Everybody's doing it, including lobbyists for fracking and nuclear power, public sector reform and bank regulation. It doesn't matter if the new frame relies on fabrication. The referendum on an alternative voting system was not, as anticipated, so much a conversation about the merits of first past the post. They led with the claim that switching to AV would deny troops badly needed equipment and sick babies incubators.
The Yes camp lost the vote two to one. The trick is in knowing when to use the press and when to avoid it. The more noise there is, the less control lobbyists have. As a way of talking to government, though, the media is crucial. Messages are carefully crafted.
Even if the corporate goal is pure, self-interested profit-making, it will be dressed up to appear synonymous with the wider, national interest. At the moment, that means economic growth and jobs. Get the messaging wrong and you get fiascos such as High Speed 2 HS2. Westbourne reframed the debate to make it about jobs and economic growth. The new messaging focused on a narrative that pitted wealthy people in the Chilterns worried about their hunting rights against the economic benefits to the north.
The strategy was "posh people standing in the way of working-class people getting jobs," said Bethell. Private healthcare also regrouped after the wrong messages went public. As Andrew Lansley embarked on his radical reforms of the NHS, private hospitals and outsourcing firms were talking to investors about the "clear opportunities" to profit from the changes. After comments by Mark Britnell, the head of health at accountancy giants KPMG giants and a former adviser of David Cameron, hit the headlines in May — Britnell told an investors' conference that "the NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years" — the industry got a grip.
Lobby group The NHS Partners Network moved quickly to get everyone back on-message and singing from "common hymn sheets" , as its chief lobbyist David Worskett explained.
The reforms were about the survival of the NHS in straitened times. Just nobody mention the bumper profits. It doesn't help if a corporation is the only one making the case to government. That looks like special pleading.
What is needed is a critical mass of voices singing to its tune. This can be engineered. The forte of lobbying firm Westbourne is in mobilising voices behind its clients.
Thirty economists, for example, signed a letter to the FT in in support of HS2; businesses endorsed another published in the Daily Telegraph. Westbourne was also hired in to lobby against the top rate of tax, although who was behind its "50p tax campaign" remains a mystery.
And once a company pays some fixed start-up costs, the marginal costs of additional political activity decline. Lobbyists find new issues, companies get drawn into new battles, and new coalitions and networks emerge. Managers see value in political engagement they did not see before. Lobbying is sticky. Lobbyists drive this process. They teach companies to see the value in political activity. They also benefit from an information asymmetry that allows them to highlight information, issues, and advocacy strategies that can collectively make the strongest case for continued and expanded political engagement.
Because corporate managers depend on lobbyists for both their political information and strategic advice, lobbyists are well positioned to push companies toward increased lobbying over time.
But what effect has it all had on public policy? Social science research on political influence has found no relationship between political resources and likelihood of success.
However, the lack of a direct, statistically significant correlation does not mean that there is no influence. It just means that the influence is unpredictable. The policy process is neither a vending machine nor an auction.
Outcomes cannot be had for reliable prices. Policy does not go to the highest bidder. Politics is far messier and far more interesting than such simplistic models might suggest.
They are generalists and oftentimes rely on lobbyists for educating on the issues. Having worked on behalf of both business interests and the public interest I can say that they take both seriously. The question then becomes not whether, but how. The strategies and tactics companies and organizations employ in their lobbying and advocacy efforts can help determine the success or failure of their efforts.
For example, the Biden administration is putting climate change front and center, so smart advocates will find ways to make their companies and organizations priorities about addressing climate change. In developing those They help set the agenda and frame the conversation. Advocates who get their ideas on the agenda in ways policymakers find compelling are far more likely to succeed than advocates whose issues are ignored, or that are defined in ways that are politically difficult to pass.
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