Lobbyists and their reputation

In political studies, it is frequently acknowledged that lobbying and lobbyists suffer from a bad reputation. The same concept of lobbying is often improperly associated with corruption or influence-peddling, while more positive views portraying lobbying as a channel of democratic participation and as an opportunity to make policymaking processes better and more informed are apparently advanced only by scholars and experts, obviously including lobbyists themselves. Besides normative reflections on this issue, empirical research on the topic of the public perception of lobbying has predominantly focused on media outlets and policymakers, looking at discourses on this matter appearing for instance in newspaper articles and parliamentary speeches. When it comes to citizens’ perceptions, a similar negative stance is usually only assumed. Furthermore, scholars and advocates of lobbying regulation have long supported the assumption that regulating lobbying contributes to strengthening trust in the integrity of policymaking and building a more positive image of lobbying itself. Our aim in this paper is to empirically test both these assumptions, by analyzing the results of two national surveys led on the citizens of Canada and Switzerland (N=1500) specifically on this topic. The article thus investigates the perception of lobbying by citizens of countries with different types of institutional cultures and regulatory frameworks, trying to understand whether the presence of specific lobbying legislation can impact the attitude toward lobbying itself. By measuring the negative or positive views of lobbying, the paper also sheds additional light on the role of specific sociographic variables in the public perception of lobbying.