The aim of this work is to answer two main questions: - Why do political systems pursue lobbying regulations? - and - within regulated systems, why are some regulations more robust than others? Lobbying regulations represent the most popular transparency-policies of the last 15 years. By explaining the emergence of lobbying regulations and the variations in their robustness (level of transparency), this work contributes to a better understanding of transparency policies. The theory involves a set of hypotheses based on the relevance of the systems of interest representation, partisanship, lobbying scandals, and the external promotion by supranational organisations. These hypotheses are tested on the Austrian case, which introduced lobbying regulations in 2013. This represents the first empirical work in this field of research. The analysis is performed by tracing the process of the introduction of the lobbying legislation providing a dynamic view on power relations involving both, access and influence.
