Abstract
This chapter addresses lobbying on trade policy, focusing on the new strategic approaches to the activity which have been encouraged and/or facilitated by the spread of economic globalization and the extension of global value chains (GVCs) across the globe. We firstly discuss the conventional view of trade policy lobbying, which focused on why governments engage with business actors, what types of corporate actors enter the political arena, and what lobby strategies they employ. We then turn our attention to the emergence, in the era of GVCs, of novel corporate political strategies to influence trade policy. These include more individual company lobbying in sectoral contexts which lack consensus on the desirability of policy change; creation of ad-hoc groupings to lobby on specific proposals; transnational lobbying by companies implicated in the same GVC; cooperating with civil society where interests coalesce; and the use of the internet to mass mobilize (mainly by civil society in opposition to private sector interests). Finally, the chapter provides some observations on how the emergence of a more skeptical context on globalization is likely to impact on these novel strategies. Some will become more challenging (individual companies coming out in support of trade; transnational lobbying with companies from ‘non-likeminded’ partner countries) while others, like ad-hoc coalitions focused on the (many) emerging regulations impacting trade and the leveraging of mass campaigns through the internet, will likely intensify.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Handbook on Lobbying and Public Policy |
| Editors | David Coen, Alexander Katsaitis |
| Publisher | Edward Elgar Publishing |
| Chapter | 28 |
| Pages | 355-368 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781800884717 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781800884700 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 9 Jul 2024 |