7 - Giving Advice

Question 1

Kollman

(Outside strategies)

Answer 1

Attempts by interest groups “to mobilise citizens outside the policymaking community to contact or pressure officials inside the policymaking community”

Question 2

Entman

(Framing)

Answer 2

Selecting and highlighting some features of reality while omitting others.

Question 3

de Bruycker 1

(IGs in EU lobbying)

Answer 3

• 2 modes of information supply:

1) Pressure politics (interest groups provide policy-makers with political information)

2) Expertise-based exchanges (groups provide policy-makers with policy expertise)

Question 4

de Bruycker 2

(IGs in EU lobbying)

Answer 4

• Results suggest that interest group type has little impact on which type of info is supplied to policy-makers.
• Instead of interest group type, the political venues and communication channels used.
• Irrespective of the group type, supplying political info is much more likely to happen when interest groups approach the EP and when there is a strong reliance on public lobbying channels.
• Expertised-based exchanges – are much more prominent when lobbyists seek to influence the EC and are not significantly related to their activities in the public realm.

Question 5

Junk and Rasmussen

Answer 5

Collective framing matters far more than individual framing.

Framing is a “collective enterprise” in which the efforts of like-minded groups matter.

Question 6

Richardson and John 1

(Strong v weak letters - UK local gov)

Answer 6

Type of letter a lobbyist sends to locally elected representatives does not make a difference to their responsiveness. Overall, the stronger treatment—in the form of the information-rich letter—does not yield a greater response than the information- poor letter.

Question 7

Richardson and John 2

(Strong v weak letters - UK local gov)

Answer 7

When replying to a lobby letter, politicians may not be paying attention to the content of the letters, either because they do not fully read the information or because it is simply the request, rather than the way it is presented, that accounts for their response.

Question 8

Richardson and John 3

(Strong v weak letters - UK local gov)

Answer 8

Also intriguing finding - info-rich letter affects quality of responses - causes councillors to pass letter on to someone else.

Are these results contradictory? We argue they are not.

At the core of the informational lobbying argument is a presumption that the lobby target will welcome external expertise or info as an aid to policy-making.