system of interests more or less.

Néo-corporatism referred to him to the idea of corporatism sociétal; The groups are not controlled by the State and are relatively independent. It is different from pluralism by a competition between the groups taking part in the policy-making process limited and legitimated by the State. Various variables then come to influence the relations between the lobbys and the public authorities. They are generally of four orders: the degree of concentration of the representation, the nature of adhesion (voluntary or obligatory), the degree of competition and centralization, the nature of the defended interests. Néo-corporatism finds its bases in the idea that the company is mainly divided into two lobbys respectively representing the capital or the workers. These two groups are central in this theory and take precedence over all the other lobbys, they are in top of a vertical hierarchy legitimated by the State and the government.

In the variety of the studies which the theories of néo-corporatism caused as of the Eighties, four principal types of relations between the lobbys and the governmental actors were proposed by Grant and Coleman:

  1. the access to the “higher realms” , the groups can profit from a regular access to the official people like with the ministers, and is frequently consulted in the development process of the policies in the fields which relate to them;

  2. the development of policies , the groups obtained a public statute by which they are formally invited to assume with the public authorities a role in the development of the public policies;
  3. the design of the policies , the groups assume with the public authorities a role in the design of the public policies;
  4. the government of the private interests , an association is deputy like public authority by the government and fully assumes responsibilities supported by the coercive capacity for the State to develop or implement policies in a given field.

The Corporatisme is different from the Néo-corporatism so that it returns to a form of intermediation of the interests subordinates and controlled by the State. This concept returns to the official corporatism which is generally carried out under authoritarian regimes not tolerating the emergence of independent and free groups. The legitimated groups are then placed under control of the State (Italy and Germany fascists for example).

The participation of the lobbys in the “European Governorship”

To include/understand what the term of “governorship indicates”, it is interesting to refer to work touching with the European governorship. These studies show and include generally many historical currents, and make it possible to better approach the contemporary design which one can grant to the concept of governorship.

It is as useful to recall as this European governorship is divided into very different characteristics according to whether the authors defining it are located more in the current supranationalist, intergouvernementalist or néo-functionalist.

It is possible to consider the range of this concept in an inclusive and broad way. Balme and Chabanet propose in this direction an interesting definition: “The governorship is distinguished from the government in what it characterizes the relations between a whole of institutions and actors, public and private. ”

The concept of governorship here is included/understood like a process resulting from the interactions between the various actors taking part in the policy making. Nongovernmental actors (associations, federations, social movements,…), the governmental institutions and actors are included in this definition. One admits their capacities to be mobilized, with being consulted, joining and to confront themselves in order to influence the political decisions being played at various levels of capacities. This definition as makes it possible to recognize as nature even political system can generate forms different of governorship.

Is the model of European governorship dominated by the level supranational, national, will infra national?

Recent studies tend to show that the institutional operation of the EU seems marked by the interaction and the succession of various modes of governorship, i.e. the confrontation of the various actors intervening for the development of the European public policies varies according to the influence granted to each one of them for decision making. Jenson and Pochet mobilize on this subject the theories of Wallace and Wallace, to explain why the modes of governorship can beings described in five alternatives, of which each one was dominant at one time of European construction. So for Wallace and Wallace Multi Level Governance was the mode of governorship most extremely during the Eighties, it would seem that today the EU is dominated by the intensive intergouvernementalism where the Council would be the most prominent actor in the process of the policy making.

However, it is interesting to retain here that various forms of governorships can coexist within the EU. It seems to us right then, for this study, to regard as it propose S.Bulmer and C.Lequesne, that: “The principal observation is that, in absence of a strong authority in vertical axis within the EU, the forms of decision making remain fluid with a small hierarchy.”

In this fluid play organizing itself on the basis of hierarchy small, the Commission and the Council remain however the Masters of the political diary of the European Union, the Council par excellence posts as a legislator political system of the European Union for all the decisions not raising of the first pillar of the Common Market where the European Parliament can act as Co-legislator. The Council of the areas and the Economic and Social Committee European (CESE) appear in this system like bodies of second plan, not recognized as European institutions and occupying only one advisory role.

Is the model of European governorship characterized by a pluralist system, supporter of corporatism or néo-supporter of corporatism of intermediations of the interests?

To specify this second slope of the model of European governorship we will call upon the various elements presented higher.

“The organized lobbys are not given, they emergent like result of an interaction to the multiple facets between the social one and the organized structures - by which the substance of the collective interest depends with final (…) way in which it was organized. ”

Before obtaining the functions which today found the specificity of managements and labor, those were lobbys. They remain it today, since they are free, beyond specific competences from which they profit, to carry out other types of activity and functions like providing services to their members, to try to influence the government policies by exploiting the structures of political occasions common to all the other lobbys (strike, lobbying, newspapers,…).

“Employers' associations, lobbys by definition, (…), are representative groupings with the direction where the public authorities regarded them as interlocutors and integrated them to differing degree in the advisory mechanisms and concertatifs of the political decision. All are lobbies with the direction where they work with the promotion of the interests of their members while trying to modify the policies of which they are the object. ”

It would be thus dangerous to deny the functions and responsibilities which the European Union confers to managements and labor. And we must also in this direction clearly theirs recognize, to define the system of intermediation of the interests characterizing the model of European governorship. These ideas are however delicate to exploit. They touch with a debate particularly sensitive and politicized in Europe: the redefinition of the role of managements and labor and reduction in their functions within the CEASE since the creation of ECSC.

Nevertheless, and whatever these stakes, we assume our point of view here, and choose to define managements and labor as specific lobbys, arrived in the European Union to a degree of official recognition and held to respect forms of particular and representative organizations to be allowed to dialog with the European public authorities:

  1. to be interprofessional, sectoral or catégorielles and to be organized at the European level;

  2. to be made up of organizations themselves recognized like forming integral part of the structures of managements and labor of the Member States and to have the capacity to negotiate agreements and to be, as far as possible, representative in all the Member States;
  3. to have adequate structures allowing them to take part efficiently in the process of consultation”.

European managements and labor thus profit in the European Union from a particular field from competences, offering to them structures of occasions more important than the other lobbys acting at the European level. We define this structure of specific occasion, from which managements and labor profit as a field of competence which is clean for them:

“The definition of the field of competence of an employers' association is not presented in the form of a one not given final and immutable. The observable changes in the structure of the economic activities, in the technological discoveries, the importance relative to the various sectors,… are reflected in the definition of the fields of intervention of the groupings. This one can widen or on the contrary to specialize. (…) In the majority of the cases, the definition of the field of competence of an employers' association refers to the delimitations envisaged by decree. ”

This analysis thus makes it possible to target with more accuracy the model of intermediation of the interests characterizing the model of European governorship by means of six ideal-types defined in the preceding chapter.

Although by nature managements and labor are not different from the lobbys a hierarchy minimalist seems well to exist in the European Union. As well European treaties as the distinction made within the CEASE between civil society and managements and labor support the thesis jointly that the model of European governorship would be characterized by a system néo-supporter of corporatism minimalist of intermediation of the interests. We consider this last very close to a pluralist system where all the lobbys without distinction nor particular hierarchisation would be in competition to influence the political decisions.

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