International Comparative Study Of Lobbyist Regulation Systems

Lobbying is a central and legitimate part of the democratic process in all political systems. Although the term has often been associated with negative connotations, the work of lobbyists is essential. Such actors engage in the provision of input, and feedback, to the political system, thereby helping to develop policy outputs. Lobby groups may include those with economic interests (corporations), professional interests (trade unions) and civil society interests (such as environmental groups). These groups may seek to infruence political decisions by many means, including direct communications with governmental officials.H owever, with more and more corruption and scandals arising, people sreamed for disclosure of the lobbying activities. Therefore, some political systems have established lobbying legislations.Up to now,10 political systems in the world have regulations with regard to lobbying activity:the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, the European Union, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Georgia, and Taiwan. Despite the many works that have offered individual country analysis of development of lobbying legislation,there was less concentration on the comparative studies, which could help us understanding the different regulatory environments one finds in this issue area much better.T herefore, the objective of this article is threefold. First, the author will give a whole description of the lobbying regulation systems established in these countries or regions. Secondly, the author will use a quantitative index to measure how strong or weak the regulations are in each system, allowing us to devise a classification scheme of the different 'ideal'types of regulatory environments. Finally, the author hope to design a framework for China's lobbying regulation system.Three major parts are included in this article, which are introduction, text and conclusion. The introduction is mainly about general description of the whole article which discusses the origin of the topic and also analyses the present situation of domestic and foreign researehes. At the sametime, it explains the basic value, significance and overall struetural arrangement of the article. Besides, research project and methods used are pointed in this part as well. The test consists of four chapters. At the outet, the author gives an account of the origins and the meanings of'lobbying', 'lobbyist'and'lobbying regulation', and the theoretical foundation of the lobbying regulation. And then, the article focuses on the detail contents of the established lobbying legislations in each system. In the next chapter, the author introduses the CPI (Center for Public Integrity) method to measure how lobbying is regulated in these systems. And on that basis, the author has classified three different models of regulatory environments:highly regulated model, medium regulated model and lowly regulated model. And the final chapter of the text turns the attention to the situation in China, and devise a framework for its lobbying regulation system by drawing on the experiences of these systems. The final part of the whole article makes a comprehensive conclusions and reviews on the research.