Lobbying against democracy

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.