Like it or not, governments are the only institutions that truly represent us – our wishes, rights and aspirations. They hold the keys to change. Even as people’s political apathy and disaffection grow, this is still true.17 Only a few individuals in society tend to devote time to the political process (and I don’t blame you for not being among them!), but everyone is affected by the policies it makes.
So, even though businesses make huge contributions to society, we had better start with government action if we want to make the world a better place.18 And at a time of increasing disaffection with politics, our elected representatives need us more than ever (though they might not always be aware of it). Shrinking water supplies, 65 million people displaced across the world,19 the disruption brought about by the fourth industrial revolution on our way of life:20 these are challenges they can’t tackle adequately without the public’s help.
This might seem too ambitious. But telling your elected representatives what you think they should do, and whether they’re doing it properly – and to do so in ways beyond simply signing online petitions – could be the most effective way to put an end to our individual and collective feeling of powerlessness. You can change their priorities and influence how they design and develop policies – whether on pensions, unemployment, environmental protection, migration reform and so on.
I’m not advising you to go into politics (though if you want to, please go ahead – we need capable people!). But if you want to have an impact (rather than just talking about the issues) not being a full-time politician might even be to your advantage, given our widespread disenchantment and growing distrust of political parties.21 Politicians sometimes seem to spend more time honing their personal images than doing their jobs, and our political leaders often seem to dump their long-term policy ideals in favour of winning elections.22
This crisis in trust is paving the way for a remarkable, yet largely unnoticed, split between the world of politics and the world of policy. Politics is the realm of a small, self-referential elite. Dominated by a party-based network of public speakers, its aim is to leave a positive yet short-lived impression on you. Policy, on the other hand, has become an ever-expanding, accessible and inclusive world, inhabited by a panoply of actors – ranging from policy analysts, journalists, activists, think-tankers, civil servants and civic entrepreneurs to a few, exceptionally committed politicians who do their jobs well. It’s a demanding environment with little room for improvisation, and where, increasingly, evidence matters more than ideology.
Joining a political party demands compromise and loyalty. So it’s hardly surprising that political parties increasingly struggle to identify and recruit talented candidates. On the other hand, the worlds of policy and government business attract more and more ‘wonks’ whose relevance and impact grow daily. They’re outnumbering politicians. That’s where the power game really is. That’s the apolitical23 world this book will show you how to navigate.
Now we’ve identified where change takes place – the world of policy as opposed to the world of politics – the next step is to make sure that change will actually happen. After that, we just need to learn how to bring about change.
If you picked up this book, you are likely to be relatively young – or at least youthfully optimistic. You are likely to be someone who cares and believes that it is still possible to shift from ‘me’ to ‘we’ in order to change the world.
But what if you’re neither young nor a believer that change is possible? I hope to persuade you that there are very good reasons to believe it, and in this book I will show plenty of evidence that you, as an individual, can help to solve many of the problems affecting your community and the world, without ever running for election.
Paralysed by the hyperactivity of our daily lives, devalued by the educational system and bamboozled by the arrogant rhetoric of many politicians, we are discouraged from believing that ordinary citizens have a role to play in changing the status quo. Today businesses and governments have ever more data about us and know how to use it, yet we citizens know next to nothing about what they are doing with it.24 This imbalance of information control and use is not only an issue of power, but also one of rights and dignity. Yet because we think our voices don’t matter, it seems to make little difference who’s in charge. In any case, we lack a reason to get involved. Again, what’s in it for us?
This has been the case for a long time. But one thing has changed. The information and digital revolution is shaking the foundations of the status quo as we know it, opening up an array of ways to influence how policies are made.25 Digital technology has already created more opportunities for more people than any technological change since the printing press.26 Google, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr are radically changing how ideas spread, influence others and create networks and communities of change. While their democratising potential must not be overrated,27 their mere existence suggests that there has never been a better time for citizens to have their say and organise.
In our socially networked societies, the publication of one document on WikiLeaks may redefine international relations. Revolutions – like the Arab Spring – can be kicked off via social media. One wrong step online can put you out of business and make you unemployable. When a money manager shared false investment information via tweets and email to a list of 60,000 people, he was fined $100,000 by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. We are the first generation with direct, unmediated access to the world.28 Technology can act as a great social equaliser. It puts resources formerly available to the few in the hands of the many.29 If we are no longer content to be spectators, we can become actors. If we are no longer content to be consumers, we can become citizens, again. As Dorothy Cotton sang during the US civil rights movement, ‘We are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting for’. Millions of citizens across the world are becoming increasingly aware of their own collaborative power.
But how do we convert digital attention into meaningful action? How can you realistically accommodate new forms of participation and engagement into your busy daily routine? How do you channel the new-found exuberance and promise of this technological empowerment into your own life?
According to received wisdom, there are two main ways of taking part in a democracy. Firstly, you can vote. Casting your ballot for local or national representatives supports a given political agenda. You can also volunteer for – or donate to – political campaigns, by canvassing door-to-door, holding public meetings, raising money and helping attract media coverage.
Voting is the most familiar and widely touted form of citizen participation. Many of us have a wide range of elected officials we can vote for, at the local, regional, national and even international level. Voting matters, and we should all take part. The other way of participating is to run for office. You need a political party to co-opt you (a bit like joining a tribe), then support you. Never forget, you must then accept the rules that govern the electoral game. Good luck.
But there are limitations to both these forms of participation.
Voting is undergoing a profound crisis. Elections are occasional events with limited choices, and turnout is not only low but also falling in most countries – particularly among young people. We’ll look at this in more detail in Part I of the book.
While political parties have historically guaranteed the citizen-democracy connection, they are facing dramatic decline – not only in membership, but also in their popular appeal and endorsement. Rather than promoting democratic renewal, outmoded party machines are making it more difficult. Hence the countless calls for more ‘direct democracy’ – a system in which people choose policy initiatives directly – in our system of government. Yet, as Podemos in Spain, the Five Star Movement in Italy, the various Pirate parties and many other protest movements have shown, ‘direct democracy’ is not in itself a viable response to many of society’s challenges. First, these self-proclaimed, technology-enabled experiences of direct democracy ha
ven’t succeeded in meaningfully engaging their followers.30 Second, experience both in parliament and in local government confirms that protest parties railing against ‘the system’ are as likely to find themselves being absorbed by it as they are to transform it once in office. Third, Facebook-type networks are great for gathering people at protests, but not for building stable political organisations.31 At the time of writing, both Podemos and the Five Star Movement are undergoing internal fights threatening their existence.
There is a growing need for alternative, unconventional forms of participation that can reconnect the elected representatives with the public. Voting and running for office isn’t enough; social media networks aren’t enough. There’s an alternative space to be filled in today’s (representative) democracies.
Fortunately, there is also a third, less well-known way to make a difference in public life: lobbying. Don’t recoil at the word! Although you may previously have only heard about lobby groups that represent the interests of big business, whether that’s the pharmaceutical industries or big tobacco companies, it is possible to lobby for good. Lobbying may be the second-oldest profession on the planet, and it is probably the most widely misunderstood (and misused) phenomenon surrounding the healthy functioning of government and society.
Lobbying enables anyone to engage with the policy process directly, by influencing elected representatives to initiate – or block – a given policy, whether it’s fracking, LGBT rights, or reforming the pension system. It involves writing to policymakers to influence them, arranging meetings with politicians or pressuring them into taking a particular course of action, but also mobilising other citizens, building alliances and conveying information to both decision-makers and the public. Thanks to the digital revolution and a myriad of new channels of participation, lobbying has never been so easy.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, lobbying is not only legitimate but also necessary – provided that everyone (including you) has the chance to get involved, which hasn’t always been the case. It ensures citizens and interest groups are directly represented in the policy process by circumventing the traditional, often insidious and oligarchic, channels of political representation. Lobbying empowers you and your community. You may end up being surprised and delighted by how much difference you can make.
But Why Should You Become a Lobbyist?
You have a busy life and certainly better things to do than to spend time with politicians (unless you need their favour or you nurture some political ambitions). In real life, only citizens hired by a company such as Coca-Cola, Google or Toyota, or a non-profit organisation such as Greenpeace or Amnesty International; your city office or a trade union, agree to lobby on behalf of their clients. This is generally a full-time job that can be performed in-house (you’re hired by Google, your city or Save the Children) or by an external consultant.
There are many more lobbyists in our societies than you might expect. Most of the time their work is not reflected by their job title. A CEO is also a lobbyist for her company’s interest, insofar as she represents and defends that company in the public space. The same applies to a teacher working for her school, or an NGO activist volunteering for his organisation. The both speak on behalf of their institutions and promote their interests. Perhaps your job entails a lobbying task but you have never realised it. We all lobby, in our own way. That’s what we are expected to do in a society where there are more and more interests to be taken into account.
Lobbying is a fact of public life in our democracies: lobbyists’ jobs are advertised in newspapers, their position papers circulate in government and they advertise at bus stops (generally presented as ‘public affairs’ positions). Unfortunately organised interests, notably corporations, have historically monopolised (even hijacked) lobbying. On average, out of the 100 organisations that spend the most on lobbying in developed countries, 95 represent businesses.32 Furthermore, many of the non-business organisations that claim to speak for citizens lack representation.33 But these elements do not exhaust the possibilities of lobbying. Thanks to the information revolution and the opening-up of the policy process, lobbying is no longer the prerogative of well-funded groups with huge memberships and countless political connections. And that’s what this book is about: democratising lobbying. We need more – not less – lobbying, but of a different kind: lobbying by the citizens, for the citizens.
To many, ‘citizen lobbying’ sounds like an oxymoron. And so it is, if you believe that lobbyists represent – by definition – the interests of some rather than all, meaning they can never be a force for good. When I was still a conventional academic insulated in my comfortable ivory tower, I shared that belief. Now, after years of direct engagement in advocacy campaigns, I see it differently. Citizens and civil society organisations can lobby for good. So can corporations.34 And sometimes all these actors can even team up to speed up change.35 Imagine the corporate world lobbying together for decisive and effective action to curb climate change, or to promote fair pay. The best lobbyists, marketers, strategists, all mobilised as one for a good cause… Imagine if the non-profit world enjoyed the same resources and expertise as the corporate world. This is the goal pursued by my organisation, The Good Lobby, an advocacy skill-sharing community connecting real people – citizen experts, such as academics and professionals as well as job-seekers and students – with civil society organisations who work on the most important public issues.36
My first experience of citizen lobbying came in 2009. I was teaching a class in Paris to a crowd of students from all over the world. I wanted to illustrate to my students how they – as citizens who knew little or nothing about lobbying – could make a difference by winning a major battle for millions of consumers.
I asked them what they thought of international roaming charges. These are the extra fees mobile operators apply when we make calls from abroad. Being deliberately provocative, I suggested roaming charges should be eliminated as they hampered our freedom of movement, thereby limiting economic and personal freedom across European countries. Only a few weeks after that class, thanks to the entrepreneurship and commitment of a former student of mine, I found myself involved in one of the first popular petitions ever lodged in the EU. In fact, it was one of the first European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECI) ever submitted. An ECI is a transnational petition system that enables citizens of at least seven different European countries to start collecting the 1 million signatures required to prompt the EU to adopt a new policy. Although we never managed to collect that many signatures, we set in motion an EU-wide public debate – through a low-cost, social media-powered marketing campaign. It led the former Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes to propose the abolition of international roaming charges to the European Parliament and EU governments. They will be gone by the end of 2017, to the benefit of more than 500 million citizens.
Success is relative. We failed to get the signatures we needed but we brought about a systemic change. And we did all of this without taking the credit. That’s the essence of citizen lobbying: learning, testing and making things happen within the system. Since then I’ve been involved in dozens of citizen lobbying campaigns and trained hundreds of students, activists and professionals to become citizen lobbyists across the world. Here are a few more examples.
Alejandro Calvillo and his wife Elaine Kemp, who live in Mexico, launched a fight against sodas and their harmful effects on health. Mexicans are among the biggest consumers of drinks with added sugar. As a result, they have one of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the world. The poor are particularly affected, putting a heavy burden on Mexico’s public health system.
Alejandro and Elaine decided to create an association to counter soda manufacturers’ lobbying and ad campaigns, which claimed that physical activity mattered more than diet, despite the scientific evidence to the contrary. They called their association El Poder del Consumidor (Consumer Power). By organising street events and academic conferences, they gradually
attracted people’s attention. By 2012, Michael Bloomberg’s foundation for public health was giving them enough funding to stand up to counter-attacks by the manufacturers and their tame politicians. Eventually, a bill was passed in 2014 which imposed a ‘soda tax’.
Soda consumption fell by 17 per cent in a year. This piece of legislation has inspired other countries to consider following Mexico’s example. Alejandro and Elaine are citizen lobbyists.
Sofia Ashraf is now an internationally acclaimed Indian Tamil rapper. But until December 2015, she was a creative supervisor at Ogilvy & Mather, a global advertising firm that counts Unilever among its clients. Sofia resigned from her job when she took up the cause of local workers’ associations that had been seeking compensation from Unilever for 14 years. Unilever allegedly operated a thermometer plant in Tamil Nadu that spilt mercury into a local river, killing dozens and incapacitating others.
Sofia released a rap about the spill called ‘Kodaikanal Won’t!’, denouncing Unilever. It went viral on YouTube. In 2016 Unilever finally agreed to compensate the victims for their losses in an out-of-court settlement. Thanks to Sofia, poisoned workers secured justice and the Jhatkaa association is now trying to ensure Unilever cleans up the river at its own expense. Sofia Ashraf is a citizen lobbyist.
Max Schrems, an Austrian law student, stood up to Facebook in 2013. After a short stay in California as an exchange student, he discovered that the company had circumvented the EU data protection regime when transferring his data (and those of millions of other Europeans) to the US. After crowdfunding his campaign, he succeeded in successfully challenging Facebook through the Irish authorities and eventually the EU Court of Justice.
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