How do lobbying and campaigning work? Let’s start with campaigning. Campaigns are normally run by by individual candidates and political parties. Candidates will run a staff of paid workers and volunteers... focused on getting that particular candidate elected. The political party will then co-ordinate the campaigns of all of its candidates. The party will normally try to prioritize its resources to where they think... it will make the biggest difference. In some places, like most of Europe... the parties are really the important thing. In other places, individual candidates matter. One of the things influencing that balance are the rules on campaign finance. In the USA, the rules on campaign finance also push campaigning to outside groups... who campaign on behalf of a candidate... but not officially under that candidate’s control. So, what we’re interested in here, is how money can get into politics? How does money get in to campaigning? In the 18th and 19th century... in Europe and the USA, there was a practice called treating the voters. Politicians would literally buy voters gifts and serve them food and drink. That kind of campaigning still happens in some countries today... like India and Nigeria, even though it’s illegal. Usually, though, the way candidates... spend their money today to influence our opinions is a bit more subtle. We can distinguish between the air war and the ground game in campaigns. The air war is about national media, including adverts on TV, radio, the Internet. The ground game is about local areas. People going out, handing out leaflets. In the ground game, what matters is having lots of enthusiastic volunteers... who will go out and campaign for you. In the air war, what matters... is having money to pay for adverts. If campaign finance isn’t regulated... then campaigns will be funded privately. Individuals and corporations donate money to the candidates or parties they support... and those candidates or parties will go out and spend that money on campaigning. States have a lot of options on how to regulate campaign finance. They could limit how much people can donate to campaigns... or they could limit how much campaigns are allowed to spend. They could limit who is allowed to donate, by banning donations by corporations. They can limit what kind of campaigning is allowed, banning treating the voters... but maybe also banning paid TV adverts. Finally, the government... can require information about this is made public. In addition to regulating private funding, governments can also provide public funding... to candidates and political parties. In lesson four, we’ll talk about the merits... of these different options in more detail. Let’s move on to lobbying. We can define lobbying as attempting to influence the opinion of policy makers. By policy makers, I mean elected representatives... members of government, senior civil servants. The kind of lobbying we’re interested in... is lobbying that’s done by professionals on behalf of their clients. Those clients are groups, like corporations, labor unions or environmental groups. Although our broad definition includes contributing money... most lobbying is about providing information. This takes a bit of unpacking. The political scientist Anthony Nownes says... politicians need three kinds of information, corresponding to their three basic goals. First, in order to do anything else, politicians need to get elected or re-elected. So, they need electoral information. Information about what kind of thing... would be popular with voters. But, to actually get things done... politicians also, normally, need the support of other politicians. That’s why they need political information, information on what other politicians support... and whether proposals actually have a change of getting enacted. Finally, if a politician gets elected and has political backing, they can think about... what they actually want to do, changing laws and policies. That’s why they need policy information, information on consequences of policies. On the environment, on society, on the economy. Lobbying is made up of lots of different activities. Probably most important is trying to get direct contact with policy makers... to talk with them about the issues, that might be in meetings, or at a party... or by telephone or e-mail. Lobbyists don’t just try to have direct contact... with people who have the political power. They also serve their clients in other ways... by trying to influence public. That might be through writing op-eds... by publishing reports, or holding press conferences. Lobbyists try to mobilize social movements, by distributing information, holding meetings... and encouraging people to put pressure on their electoral representatives for issues. In all of these ways, lobbyists try to advance the interests of their clients. In the rest of this module, you’ll learn about lobbying... and campaign finance in more detail. For now, to get more feel for these activities... let’s take a look at a couple of case-studies.
