When
"What’s Wrong with Lobbying? The Philosophical and Political Challenge Posed by Unelected Interest Groups".
Abstract: What kind of challenge, if any, does political lobbying pose to democratic theory and practice? This chapter draws on egalitarian and libertarian critiques of lobbying in order to provide a tentative answer. On the one hand, lobbying is an important aspect of democracy. 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.
This paper suggests that real-world lobbying undermines democracy in a very particular 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 have also engaged in ‘norm capture’: they have been instrumental 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. Groups representing corporate interests in particular have been complicit in shaping society in a way that skews democracy toward 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.
Here is Dr Parvin's webpage:
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/staff/phil-parvin/