Six measuresto clean up to clean up corruption and special interest collusion in Washington DC

Advocacy can be defined as the practical use of knowledge for purposes of social changes. These changes can be directed to government policies, laws, procedures or sometimes to ourselves. Advocacy is therefore an act of supporting an issue and persuading the decision makers on how to act in order to support that issue. Advocacy is a process aimed at achieving some specific results, it is not a one way activity.

A. Government Affairs

There are currently over 480 corporations listed in the EU Transparency Register. However, this figure represents only a fraction of the total number with dedicated EU Corporate Affairs operations. 

Preamble

There are many ways to support and contrubute to the AALEP. For those individuals and organisations who wish to do by providing financial support in an ongoing manner, the AALEP offers a Supporting Membership.

§1 Definition of Supporting Members: Every entity, natural person, company and authority from any country can become a Supporting Member of the AALEP according to the articles of association. Supporting Members pay membership fees to the AALEP in the amounts defined below.

Source: LobbyFacts EU (Based on Lobby Expenditures)

In the United States, the term “shadow government” refers to the hidden policy-making process where key decisions are made behind the scenes by a plutocracy. To study this process involves naming and investigating the ensemble of powerful institutional and individual actors operating in the private sphere of socio-economic relations, and their relationships to those in formal governmental policy-making positions.

Author: Gary Hart, Former United States Senator and Presidential Candidate

There has never been a time,when the government of the United States was so perversely and systematically dedicated to special interests, earmarks, side deals, log-rolling, vote-trading, and sweetheart deals of one kind or another. What brought us to this? A sinister system combining staggering campaign costs, political contributions, political action committees, special interest payments for access, and, most of all, the rise of the lobbying class.

Author: Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez, Professor at the University of Castilla La Mancha

Corporate Diplomacy is the instrumental development of strategy to guide relations between the public authorities and private organisations. It entails defending interests by using tools typically found in diplomacy. Companies become diplomatic entities, without detriment to other conventional activities used in international economic relations.