Overview
Political scientist Thomas R. Dye once said that politics is about battling over scarce governmental resources: who gets them, where, when, why and how. Since government makes the rules in a complex economy such as the United States, it is logical that various organizations, businesses, individuals, nonprofits, trade groups, religions, charities and others—which are affected by these rules—will exert as much influence as they can to have rulings favorable to their cause. And the battling for influence has happened in every organized society since the beginning of civilization, whether it was Ancient Athens, Florence during the time of the Medici, Late Imperial China, and the present-day United States. Modern-day lobbyists in one sense are like the courtiers of the Ancien Régime. If voting is a general way for a public to control a government, lobbying is a more specific, targeted effort, focused on a narrower set of issues.
The term lobby has etymological roots in the physical structure of the British Parliament, in which there was an intermediary covered room outside the main hall. People pushing an agenda would try to meet with members of Parliament in this room, and they came to be known, by metonymy, as lobbyists, although one account in 1890 suggested that the application of the word "lobby" is American and that the term is not used as much in Britain.
The term lobbying in everyday parlance can describe a wide variety of actions, and in its general sense, suggests advocacy, advertising, or promoting a cause. In this sense, anybody who tries to influence any political position can be thought of as "lobbying", and sometimes the term is used in this loose sense. A person who writes a letter to a congressperson, or even questions a candidate at a political meeting, could be construed as being a lobbyist. And a retired school administrator from Ohio who met with House Speaker John Boehner in 2011 to discuss social security could be considered as a lobbyist, in this sense of the term.
However, the term "lobbying" is generally used in the public sphere to describe a paid activity with the purpose of attempting to "influence or sway" a public official, including bureaucrats as well as elected officials, towards a desired specific action often relating to specific legislation. If advocacy is disseminating information, including attempts to educate public officials as well as the public and media, to plead the cause of something and support it, then when this activity becomes focused on specific legislation, either in support or in opposition, then it crosses the line from advocacy and becomes lobbying. This is the usual sense in mainstream media. One account suggested that much of the activity of nonprofits was not lobbying per se, since it usually did not mean changes in legislation.
A lobbyist, according to the legal sense of the word, is a professional, often a lawyer. Lobbyists are intermediaries between client organizations and lawmakers: they explain to legislators what their organizations want, and they explain to their clients what obstacles elected officials face. One definition of a lobbyist is someone "employed to persuade legislators to pass legislation that will help the lobbyist's employer." Many lobbyists work in lobbying firms or law firms, some of which retain clients outside lobbying. Others work for advocacy groups, trade associations, companies, and state and local governments. Lobbyists can be one type of government official, such as a governor of a state, who presses officials in Washington for specific legislation. Generally, an elected official who tries to persuade another elected official to adopt a particular position is not considered as a lobbyist in the usual sense, although one could make a case that one official was lobbying another. In addition, there is a sense in which the term lobbyist is too limiting in that it fails to convey the power and influence of persons who advise public officials; in this sense, these people have many roles, including being "influence peddlers, campaign contributors and fundraisers, political advisers, restaurateurs, benefactors of local cultural and charitable institutions, country gentlemen and more," according to one view. A lobbyist may put together a diverse coalition of organizations and people, sometimes including lawmakers and corporations, and the whole effort may be considered to be a lobby; for example, in the abortion issue, there is a "pro-choice lobby" and a "pro-life lobby".
In 2007, according to one estimate, there were more than 17,000 federal lobbyists based in Washington, DC. A second estimate, for 2011, suggested that the count of registered lobbyists who have actually lobbied was around 12,000. While numbers like these suggest that lobbying is a widespread activity, most accounts suggest that the Washington lobbying industry is an exclusive one run by a few well-connected firms and players, with serious barriers to entry for firms wanting to get into the lobbying business, since it requires them to have been "roaming the halls of Congress for years and years."
Read more about this topic: Lobbying In The United States