Sweden currently has no legislated regulation of lobbying, but the professional lobbyist can voluntarily subscribe to, among others, the professional code of standars created by the trade association of Public Relations, Precis. There is an ongoing discussion in Sweden to regulate lobbying, both in mass media and in politics. This study examines this debate and focus on which arguments there are for and against lobbying regulation in Sweden. It also attempts to identify the differences, if there are any, between left and rights parties with regards to their views on regulation of lobbying. Tha main method used was document analysis of parliamentary bills which have been raised concerning a lobbying regulation in Sweden. In the theory section, I include four different types of requirements placed on democratic lobbying (se for example Jaatinen 1998, Kitchen 1999, Larsson 2005, Möller 2009 and Naurin 2001). The research showed the need for transparency to be the most prominent, followed by requirement of equal acces to diffrent social groups to lobby. The document analysis focus on the arguments that are given to regulate lobbying in Sweden. The arguments for regulating lobbying presented of the parliamentary bills include measures taken to prevent covert lobbying, to create more equal opportunities to lobby, to that the kind of self-regulation practiced by the proffesional lobbyists by Precis proffesional standars has shortcomings, to that the PR industry will expand and that lobbying is at least commom in Sweden as in other parlaments. Therefore, there is a need to review how other countries have regulated lobbying. The study shows that among the parliamentary bills, The European Parliament regulatory system is the largest role model of other parliaments regulating lobbying. Furtheremore it shows that a registration system is the type of regulation advocated by the most of the politicians behind the researched parliamentary bills. The counter-arguments to a lobbyng regulation in Sweden, identified trough the document analysis and interviews in this study, are that ethics and morality of the individual are more important than rules and laws and a skepticism that a registration system can record people's lifes, which from a democratic point of view is not desirable. Other counter-arguments are that the community allready has so many rules and laws and that a regulatory system can discriminate less economically affluent groups in society. The study has shown that one can devise some differences between left- and right-wing views concerning policies for regulating lobbying in Sweden. This because no parliamentary bills has brought on a lobbying regulation by any of the so- called red parties and the majority of the bills are raised by politicians from the right-wing Moderate Party. One can also see diffrences in the arguments of regulating lobbying by politicians. The bourgeous side seems tho think that the most important requirement of lobbying from a democratic perspective is transparency while the Swedish Green Party is focusing on the lack of equal access between different social groups to lobby.

Lobbying - Economic and Legal aspects Abstract The diploma thesis deals with lobbying and its economic and legal aspects. The aim of the thesis is to present lobbying from a broad perspective in the context of other regulations by using descriptive, comparative and analytical methods and to provide a comprehensive overview of the development of efforts to regulate lobbying in the Czech Republic. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the last governmental regulatory initiative where I am testing a hypothesis of whether the underway regulation is systemically correct in light of examples in other countries. I also conducted two surveys aimed at finding out the attitudes of members of the law academia and members of the lower house of the Parliament of the Czech Republic to the regulation of lobbying in the Czech Republic. The data serve both to (i) illustrate the interpretation of lobbying across the work, (ii) but also because of the specific proposed variant of lobbying within the framework of the approved substantive intent of the lobbying law (the deadline for submitting a paragraph to the government is set to end 2018), and (iii) I believe that they can be useful even when finalizing the bill, or other later proposed measures under the de lege ferenda considerations on lobbying. The thesis is...

Diploma thesis "Interest Groups, lobbying and it's regulation in the Czech Republic" deals with the phenomenon of lobbying and it's role in democratic political processes. First part of this thesis is aimed at political theories of interest groups, various definitions of lobbying and methods of regulating lobbyists. The second part containes a comparison of lobbying regulations in various western states. The third part containes an analysis of the present state of lobbying regulation in the Czech Republic. In the final fourth part, certain methods of lobbying regulation are proposed to take place in the Czech Republic and scrutinized for compliance with the oppinion of Czech political elites and professional lobbyists.

Lobbying and its regulation in Czech and international context Abstract This Master's thesis investigates the phenomena of lobbying and its regulation both in international and subsequently national context, following a current government draft law on lobbying. The thesis is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, a suitable definition of lobbying is sought and its functions, most common typologies and three main theories are presented. After that, attention is shifted to the mutual relationship between lobbying and corruption and their interactions. In the following part, possible approaches towards the legitimacy of lobbying as a part of democratic process are presented. The end of the chapter analyses general background of lobbying activity regulation and its forms and tools. The second chapter is concerned with lobbying and concrete modes of its regulation in three selected countries - Lithuania, Poland, and Slovenia. The individual subsections have the same structure: at the beginning, the overall history of the regulation is outlined, followed by the introduction of the national lobbying environment. After that, relevant legal definitions are summed up, the regulation is comprehensively presented and then, based on academic literature, evaluated. Each of the subsections is concluded with...

Lobbying regulation in the Czech Republic - recommendations based on international experience Summary Lobbying is a natural part of contemporary globalized world, where political interests meet intensively with the economic and other private interests. In order to strengthen the principles, especially transparency and responsibility, some countries adopt lobbying regulation. The USA, Canada, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and the EU institutions approach to lobbying in some aspects in the same way, in many other aspects they approach to it very differently. Different historical and socio-economical experience of these entities has, often substantial, influence on the differences of their regulation approach. The Czech Republic shares with many mentioned countries the experience of post- communist state, which does not have long democratic political culture and which has many problems with corruption in the public decision-making process. Lobbying regulation under Czech conditions is therefore necessary for raising transparency and responsibility of politicians. During the preparation of the future regulation, it is necessary to respect recmmendations of the international organizations and to thoroughly analyze experience of other states. The necessary parts of the future law should be especially: clear...

The paper examines attempts to professionalize and institutionalize lobbying in Poland and the Czech Republic from the beginning of the 1990s to 2016, from the point of view of the sociology of professions, the sociology of public policy-making and interpretative policy analysis. First, on the basis of an analysis of the professional paths of 80 Polish and Czech commercial lobbyists, it presents their common typology for both countries and shows how efforts to gain recognition and enhance their professional status, i.e. efforts to professionalize lobbying, are linked to their pursuit of political legitimacy. Then it shows lobbying as a specific way of constructing the political activity of private actors as a policy problem. It illustrates the conditions under which lobbying in both countries was constructed as a problem and set on the agenda. In doing so, the dissertation pays particular attention to the role of transnational actors in this process. Finally, lobbying regulation processes are analysed as arenas where the symbolic boundary between the public and private spheres is negotiated and redefined.