Inspiring students to take action! The Lobbying Strategy Handbook shows how students with passion for a cause can learn to successfully influence lawmaking in the United States. The centerpiece of this book is a 10-step framework that walks the reader through the essential elements of conducting a lobbying campaign. The framework is illustrated by three separate case studies that show how groups of people have successfully used the model. Undergraduate, graduate students, and anyone interested in making a difference, can use the book to guide them in creating and conducting a grassroots campaign from start to finish. Video: Lobbying Is NOT a 4-Letter Word Author Pat Libby, Professor of Practice and Director of the Institute for Nonprofit Education and Research, University of San Diego, discusses lobbying rules and strategy in her video presentation, Lobbying Is NOT a 4-Letter Word. Discover more about the author and the book here:

"To demonstrate this, the author models the incentives that the initiative process creates for interests to organize and for how they communicate their preferences to policy makers. Interests that represent a broader range of the public are found to gain the most from the option to propose initiatives, implying that the set of organized interests in initiative states should reflect this advantage. Ironically, an effect of direct legislation is to potentially increase the effectiveness of special interest lobbying in state legislatures - in a sense, the opposite of the direct control that gives direct legislation its theoretical appeal. Yet, the clear effect is one of empowering voices that traditionally had very little effect in the legislative process.

Gelak offers a comprehensive guide for lobbyists and Washington advocates that reveals top strategies for winning as an effective lobbyist or advocate, practical resources and methods for maintaining compliance, and extensive lists of resources.

The Treaty of Lisbon came into effect on 1 December 2009. It gives the EU a new primary law framework and has significantly enhanced its competence and importance, thereby causing a remarkable increase in the EU's influence. Certain changes in the voting procedures should be particularly significant for companies: alongside the double majority rule in Council decisions, under the Lisbon Treaty, only a majority is now required in many areas previously governed by the principle of unanimity. Foremost examples here are justice and internal affairs, foreign trade and agriculture. Persuading its own national government that its concerns are legitimate is, therefore, only of limited benefit to a company as individual Member States can easily be outvoted in Brussels. A strong position in the company's "home Member State" only can rapidly become an insignificant minority position. Nevertheless, European actions and procedures remain obscure and inaccessible for many company heads. Companies, for this reason, often fail to see many opportunities and chances which a deeper understanding of and a strong presence in the European capital can offer a business. It is not simply the underlying conditions for companies in one Member State which are at stake, but rather the conditions governing an internal market with around 500 million consumers. The need for effective and efficient lobbying has increased due to the recent renaissance of the State observed in the crisis: in the context of partial nationalisation, far-reaching regulation of entire sectors and a general increase in state control of company decisions, good channels of communication to legislative and executive decision-makers are more important than ever. The publication helps to guide companies through the intricacies of Brussels and offers an insight into the complex but diverse and interesting service of lobbying. It is designed as a practical tool especially for decision-makers and executives in companies. Numerous figures and tables illustrate the text. Main topics include the characteristics of lobbying at the European level, taking account of the changes brought about by the Treaty of Lisbon, the notion of a lobbyist's "practical tools" and finally suggestions for a company's strategic positioning vis-a-vis decision makers in the European legislature and executive.

What is the impact of lobbying on the policymaking process? And who benefits? This book argues that most research overlooks the lobbying of regulatory agencies even though it accounts for almost half of all lobbying - even though bureaucratic agencies have considerable leeway in how they choose to implement law.

This work seeks to clarify why and when interest group leaders in Washigton, USA seek to mobilize the public order to influence policy decisions in Congress. It grants a more important role to the need for interest group leaders to demonstrate popular support on particular issues.

The passage of Citizens United by the Supreme Court in 2010 sparked a renewed debate about campaign spending by large political action committees, or Super PACs. Its ruling said that it is okay for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want in advertising and other methods to convince people to vote for or against a candidate. This book provides a wide range of opinions on the issue. Includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives; eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials, and many others.

"The authors come up with some innovative tools, namely the “Catalogue of transparent lobbying”. They look at and evaluate the impact on both key stakeholders (lobbyists and targets of lobbying), monitoring of lobbying activities and sanctioning for breaches of rules. This tool holds out benchmarking capacity of sound framework for understanding of lobbying in the context of democracy, legitimacy of decision-making and accountability."David Ondráčka, member of global Board of Transparency International, head of Transparency International, Czech Republic "Transparent Lobbying and Democracy provides a comprehensive view into the phenomenon of lobbying... As a well-established scientist specializing in democracy, civil society and the public sphere, I see it as a useful and enriching contribution to the debate on lobbying, its necessary transparency and its role in the democratization process. This book has the potential to reach an international audience of experts and interested lay persons, and both complement and compete with publications on similar issues."Karel B. Müller, University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic This book deals with the current, as yet unsolved, problem of transparency of lobbying. In the current theories and prevalent models that deal with lobbying activities, there is no reflection of the degree of transparency of lobbying, mainly due to the unclear distinction between corruption, lobbying in general, and transparent lobbying. This book provides a perspective on transparency in lobbying in a comprehensive and structured manner. It delivers an interdisciplinary approach to the topic and creates a methodology for assessing the transparency of lobbying, its role in the democratization process and a methodology for evaluating the main consequences of transparency. The new approach is applied to assess lobbying regulations in the countries of Central Eastern Europe and shows a method for how lobbying in other regions of the world may also be assessed.