Parliamentary Affairs articles

Recent articles from Parliamentary Affairs

Locating the Target: Regulating Lobbying in Australia.
October 1, 1998... AUSTRALIA'S EXPERIMENT with regulating lobbying and lobbyists has so far been unsuccessful. In 1996 the new Liberal-National coalition government disbanded the Lobbyists Registration Scheme which had been set up by the Labor government, also newly elected, in 1983. There was little...

Towards Regulation in the UK: From `General Good Sense' to `Formalised Rules'.
October 1, 1998... THE REGULATION of lobbying in Britain has been a significant issue in Britain for about 25 years, with successive parliamentary inquiries looking at the issue but their recommendations (if any) having limited impact. The House of Commons Select Committee on Members' Interests looked at the...

The Canadian Experience: The Lobbyists Registration Act.
October 1, 1998... IN THE Canadian federal election of 1984 the Progressive Conservatives Party (PC) won a massive majority and reduced its principal opponents, the Liberals, to a mere forty seats. Nine years later, in October 1993, the Canadian electorate was to deal the Conservatives a humiliating blow by...

Interest Group Regulation Across the United States: Rationale, Development and Consequences.
October 1, 1998... THE REGULATION of lobbying and lobbyists has been an issue in American politics for over a hundred years and it remains so today at the federal, state and recently at the local level. Thus America provides a range of experiences and lessons on lobby regulation. Given this, five questions...

INTRODUCTION: Regulating Lobbying in the Western World.
October 1, 1998... THE RELATIONSHIP between state and society is one of the central issues for democracy. As Walzer put it, `only a democratic state can create a democratic civil society; only a democratic civil society can sustain a democratic state'.(1) Democratic systems are founded upon participation, the...