Hidden in plain sight: how lobby organisations undermine democracy

Political lobbying poses a challenge to democracy. This chapter draws on egalitarian and libertarian critiques of lobbying in order to determine what kind of challenge it poses. On the one hand, lobbying is an important aspect of democratic theory and practice. On the other hand, lobbying by unelected organisations places considerable power in the hands of groups that stand outside of the formal system of institutional checks and balances designed to hold power to account and ensure transparency. The challenge is deepened when we consider the ways in which economic inequalities tend to translate into political inequalities of access and influence. However, rich organisations do not always get their way by spending more on their campaigns.

This chapter argues that real-world lobbying undermines democracy in a very particular, and much deeper, way. The problem is not simply that powerful lobby groups have managed to capture institutions and processes, although they have. It is that, over the long term, they also have engaged in ‘norm capture’: they have been complicit in shaping the background norms and values of many democratic states in ways that determine in the public consciousness what is possible and mainstream, and what is impossible and radical. Interest groups representing the private sector and advocating for free markets in particular have been complicit in shaping society in a way that skews democracy towards supporting these ends, creating an environment in which governments are disproportionately responsive to these groups and their interests at the expense of other ideas, values, and interests.