Lobbying for Change

by Alberto Alemanno

  Conclusions

  ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’

  Margaret Mead

  Becoming a citizen lobbyist is a powerful antidote to our growing feelings of powerlessness. But there is more to it than that. Breaking free of the habit of passivity gives you the chance to channel your talents into effective engagement. This feels like an awakening. It comes from the sudden realisation that so much of our physical and social space is the fruit of somebody else’s efforts. As our daily digital excursions remind us, we are increasingly powerless by design. Rising income inequality is not, as a matter of fact, the inevitable result of impersonal forces such as globalisation or automation.1 It stems from hundreds of social, financial, tax and trade policy measures that benefit the people with a direct line to government.

  Over half of the money given to US presidential candidates in the 2016 campaign came from just 158 families.2 And the demographics of these 158 families are strikingly similar: 50 of them are in the Forbes 400 list of America’s wealthiest billionaires, and many of them even live in the same neighbourhoods. They are overwhelmingly older, male and white, in an electorate that is increasingly young, female and black, Asian or Latino. These 158 families donated a total of $176 million; 138 of them backed President Trump.

  While other liberal democracies are not quite so polarised, the overall picture of a government dominated by special interests is borne out by systemic imbalances that weaken the voices of ordinary citizens.

  As a citizen lobbyist, you are bound to experience this imbalance first-hand. Even if your issue is small, local and affects relatively few people, you will start to feel a sense of injustice – at first superficially, then more deeply. The experience will change you. You will see, engage with and live out this imbalance of power and social injustice. Your fear will be turned into outrage before your outrage will turn into hope.

  You may come to realise that beneath your issue there are deeper dynamics which call for a greater commitment to social justice and citizen empowerment. In other words, the problem you initially cared about is only a symptom of a more serious pathology that deserves your attention.

  Nobody will force you to step up your efforts, but acting as a citizen lobbyist – even if you do it only once – will give you a deeper world view than you had before. At a time of acute societal polarisation, you will reach out and listen to those with whom you disagree. By now you know what kind of difference you can make to society and how.

  I have my own opinions about public policy and politics, but they are not what this book is about. Regardless of whether you are a conservative, a progressive, a libertarian or a communist, a green or a pirate, atheist or theist, activist or politically inactive, the purpose of this book is to make you into an effective citizen lobbyist. The more we engage as citizens with our elected representatives, and the more we force our systems of governance to answer to us, the better government works for everyone.

  At a time of growing disenchantment with the democratic system, we have no choice but to transform mounting distrust into an active democratic virtue. That’s exactly what citizen lobbying does. Acting as a corrective device for our representative democracies, it offers a form of criticism and monitoring that allows citizens, policymakers and businesses to work better, together. And it does so by leveraging citizens’ expertise and imagination, empowering ourselves and boasting our happiness. By striving for equality, citizen lobbying helps society to heal itself.

  Each of you will decide for yourself what to fight for, and once you have found something you care passionately about – whatever it is – you now have the tools, tactics and mindset to become an effective advocate for change. Please share your citizen lobbying stories. Tell me (and the world) how they go and, regardless of the final outcome, how much you have learned from them.

  Will lobbying became a new hobby, like chess, gardening or reading? If you too become an ambassador for the citizen lobbying movement, perhaps we will live in a more engaged society – and probably a happier one.

  And remember that none of the big leaps forward for society, such as universal suffrage and civil rights, have happened without citizens’ involvement. For change to happen, people who are unhappy with the status quo have to grab the bull by the horns and win the battle. You don’t have to be a celebrity to make it happen.

  It is up to us – and up to you.

  End Notes

  Introduction

  1.Throughout the book, we’ll explore some of these opportunities in more depth.

  2.Alberto Alemanno, ‘Unpacking the Principle of Openness in EU Law: Transparency, Participation and Democracy’, European Law Review, Vol. 39, pp. 72–90 (2014). Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2303644

  3.Cass Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, Oxford University Press (2006); Cass Sunstein, Republic.com, Princeton University Press (2001); Cass Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, Princeton University Press (2017).

  4.E. J. Wood, ‘Problem-Based Learning: Exploiting Knowledge of How People Learn to Promote Effective Learning’, in Bioscience Education E-Journal, Vol. 3. Available at: http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol3/beej-3-5.htm

  5.Dahlia Remler, ‘Are 90% of academic papers really never cited? Reviewing the literature on academic citations’, London School of Economics, Impact Blog, 23 April 2014.

  6.Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, ‘The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect’, Journal of Democracy, July 2016, Volume 27, Number 3.

  7.For an excellent introduction, see Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism?, Penn University Press (2016).

  8.For an introduction to happiness studies, see Derek Bok, The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being, Harvard University Press (2011). Current research on well-being derives from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on self-realisation and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research streams and a body of knowledge that is in some areas divergent and in others complementary. To know more, see E. Deci and R. Ryan, ‘Hedonia, eudaimonia, and well-being: An introduction’, Journal of Happiness Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 1, pp. 1–11 (2008).

  9.B. Frey and A. Stutzer, ‘What can Economists learn from happiness research?’, Journal of Economic Literature, 40:402–435.

  10.A. Sen, Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press (2001).

  11.C. Barker and B. Martin, ‘Participation: The Happiness Connection’, Journal of Public Deliberation, Vol. 7, Issue 1 (2011).

  12.Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: How Face-To-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier, Penguin Random House (2015); ‘Immunology: The pursuit of happiness’, Nature, 27 November 2013. Available at: http://www.nature.com/news/immunology-the-pursuit-of-happiness-1.14225

  13.Arie W. Kruglanski et al., ‘The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism’, Political Psychology, Vol. 35, pp. 69–93 (2014).

  14.See, for example, Michael Edwards, Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World, Berrett-Koehler Publishers (2010).

  15.Paul Monaghan and Philip Monaghan, Lobbying for Good: How Business Advocacy Can Accelerate the Delivery of a Sustainable Economy, Greenleaf Publishing (2014), p. 15.

  16.Manuel Arriaga, Rebooting Democracy — A Citizen’s Guide To Reinventing Politics, Thistle Publishing (2013).

  17.Edelman’s polling of ‘informed publics’ found a three-to-one margin of support for increased government regulation of the energy, food and financial services sectors. See: http://www.edelman.com/insights/intellectual-property/2016-edelman-trust-barometer/executive-summary/


  18.For an economic argument supporting this position, see Mariana Mazzuccato, The Entrepreneurial State, Anthem Press (2013).

  19.UNHCR, ‘Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015’ (2016).

  20.For a primer on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, see Klaus Schwab, ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’, World Economic Forum (2015). Available at: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Media/KSC_4IR.pdf. In his view, this new revolution is characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres building on the Third.

  21.D. Altman, ‘Bringing Direct Democracy Back In: Toward a three dimensional measure of democracy’, Democratization, Vol. 20, pp. 615–614 (2013); R.J. Dalton and S.A. Weldon, ‘Public Images of political parties: A necessary evil?’, West European Politics, Vol. 28, pp. 931–951 (2005); M. Dogan, ‘Erosion of Confidence in Thirty European Democracies’, Comparative Sociology, Vol. 4, pp. 11–53 (2005); B. Stevenson and J. Wolfers, ‘Trust in public institutions over the business cycle’, Discussion paper series // Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit, No. 5570 (2011).

  22.James Adams, ‘Causes and Electoral Consequences of Party Policy Shifts in Multiparty Elections: Theoretical Results and Empirical Evidence’, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 15, pp. 401–419 (2012).

  23.Check the recently established organisation, Apolitical, whose mission is to celebrate ‘the men and women in government who are on the front lines of our greatest challenges’. See: www.apolitical.com

  24.David Sarokin and Jay Schulkin, Missed Information: Better Information for Building a Wealthier, More Suistainable Future, The MIT Press (2016).

  25.Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, Polity (2015).

  26.Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organising Without Organisations, London: Penguin (2008).

  27.Micah Sifry, The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Changed Politics (Yet), OR Books (2014).

  28.Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit, Antonin Bergeaud, Richard Blundell and David Hemous, ‘Innovation, Income Inequality and Social Mobility,’ VoxEU, 28 July 2015.

  29.Sergey Filippov, ‘Government of the Future: How Digital Technology Will Change the Way We Live, Work and Government’, European Digital Forum Digital Insight, The Lisbon Council and Nesta (2015).

  30.See Jamie Bartlett and Heather Grabbe, ‘E-democracy in the EU: the opportunities for digital politics to re-engage voters and the risks of disappointment’, Demos, p. 8 (2015).

  31.Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, ‘Learning from Virtuous Circles’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 27, p. 96, p. 198 (2016).

  32.Lee Drutman, The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, Oxford University Press (2015).

  33.For an OECD perspective, see Alberto Alemanno, ‘Stakeholder Engagement in Regulatory Policy’, OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook, OECD Publishing (2015). Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2701675. For a US perspective, see Matt Grossmann, The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation, and American Governance, Stanford University Press (2012).

  34.Kyle Peterson and Marc Pfitzer, ‘Lobbying for Good’, Stanford Social Innovation Review (2009).

  35.Michael Edwards, Civil Society, Polity Press (2014), p. 46; Mary-Hunter McDonnell, ‘Radical Repertoires: The Incidence and Impact of Corporate-Sponsored Social Activism’, Organization Science, Vol. 27 (2016).

  36.The Good Lobby website is available at: www.thegoodlobby.eu

  Part I – The Problem

  1.For a compelling account on the cognitive psychology of powerlessness, see Sendil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity: Why having too little means so much, Henry Holt (2013).

  2.Ibid.

  3.When people are in the presence of others, they are less likely to offer help than when they are alone. This reinforces inaction.

  4.Brian Stipelman, That Broader Definition of Liberty: The Theory and Practice of the New Deal, Lexington (2012), p. 243.

  5.John Thorley, Athenian Democracy, Routledge (2004).

  6.James Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (1861), The Floating Press, May 1, 2009.

  7.For one of the best defenses of liberal democracies, see, Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Princeton University Press (2013).

  8.James Madison, Federalist papers, no. 10, New York Packet, November 23, (1787).

  9.Robert Dahl, Democracy and its Critics, Yale University Press (1989).

  10.David Van Reybrouck, ‘Why Elections Are Bad for Democracy’, Guardian, 29 June 2016.

  11.Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Routledge (2003), p. 269.

  12.Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, Chapter XV.

  13.James Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (1861), The Floating Press, May 1, 2009, p. 204.

  14.Christopher H. Ache and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, Princeton University Press (2016).

  15.Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increase Inequalities in Political Involvement and Polarized Elections, Cambridge University Press (2007).

  16.For a masterful account of how citizens exercise power alongside and beyond the ballot box, see Pierre Rosanvallon, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust, Cambridge University Press (2008).

  17.Massive Millennial Poll, a survey of attitudes about sex, politics, tech, culture and more in 2015.

  18.The Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement, 2016.

  19.‘Voters can’t name their MEPs as poll highlights disengagement with EU’, Guardian, 10 May 2014.

  20.Martin Gillens et al., ‘Testing theories of American politics: elites, interest groups, and average citizens’, Perspectives on Politics. Vol. 12, pp. 564–581 (2014); Martin Gillens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America, Princeton University Press (2010).

  21.Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, University of Chicago Press (1995).

  22.‘An Economy for the 99%: It’s time to build a human economy that benefits everyone, not just the privileged few’, Oxfam Briefing Paper (2017). Oxfam’s calculations use the wealth of the richest individuals from Forbes’ billionaires list and the wealth of the bottom 50 per cent from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2016.

  23.‘An Economy for the 1%, How privilege and power in the economy drive extreme inequality and how this can be stopped’, 210 Oxfam Briefing Paper (2016).

  24.The material on page(s) 1, from ‘62 people own same as half world – Oxfam,’ 2016 is reproduced with the permission of Oxfam, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford OX4 2JY, UK www.oxfam.org.uk. Oxfam does not necessarily endorse any text or activities that accompany the materials.

  25.Considerable empirical work finds that there is no consistent correlation between money spent on outcomes in any given case.

  26.Center for Responsive Politics, lobbying database available at: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/

  27.Lobbyingfacts.eu, ‘List of biggest NGO spenders on EU lobbying reveals register’s absurd data’, November 12, 2015. Available at: https://lobbyfacts.eu/articles/12-11-2015/list-biggest-ngo-spenders-eu-lobbying-reveals-register%E2%80%99s-absurd-data

  28.See ‘7,000 and counting – Lobbying meetings of the European Commission’, Transparency International (2015)

  29.For an OECD perspective, see Alberto Alemanno, ‘Stakeholder Engagement in Regulatory Policy’, OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook, OECD Publishing (2015). Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2701675. For a US perspective, see Matt Grossmann, The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation, and American Governance, Stanford University Press (2012).

  30.Cass Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, Oxford University Press (2006); Cass Sunstein, Rep
ublic.com, Princeton University Press (2001); Cass Sunstein, Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, Princeton University Press (2017).

  31.APSA Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy (2004), p. 651.

  32.Clay Shirky, ‘The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 1, pp. 28–41 (January/February 2011).

  33.Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy, Polity Press (2004).

  34.William D. Nordhaus, Paul Samuelson and Global Public Goods, ‘A commemorative essay for Paul Samuelson’, Yale University (May 5, 2005).

  35.Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, ‘The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 27, Number 3, (July 2016).

  36.‘Youth Voter Participation: Involving Today’s Young in Tomorrow’s Democracy’ IDEA (1999).

  37.James Madison, Federalist papers, no. 10, New York Packet (November 23, 1787).

  38.Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1824).

  39.Robert Dahl, Who Governs, Yale University Press (1961).

  40.Donald C. Pennington, The Social Psychology of Behaviour in Small Groups, Psychology Press (2002).

  41.See, for example, Jefferson and Rush quoted from The People’s Bicentennial Commission, Voices of the American Revolution, Bantam Books (1974), pp. 175–76.

  42.James Russell Lowell, ‘The Place of the Independent in Politics’, Political Essays, New York, 13 April, 1888.

  43.John Dewey, ‘Democracy and Education’, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, Macmillan (1916).

  44.Lija Farnham, Gihani Fernando, Mike Perigo and Colleen Brosman, with Paul Tough, ‘Rethinking How Students Succeed’, Stanford Social Innovation Review (February 2015).

  45.Richard Howell Allen, Impact Teaching, Allyn and Bacon (2002).

  46.Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education, Viking (2015).

  47.The Value of Extracurricular Activities Infographic: http://elearninginfographics.com/value-extracurricular-activities-infographic/