Axr5380A

Andr-louis Rochet

11/04/2014

CAS138T : RCL II

ISSUE BRIEF

For a Few Lobbies More

By Andr-Louis Rochet

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Andr-louis Rochet

11/04/2014

The act of lobbying is defined as to influence a norm, create a new one or delete already existing laws.1 Its form is following the definition of Merriam Webster an organized group of people who work together to influence government decisions that relate to a particular industry, issue, etc.2 Governments try to define and regulate lobbying by creating voting laws to prevent political corruption and establishing norms that improve their transparency. A lobbying group will mainly try to enforce certain laws in their favor or in the favor of their employers (relations between corporations and lobbies). But lobbyism is not always related to corruption or wrongdoings (African-American rights). Lobbies are usually related to corruption and pressures put on politicians, but it is not always true. Although the traditional methods for lobbying groups to get favors from a government representative (or other) include: Giving the very expensive dinners with bags of money or presents to the government representatives kids or even simply the use of violence or threats. A legal way exists too; a group can influence decisions in federal court cases by writing briefs. They may give a different point of view or more information to the jury or the members of the court themselves. They will influence public policy (executive decisions that are taken for public administrations), that are part of the constitution, legislative and judicial branch decisions. Interesting fact is that each state in the world has its own different view of lobbyism and different sanctions to work with lobbying, but where does lobbying comes from? The term lobby was used to since the beginning of the 19th century; lobby literally means corridor or vestibule3 and referred to the House of Commons of Great Britain, where members could discuss with Members of Parliaments, and obviously illegal transactions or favors did occurs4. We can underline lobbying with a major case: In the 1990s Jack Abramoff Native

1 2

Gilles Lamarque, Le Lobbying, PUF, Que sais-je, page 6 www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lobby Comes from french vestibule meaning hall or more litterally lobby Lobbying". BBC News (BBC). 2008-10-01 (it is where the definition literally comes from.)

3 4

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American lobbying scandal5 on Native American casino gambling interests, involving Jack Abramoff and other lobbyists. By overbilling and putting fake pressure on them they build a lobbying system that stole more than 85 million $ from their clients pocket. They mainly illegally gave gifts to many legislators in exchanges of votes to support their legislations, political men of both political sides have implicated on both sides. This is one of the first major acts of Lobbying, one of the reasons why American federal states followed by European states started to take measures against lobbyism. Lobbying in the United states describes a paid activity in which special interests hire well-connected professional advocates often to argue for specific legislation in decisionmaking bodies such as the United States Congress,6 even the origins of lobbyism can be traced a long time ago, since the 70s it grew exponentially (with its pic in 1990 with Abramoffs affair). In the United States lobbying and lobby are two distinct things, while lobbying can be seen as against the law and might lead to punishment (related to corruption), the act of lobbying (related to protest through legal way) is seen as a way of expressing free speech and protected by the US constitution7. As well as European Lobbying stretches from local government to the federal level. Lobbying is considered by most of the S&P 500 firms and major American corporations as a valuable investment, giving opportunities that the free market itself could not offer to them. Lets define what is acceptable and what is not, Gaetan Gorce on the radio France Inter8, defines the act of accepting presents from lobbies as a deontological and moral choice. In 2007 when two big companies of energies (one state owned the other was private) merged many deputes that had to vote the for the law according the merging process received

5 6

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5081540 Evangeline Marzec of Demand Media (2012-01-14). "What Is Corporate Lobbying?" 7 Eric Lane, Michael Oreskes, Le Gnie de l'Amrique, Odile Jacob, 2008, p 44
8

http://www.franceculture.fr/player/embed-share?content=4654150

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invitations from the company to go see some rugby games during the world cup. Even though the invitation was friendly and did not technically asked anything concrete in return, their purpose was evident. These firms use these always used these form of friendly presents, but according to Malek Boutih a Socialist deputy these forms of lobbying belong to the past 9, indeed with nowadays technology it is very easy to record/tape these kinds of informal meetings, lobbies understood it and they now send intelligent, competent lawyers with solid arguments, to prove the depute wrong.10 Some depute are even legitimate representative of these lobbies, everyone knows but no one talks11 says Gerrad Dupond, indeed there are very few written evidences like letters, tickets or actual presents (see document below) . The problem is so widespread that in 2001 the French National Assembly hired a deontologist12 , unfortunately the deontologist does not have real power as the French law states if the deontologist sees that there is a lack of morale with the depute actions, he has to inform the depute and the depute has by himself to take all the measures to stop his lack of morale. We will appreciate here the lack of clarity and of severity of the law. No real measures are taken, because many persons in power are too corrupted and cannot permit investigation of the French Justice (as it is happening now to the Former president Nicolas Sarkozy who is prosecuted in multiples affairs of corruption, lobbyism, usurpation of identity etc.)

For Pascal Tallon, president of The French association of council in lobbism, states in his press release13 that we are all lobbysts14 indeed when you go see a state representative, a mayor or a depute and you tell him what you think is the most appropriate for the situation
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http://www.franceculture.fr/player/embed-share?content=4654146 http://www.franceculture.fr/player/embed-share?content=4654150 11 http://www.franceculture.fr/player/embed-share?content=4654146 12 http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/qui/deontologue-role.asp 13 I could not find the written post (probably deleted), so Ill post the vocal proof 14 http://www.franceculture.fr/player/embed-share?content=4654158
10

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you are lobbying. Now we can ask ourselves if lobbying isnt just a normal aspect of our society, where is the human being ready to go to get something, if you want to buy an average car and someone compete with you, if you have the opportunity to advantage your interest would you do it? Even if the measure is unethical? Well the economic way of thinking proves that due to his rationality the Human being will always put ethics after profit, this is one of the reason why we have a government creating and enforcing laws to permit the human to stay away from his state of nature and coexist one with the other. How can we fix this problem? Well the model will be Bruxelles (Belgium) where the lobbies are listed in the Lobby register, at the European parliament 5570 group of interest at inventoried, it gives more transparency to the entire system. But does it work? The group LobbyPlag compared amendments made by Euro-deputes and texts that the lobbies where forced to make public, as a result more than 60% of the amendments were literally just copy and paste from lobbys texts15. As France Culture Pixel mentions it in his tweet, transparence = Utopia? 16, with the creation of the European Union we assist to a switch from lobbying at a national level to a more widespread level, rending the lobbies more powerful and more. But what if even the European parliament is corrupted? According to some internal sources of the Members of the European Parliament17 the value of the invitation of lobbies to each other individual can reach 13.000 $ a week, corrupting research and data that could be hurtful to certain powerful lobbies. Usually the lobby would attack the national delegations in Brussels or directly to certain of member of the council working group sometimes even directly to the government itself (Hollande vs Startups18) . Lets remember the switch between national and supranational (European level) of lobbyism action acted simultaneously with the development
15 16

http://lobbyplag.eu/docs https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=349173140695437312&related=FCpixel 17 Taming Brussels lobby". Neurope.eu. April 25, 2011 18 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-22/solo-french-startups-face-curbs-as-hollande-heedslobbies.html

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of Europe, we can trace is back since the election of the first European parliament in 1979, in 1986 the single European act permitted each nation to vote to decide decision in the council, therefore making the European Union less based off executive decisions and more on parliamentary vote, which is one more reason for the lobbies to develop pressure on individual members of the parliament which is more feasible to do than directly attacking a member of the government. The aftermath of Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal in Washington D.C. and had a massive impact on the international lobbying scene, but this is only the emerged part of the iceberg and there is still a long way to go before we will burst the abscess. One could retrace lobbyism in the USA since the first fire of the White House, the general Grant had to find refuge in the hotel Willard and was invaded by pressure groups, as old as lobby can be are they a threat for democracy? The group Lagardre published in 2012 a series of measures that would be beneficial to the environment and that literally was the route that had to be followed by the French government (the measure was mainly consisting on giving more share to the shareholders and lowering the cost of work. Which technically would bring more employment, but less paid and with less right which is not very ethical.) and was signed by all the most powerful companies19. The only reason for it not to occur was the change of government (from right to socialist). We already proved that in Europe the lobby where overall an issue, and when the governement does not have any more solutions they just turn towards groups of pressure that propose to them so many helpful solutions. So why not banning all the lobbies? Well we already saw that it would be very unconstitutional, since lobbies are hypocritically a figure of free speech Black lobbies (that made the federal government backing up segregationist laws), Homosexual lobbies, Women rights lobbies It is a question of balance; would you like to be ready to sacrifice the LGBT community (that is
19

See picture number 2

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a form of lobby) for the sake of neutrality? We criticize the politics and the big corporations for their actions but in the end we are all responsible, everyone is involved. History has proven that radical decisions never work, changes must be made step by step, making sure to give the information to everyone. We need to regulate lobbyism at a global scale with solid global bases (not as the Lobbying Act who has a lot of imprecisions that make it very easy to circle for the lobbies). We have to make the laws as global as the lobbies are; measures must be taken at the level of the UN only supranational can solve this problem. The human way of thinking proves indeed that as long as the rational man does not sees a better incentive he will never step back from a profitable offer (If it can be beneficial to someone else, I have to take the opportunity so it benefits me instead). This is why when humans stood in communities and raised laws to be able to live one with the other20, this social pact must apply to group going against democracy, groups trying to make their right more valuable than their neighbors ones. To keep everyone one the same page, we need regulations with severe punishments with anyone going against the rule. The change in mores has not been for the best, a century ago when political men would be caught in corruption scandal they would just put an end to their life21, but it appears that nowadays honor does not matter as much anymore. As we see in France where Jean-Francois Cop pressurized members of its own political party to favorite some of his friends in affairs involving corruption at large scale22 and walked away by faking being the victim claiming that he was the victim of a public lynching a man-hunt and methods worthy of the Inquisition.23 Even if raising the severity of the punishment for corruption will not eradicate the evil lobbies it will at least help to get rid of a good proportion
20

Philippe Raynaud, Dictionnaire de philosophie politique, article picurisme (extrait of my senior high school philosophy class)
21

Affair of the Canal The Suez where the responsibles instead of going into trial preffered to put an end to their lives.
22

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-opposition-leader-jeanfranois-cop-hits-back-atcorruption-allegations-9166384.html (found an article in English) 23 BIS

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of these problematic lobbies. Punishment is for me the only solution to put everyone in the right path; lobbyism is too big as a profit for people to back down with the actual punishments.

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11/04/2014

Pic 1: Example of invitation of depute to a very expensive restaurant by a pressure group.

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Pic 2: Major French Firms Action (MFFA): an example of a group of pressure in action