The Regulation of Interest Groups and Public Benefit Organizations

This chapter presents a detailed empirical assessment of cross-country variation in the regulation of interest groups and public benefit organizations in the operation stage—covering the regulation of these organizations’ constitutive functions as well as of resource access—across nineteen long-lived democracies. Regarding regulation of organizations’ constitutive functions, it covers areas such as lobby regulation, third-party regulation, and other legal restrictions on groups’ political activities. In terms of resource regulation, it covers aspects such as tax benefits for donors and organizations themselves as well as the regulation of fundraising. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the monitoring and supervision structures in charge of implementing group regulation. The analysis shows how interest groups and public benefit organizations have to operate within a complex web of legal regulation, which fundamentally affects their ability to engage in political activities and access state resources.

Rejstřík transparentnosti EU: Hodnocení regulačních pravidel podle CPI

A common initiative of the European Parliament and the European Commission resulted in the unification of the rules governing lobbyists at EU level in June 2011. The aim of this paper is to fill the gap in the literature as regards evaluation of the new system of the EU Transparency Register using the CPI methodology and to generate a numerical value for the scheme for further comparative purposes. Detailed analysis of relevant documents indicates that the current EU scheme’s index is 26, which mirrors its supposed low level of stringency. Thorough comparison with past regulatory schemes of the Parliament and Commission reveals that, surprisingly, it is the European Parliament which has made greater steps in lobby regulation, especially towards enhancing transparency in lobbying. Although the new scheme represents a compromise between both institutional approaches, regarding its individual elements, there is a clear dominance of the Commission’s approach, which can be regarded as the true leader of reform.