Lobbying, Public Policies and Representation of Interests in Argentina

Prior to his arrival in Huddersfield in 2020, Gabriel Sadi was researching lobbying in the civil society and its implications for Argentinian society in recent years.

The practice of lobbying is a legitimate and legal way to reach public decision-makers in order to contribute to a more participatory and plural democracy. Public policies and regulations need to broaden the voices represented in the deliberation and search for solutions to societal problems.

Interest groups must be incorporated into public decision-making processes in a role of sectoral (or functional) representation, which acts as a complement to traditional representation so that there are counterweights to guarantee that public affairs have the public interest as a horizon and are not co-opted by powerful influence groups to the detriment of the common good.

We are here within public affairs, an area of public relations/strategic communication that focuses on the field of action in which lobbying is framed.

Indeed, lobbying is a professional activity that defends the legitimate interests of groups or companies before public administrations and transparently transfers relevant information and knowledge about a sector, activity or collective (Xifra, 2011). In turn, Ferrer (2014) provides a useful distinction between lobbying and public affairs: the latter is more comprehensive because includes sectoral analysis and intelligence, lobbying itself, all dialogue and communication with the different stakeholders of an organisation and the construction of alliances, delimiting lobbying to the incumbency over the exercise of influencing a public policy or legislative initiative.

So lobbying is a communicative strategy of public relations (Davidson and Rowe, 2016) whose specificity lies in its purpose, e.g., to influence the spheres of competence of Executive and Legislative branches at any scale -international, national, regional or local.

In turn, as a general characteristic, Latin America still has shortcomings in its development of participatory democracy. Due to the lack of an organised civic culture, resources, or just ignorance, civil society does not usually use planned methods for an effective exercise of the right to petition public authorities and reduces its areas of incidence to sporadic demonstrations around specific issues.

That could be the case in Argentina, where civil society has not usually used planned methods and suitable channels for an effective exercise of the right to petition public authorities, recognised in the Argentinian Constitution (article 14) as well as in most Latin American countries and other democracies.

Partial progress towards openness to collaboration and transparency of decisions has been made with the 1172/2003 decree of the Argentinian federal executive branch entitled Improving the Quality of Democracy and its Institutions. This regulation includes five instruments - public hearings, access to public information, publicity of the hearings of representation of interests, participative elaboration of norms and participation in the open meetings of the regulating entities of services- with a view to a more participatory democracy and in the framework of a democratic reform for a country that was coming out of a crisis of representation post 2001. However, after 15 years, the mechanisms contemplated are limited in their scope and in their effective compliance. The only relevant improved was the public access to information (27,275 Law) in 2016 that was subject to numerous modifications as a result of the legislative debate.

Despite this situation, it is possible to recognise certain key cases promoted in recent years in Argentina by civil society organisations that have achieved their purposes, such as laws related to eating disorders, equal marriage, and assisted fertilisation. All the cases reaffirm this perspective, as they have confronted with success the civil society to powerful groups such as private health organisations, the food industry, and the Roman Catholic Church, providing a promising horizon based on some auspicious aspects, such as the strengthening of think tanks and not-for-profit organisations as valid interlocutors in the process of public policy making.

 

* Article based on Sadi, G. & Ramos Meneghetti, M. (2020). A normative approach on lobbying. Public policies and representation of interests in Argentina. Journal of Public Affairs, 20:e1907. https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1907