Lobbying against democracy
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Date
2021
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Western Cape
Abstract
This essay seeks to excavate the anti-democratic propensities of corporate lobbying. It
begins by considering the nature of lobbying and then attempts to comprehend the
relationship between corporate lobbying and democracy in terms of Crouch’s theory of
post-democracy. The political culture of post-democracy is blatantly corporatist and
promotes the anti-democratic proclivities of the corporate lobby by providing ready
opportunities for non-transparent lobbying. Cohen-Eliya & Hammer classify non-
transparent lobbying as an index of the failure of the democratic process. The essay
applies the typology developed by them to Germany as a case study of anti-democratic
corporate lobbying in action. It concludes by considering regulation and criminalisation
as two possible remedies for the anti-democratic transgressions of non-transparent
corporate lobbying. The former is explored by way of an analysis of the regulatory
regimes of Germany and the USA; the latter by considering non-transparent corporate
lobbying as a homologue of the crime of corruption.
Description
Keywords
Corporate lobbying, political culture, Anti-democratic, Crime of corruption
Citation
Kolmar, L. Koen, R. (2017). Lobbying against democracy. JACL 1(1) pp 9 – 45.