Variations of the discursive framing of lobbying in the Czech Republic and their implications on modes of lobbying regulation
Abstract
Proposals for lobbying regulations have sprung up simultaneously in Central Europe during the last six years. In the Czech Republic, a law on lobbying was passed by the lower chamber of the Parliament in May 2010, before being rejected by the Senate.
However, the debates on lobbying as a policy problem have not shown much consistency and coherence as to what place lobbying should be granted in the political processes, nor as to what goals should a regulation fulfil. In this article, therefore, I use qualitative methods to identify four different ways of framing lobbying that appear in the Czech context in public statements of a wide range of actors and thus, four different ways of defining the goals of lobbying regulation.
In the second part, I develop the concrete implications of these differences on the provisions of a law on lobbying, more specifically in defining who a lobbyist is and in defining the scope of his reporting obligations.