Yet alcohol presents dangers of which many Europeans seem unaware. It has been recognised by the World Health Organisation to be the third leading risk factor for disease and mortality in Europe. In 2015, alcohol was responsible for one in seven male deaths and one in thirteen female deaths in the 15–64 age group in Europe. In other words, 120,000 people died prematurely due to alcohol in 2015. Moreover, alcohol marketing has become more aggressive in recent years, targeting the European youth in particular.
In order to reduce excessive consumption of alcohol, Amandine Garde (University of Liverpool) and I have promoted a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) project aimed at drafting a directive to regulate alcohol marketing in the EU.
One million signatures then need to be collected over a twelve month period, across seven Member States. This will allow the project to be submitted to the European Commission for consideration.
There is an actual demand for such an ECI among European citizens. According to the Eurobarometer survey, three quarters of the EU population (76 per cent), would approve the banning of alcohol advertising targeting young people in all member states, with every second respondent (50 per cent) answering that they ‘agree totally’ with this idea. A country-by-country analysis shows that in all countries the majority of respondents would favour such a ban, the strongest support (93 per cent) being seen in Slovakia (with 68 per cent ‘totally agreeing’), and less support in Luxembourg (58 per cent, with 41 per cent ‘totally agreeing’) and Denmark (59 per cent, with 37 per cent ‘totally agreeing’).
Before moving on, let’s see if you are ready. Here are some questions to help you identify where you currently stand:
Are you sure – based on your direct experience or preliminary research – that your issue won’t be tackled unless you take action?
Do you feel capable and ready to carry it through?
Do you have enough enthusiasm and energy to last what could be a long journey?
Are you ready to learn the tools that power citizen lobbying?
If you answered yes to these questions now, or after reading the rest of this book, then you are ready to become a citizen lobbyist and start planning your campaign.
Now you know the main steps of successful citizen advocacy and you seem ready to go, let’s explore them one by one. They are presented in logical order, so you might want to follow them step-by-step. Avoid treating them as a checklist, though: you must revisit each step as you work through the process.
We are now ready to examine the first step in our list: pick your battle.
STEP 1: Pick Your Battle
‘The best way to predict your future is to create it.’
Abraham Lincoln
The first step is to know what you want. What do you want to change? This is what we call ‘issue identification’, or – in activists’ language – the battle. The list of issues you might want to address is virtually infinite. No policy is ever perfected. Choosing your battle is not necessarily the result of a rational process – it can emerge when you suddenly feel that you must stand up – but you can still think strategically before acting.
Climate change policy, action to protect bees, LGBT rights, admission policy to your local school, whistle-blower protection: almost anything you deem worthwhile can be brought to policymakers’ attention. It might be local, national or even have an international dimension.
The range of issues at stake may feel overwhelming. But don’t worry – you don’t have to come up with an original idea to become a successful citizen lobbyist. You may pick up an idea you came across in conversation with friends, family or colleagues, in an op-ed piece or on a blog. That’s where most of my best ideas for new citizen campaigns come from!
The more the ideas are generated by yourself, friends and colleagues, on the basis of a shared experience, the more representative, enthusiastic and promising your project will be. In other words, stick to reality.
Although you can pick virtually any issue that concerns you, your choice needs to be strategic. There is a big difference between lobbying on an issue that is already being discussed by the media and politicians, and lobbying on an issue that you have to sell from scratch. While the latter scenario is obviously more challenging and demanding, your action – if successful – could be even more impactful. You will be the one framing the debate!
A number of tools can help you monitor what is going on in the policy space. And since timing is key when it comes to influencing any process, you really want to be first so that the conversation is anchored to your point of view and concerns. Professional lobbyists call this monitoring. Most countries publish online legislative initiatives – generally called ‘bills’ – at a local and national level. In the UK, the key monitoring tool is called Hansard. The US has THOMAS, the Library of Congress website, which tracks federal legislation in action. The EU has Eur-lex. Almost every country has its own monitoring tools.
Monitoring tools also help you find out the major actors involved in an initiative. Bills in the US are sponsored by congressmen. In the UK any Member of Parliament can introduce a bill. Some bills represent agreed government policy, and are introduced into Parliament by ministers; all others are known as private members’ bills. A similar system applies in most of the world. In the EU, legislative proposals always come from the European Commission, and only then they are entrusted to a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), generally called a rapporteur.
Various media outlets track the progress of major policy initiatives, such as Politico (both in the US and Europe), The Hill and Euractiv; plus, there are other national counterparts. Often they offer free email newsletters to which you can subscribe.
Alongside these conventional information channels, you can often follow the progress of legislation on social media. Public officials run personal websites and circulate newsletters, and their offices and organisations do the same; you can keep up to date with them through an RSS feed. Many news sites, blogs and other online publishers syndicate their content in this format to deliver fresh content. Monitoring these sites will help you find out about policy decisions, new issues and debates before the general public does.
Unlike previous generations, you have Google. On top of using basic and advanced searches, you can also set up Google Alerts for free and receive email notifications whenever Google finds new results on a topic that interests you. For example, you could get updates about a cause you like, or discover immediately when something about you pops up on the web. Over the years, this has been the most effective and inexpensive monitoring tool I’ve used.
Last but not least, never forget that your own community is a great place to identify, detect and understand live issues. In other words: leave the office, break the silence and talk to people! Doing your work in a café, as most of my fellow citizen lobbyists do, makes this easier. Amid the urge to act, don’t forget that talking to others is one of the best ways to explore your ideas, test your plans and find out whether they make sense before you put them into practice. This is what we call ‘talking with purpose’. Having said that, never forget that you can’t listen if you are too busy talking. Listening teaches you just as much as talking does. Moreover, by empathising with others, as you do when you listen properly, you’ll gain a huge advantage with policymakers once you start discussing the same issues with them.
‘Easy Wins’ and Other Good Starting Places
Some issues are inevitably easier to sell than others – either because of their inherent nature, or the spirit of the times. For example, efforts to limit individual choice – typically in an effort to crack down on alcohol or tobacco use, or gambling – are likely to meet resistance. The more socially acceptable it is to behave in a particular way, the tougher you will find it to argue for change. Conversely, issues on which public opinion is already starting to change, such as same-sex relationships or cannabis use, might be easier to tackle. Here are a few relatively easy wins.
The ‘Revolving Door’
This is about public officials who leave office to take on corporate posts, making money out of the connections and influence they acquired in office. The risk that these people may undermine democratic decision-making is high.4 Imagine that an outgoing regulator joins the very same bank that she has previously been regulating. The key strength of this battle is that very few people, except maybe the ex-politicians concerned, would dare to openly defend the revolving door phenomenon. Even indifference would go down badly. How could you consider it to be a healthy relationship between the public and the private sectors? If you find the right way to go about it, you can quickly gather huge support. That’s why the petition launched on WeMove.eu after former EU Commissioner President Barroso took a job at Goldman Sachs gathered 100,000+ signatures within a few days.
Data Protection
Data protection issues, such as how to protect your data when it is collected and traded among businesses, is set to inspire a large number of citizen actions. In the space of just six years, privacy has become a core issue that attracts substantial financial backing — shown, for example, not just by the recent surge of mainstream privacy start-ups such as Sirin Labs,5 but also by the $250m bankrolling of The Intercept magazine, which aims to hold governments and businesses to account, while doggedly protecting the security and anonymity of its sources. Activist groups, non-profits and NGOs have never experienced such a boost in popularity and funds.6 These campaigners are building a new framework of strategic activism that aims to create reputational damage by destabilising public confidence in targeted companies.
Drones
Although countries like the UK already have some drone legislation in place, it is proving difficult to prosecute people for crimes such as flying them too close to buildings or people, or in crowded areas. Commercial airline pilots have also reported drones being flown close to airports. Their growing popularity and availability present several dangers that may call for legislation.
Drug Monopolies
A number of pharmaceutical firms have come under fire in recent years for charging extortionate prices for drugs over which they enjoy a monopoly. A notable example is Turin Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager, which in 2015 acquired Daraprim – a drug used to treat HIV – and immediately increased its price by more than 5,000 per cent.7 This brought the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Big Pharma Under-reporting
AllTrials is a project countering the phenomenon of under-reporting of clinical trials by advocating that clinical research adopts the principles of open research. The project summarises itself as ‘All trials registered, all results reported’: that is, all clinical trials should be listed in a registry and their results should always be shared as open data. At the heart of the organisation is a petition signed by over 85,000 individuals and 599 organisations. As of today, thousands of clinical trials have not reported their results; some have not even been registered. Information on what was done and what was found in these trials could be lost forever to doctors and researchers, leading to bad treatment decisions, missed opportunities for good medicine and trials being repeated. All trials past and present should be registered, and the full methods and results reported.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
A unique opportunity to test citizen lobbying is offered by the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite their pretty unattractive name, these were agreed by UN Member States in September 2015 as the successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The SDGs are a new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators that UN Member States will be expected to use to frame their agendas and public policies over fifteen years (2015–30). With seventeen goals and 169 targets covering the social, economic and environmental spheres, the SDGs are part of the ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’. While the MDGs were aimed at developing countries, the SDGs are universal, apply to all countries and foresee an active engagement of civil society to actually attain them. The goals embrace and reflect the interconnectedness of social, economic and environmental challenges and, most importantly, reflect a powerful aspiration to improve our world – laying out where we collectively and individually need to go and how to get there.
Citizen lobbyists will be essential – together with political, business and civic leaders – to achieve this transformational change. While not legally binding, as an internationally-agreed policy framework, governments will be encouraged to demonstrate progress against the goals and targets on the international stage. Against this backdrop, citizens are expected to play a key role in engaging with all relevant actors and to pressurise their governments to deliver on their pledges.
Do you have a realistic chance of success? Since organising is hard work and generally involves roping in various people, you probably want to be sure that your plan has a real chance of success. Of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embark on a plan unless you can come up with a winning tactic. Most of the time, you need to score a series of small victories to create the momentum that will lead to success.
The final element to consider – and this is the ultimate test – is how passionate you are about the issue. Citizen lobbying is something you do alongside your main job, so you need a real passion for it. Ask yourself if this is the issue you’re going to make time for.
ACTIVITY 1 – Chart the Issue and its Solutions
Now that you know how to pick up an issue you feel deeply about, grab a pen and notebook, laptop, iPad or (even better) a flipchart or board. Write down a brief statement describing what you are concerned about (‘the issue’) and start thinking what to do about it (‘the solutions’). We’ll get into more detail on creating solutions shortly, but for now it’s valuable to think about the problem and its solutions in tandem. Do it now, and keep these statements updated as you monitor the issues, talk to people and share ideas with friends and colleagues.
Situating the Issue
Once you have identified your cause (or causes), you need to find out whether it has already entered the policy process via a policy proposal, resolution or even an international treaty. Then identify which stage it has reached. Is the issue due for a hearing or vote? Does a proposal already exist or has the issue already been addressed by a new regulation that you dislike? Is it part of an administrative process?
In order to avoid getting bogged down, you need some benchmarks. The diagram on the next page is a very simple visualisation of the policy cycle that I came up with a few years ago and regularly use in my own work and teaching. It shows the process by which new initiatives are adopted, and can help you to figure out how far policy has already progressed on your issue by the time you join in.
The policy process typically includes the major phases shown below the diagram.
As a citizen lobbyist, you may get involved with one or more of the phases. You might draw policymakers’ attention to your cause and provide data and statistics to understand it (problem definition), come up with ideas for solving it (consultation and design of policy options), influence the enactment (adoption and implementation), and even go as far as to challenge the final policy outcome (adjudication) if you dislike it. Should the policy be subject to evaluation (policy evaluation), you may want to seize this chance to shape its revision.
© Alberto Alemanno
Problem definition: what the issue is
Public consultation: what people think about the issue
Design of the policy options: how to solve the issue
Adoption: making a decision to adopt the solution
Policy implementation: the implementation of the solution
Policy adjudication: somebody may challenge the solution(s) before the Courts
Policy evaluation: how well the solution worked.
But if the issue you are promoting is not yet on policymakers’ radar, your lobbying journey will have to start earlier. The first chal
lenge will be to get your issue into the policy cycle (via problem definition). Promoting a solution for something that is not yet deemed a problem could turn out to be initially more challenging than one that has already gained public attention.
Sometimes your issue may not call for new or amended laws, but simply an administrative decision. This will be the case if you want public authorities to stop the construction of a mall or to authorise a protest, for example. In this situation, you need to understand the process leading up to the adoption of that decision. In other circumstances, your aim might be even more modest. What you seek is for decision-makers to take a stance upon a particular societal issue, such as domestic violence or same-sex relationships, so as to prompt a change in social perception.
ACTIVITY 2 – Map Your Issue
Now that you have picked your battle, chart it in the right spot in the policy process cycle. Is it a new idea? Or is it a pending initiative you want to promote or stop? Find out where your initiative stands before you pick it, and then chart its possible steps.
STEP 2: Do Your Homework
‘We need to first define the problem. If I had an hour to save the world I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions.’
Albert Einstein
Any lobbying action requires some background research work, regardless of its complexity.
Firstly, no matter how brilliant your proposed solution might be, it alone will not be enough to persuade policymakers to adopt it. Do you want to block the construction of a nuclear plant? Do you want to get an LGBT rights law on the statute book? Do you want to protect whistle-blowers? To pursue any of these causes, you will generally be expected to speak the language of policymakers: hard facts, figures and data. You’ll need arguments backed up by data in order to build your case for action. Usually, these will come from expert and authoritative sources backing up your position. If you neglect to educate yourself about the issue, or are so hasty in your research that you misinterpret or misrepresent information, you’re doomed to failure. What credibility can you possibly inspire in a decision-maker if you can’t prove that you know your facts?
Lobbying for Change Page 10