WHAT CAN BE TAUGHT IN LOBBYING/PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY: 1. KNOWLEDGE

There are three basic areas of the lobbying/public policy advocacy profession that we believe can be taught. There are three different sets of skills or abilities essential to the business of lobbying/public policy advocacy that can be taught: Knowledge, Communication and Messaging and Relationship Building.

Knowledge

The most obvious contribution of the classroom to students wishing to be lobbyists/public policy advocates is knowledge, both factual information and knowledge on how to leverage what they know to advance their careers. We can teach a great deal about the structures of government and how officials work within a complex web of rules and norms. This is process learning. The more lobbyists/public policy advocates know how policies are really made and executed, the better they are at influencing them and the more they are valued by others wanting to be influential. How to comply with lobbying laws and regulations can also be taught, and is a part of process learning.  Lobbying regulations may not be perfect but they provide students with an entry point into a discussion of ethical norms and expectations about professional behaviour.

We can also teach students quite a bit about specific areas of public policy- what may be called policy learning. Lobbyists/Public Policy Advocates are valuable to lawmakers and other Lobbyists/Public Policy Advocates because they are experts in particular areas of public policy as well as how government works. Many spend large portions of their careers working in one or two policy areas, most of which are exceedingly complex, with intricate statutes which are then implemented by codes of administrative rules. University-based courses in different areas of policy would give students a leg up in the job market. Learning something about an area of policy, presumably one interesting to the students, is as important for a lobbying curriculum as learning about the rules and norms. This also open doors in incorporating lobbying/public policy advocacy education in other courses in political science and across university curricula where departments teach about public policy. In addition, business schools may find value in teaching lobbying/public policy advocacy, especially as corporate managers need to learn that businesses are only successful in politics when they can earn broad public support. Moreover, corporate managers need to be prepared to deal with significant changes in how their interests are represented; corporations once relied heavily on associations to lobby on their behalf whereas more recently they have become much more likely to establish their own presence.

Research processes and data interpretation have also become increasing important in lobbying and public policy advocacy. Lobbying firms increasingly hire economists and statisticians to craft the set of facts they use to advocate for policy change. Political science departments may need to boost the research methods and quantitative reasoning parts of their curriculum to improve analytical learning. Masters programmes, in particular may be ripe for courses focusing on the kind of applied data analysis useful for lobbying/public policy advocacy, with an emphasis on the graphical representation of analysis and how to produce so-called ‘infographics’ that visually represent complex ideas.

Different kinds of knowledge are not just a suite of tools lobbyists/public policy advocates use in their work, they are the products they sell. Knowledge is power and whoever has it is valuable to others. Lawmakers grant access to lobbyists/public policy advocates who know things they do not know or are otherwise difficult and costly to learn. Indeed, the whole theory of access and influence in politics is built on the assumption that lobbyists/public policy advocates know more about structure, content and process than lawmakers, and as lawmakers need to know these things they invite lobbyists/public policy advocates into their offices and sometimes as counsellors. Smart, knowledgeable lobbyists also attract the attention of other lobbyists/public policy advocates. To the extent that coalitions and networks are important, individual lobbyists/public policy advocates are more attractive to other coalition partners if they bring to the table information the others lack but badly desire.

The more students focus on learning the intricacies of government structure and functioning, the intricacies of specific areas of policy, and the art and use of data analysis and presentation, and the better job faculty do at teaching it, the better job prospects students are going to have when they enter the advocacy job market.