Jana Vargovcikova

Partant de l’étude d’une affaire qui a secoué le gouvernement polonais en 2002-2003, le présent article propose un cadre d’analyse du scandale qui synthétise et élargit les approches sociologiques du scandale pour éclairer l’articulation entre le dévoilement des transgressions et la production des politiques publiques. Ni cause, ni pur prétexte de l’action publique, le scandale incite à une montée en généralité à laquelle il ne peut, néanmoins, fournir des « leçons » univoques du fait de son indétermination. Ses trois dimensions analysées (processus ; test des valeurs et règles en vigueur ; mode spécifique de dévoilement) se trouvent chacune animée par une tension infranchissable entre l’extraordinaire et le typique.

This issue’s contribution lies in its bringing together five case studies focusing on modes of public-private interaction that go beyond the frequent focus on the lobbying of decision-makers by special interests. Their approaches share three important features: the originality of their objects of analysis; their use of less frequent theoretical frameworks for conceptualising public/private interactions; and their careful restitution of the historical and political contingency of the public/private interactions that the authors analyse. Armèle Cloteau and Lola Avril concentrate on the work of intermediaries between public authorities and business actors at the level of the European Union, in-house lobbyists, and competition law specialists in particular. The articles by Lucie de Carvalho, Jan Daniel, and Jakub Eberle, and the one by Katarína Svitková focus on how policy problems and solutions are co-produced by public and private actors in the energy and security sectors at national and local levels of government.

Cet article s’intéresse aux rôles respectifs des acteurs nationaux et transnationaux dans l’élaboration des réglementations du lobbying. Il repose sur une enquête auprès des acteurs clés de ces réglementations en Pologne et en République tchèque, ainsi que sur l’analyse des travaux parlementaires et consultations interministérielles entre 2002 et 2017. Il montre ainsi comment, en l’absence de contraintes extérieures sur la question, ce sont les divergences entre les acteurs nationaux qui façonnent leurs traductions de modèles étrangers. Le recours généralisé aux instruments de la transparence comme solutions est dû quant à lui à une combinaison complexe de facteurs nationaux et externes.

Translating transparency at national levels
The case of lobbying regulations in Poland and the Czech Republic
This article examines the roles played by national and transnational actors in the production of lobbying regulations. It draws on a qualitative research of policy-makers involved in these processes in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as on an analysis of the parliamentary debates and inter-ministerial consultations in both cases, from 2002 to 2017. It shows that in the absence of constraints from external actors, competition between national political actors is key for lobbying to get on the agenda. Still, policy instruments based on transparency are chosen as solutions across contexts, in a complex interplay of internal and external factors.

The wave of attempts at lobbying regulation at national levels in Europe over the last decade highlights an increasing interest on the side of policy-makers to propose rules for lobbying in the context of a crisis of trust in political representatives. However, these initiatives lead to a paradox: Public and private actors want to be seen as supporting lobbying regulation, yet these same actors often contribute to the ineffectiveness and lack of implementation of the regulations. What is at stake for these actors when lobbying regulations are drafted and negotiated? Based on an interpretive policy analysis of the lobbying regulation processes initiated by governments in Poland (2003–2005) and the Czech Republic (2011–2013), the article shows how decisions about the design of the core policy instruments of lobbying regulations, registers of lobbyists and reporting obligations, contribute to shaping the institutional framework of state–society relations.

Le lobbying professionnel, apparu en Europe centrale à la faveur l’ouverture des marchés aux investisseurs étrangers, représente un nouveau débouché lié à la sphère publique. Qui investit ce métier peu institutionnalisé et ambigu aux yeux de l’opinion publique, et avec quelles attentes ? Peut-on considérer que ces acteurs qui se font les intermédiaires entre le secteur privé et le secteur public appartiennent au champ politique ? Une typologie des lobbyistes et leur analyse en tant que groupe professionnel contribuent à répondre à ces questions. Principal critère de différenciation dans la typologie proposée, le passage par la sphère publique s’avère commun à la majorité des lobbyistes et semble exercer à cet égard un rôle paradoxal : tout en alimentant une dépendance pragmatique et symbolique par rapport à la sphère publique, il assure aux lobbyistes une maîtrise des ressources nécessaires pour la construction d’un statut autonome.

Private actors are becoming increasingly involved in drafting public policy at various levels of governance, with expertise as a key resource for access. Crossing the perspectives of interest group theory and public policy analysis, the article explores under what circumstances and through what channels private expertise gets to play a role in the Czech policy-making, and how private actors as expertise providers relate to public actors in this process, in particular to political parties. The article proposes that the private actors’ influence is determined by the nature of the policy issue and the prevailing logic of the policy making process, understood following Claudio Radaelli as a proportion between the visibility and the uncertainty in the process. As an empirical enquiry into these assumptions, we present two dissimilar cases: the Czech pension reform and the transposition of the EU directive on the energy performance of buildings into Czech law. Although their analysis confirms much of the initial hypotheses, it brings a more nuanced view of the impact of the complexity-visibility ratio on the role of private expertise by pointing to the dissociated character of the different stages of the process, as well as to the fact that political actors’ demand for private expertise may be motivated by its other functions than as a knowledge input.

This article looks at the ways in which political representation is used as a symbolic resource
of legitimacy by those acting as intermediaries between the private and the public sectors— professional
lobbyists. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Michael Saward, the article puts forward an analysis of
whether, how and in relation to whom, lobbyists claim to be representatives so as to acquire a recognized
position in the policy-making process. Representative claim-making by lobbyists matters, we argue, because
it is an indicator of the status afforded by the public to private actors in politics. In the Czech and Polish
cases, even though the invisible character of lobbying practices seems to limit the range of roles lobbyists
can adopt in front of the general public, lobbyists mobilize representation as a resource both directly and
indirectly when having to justify their involvement in public decision-making.

Ačkoliv Hannah Arendtová ve svém díle klade silný důraz na občanskou participaci, zůstává její pojetí participace v současné teorii deliberativní demokracie, se kterou jinak sdílí mnoho východisek, téměř nepřítomné. Srovnání chápání participace u Arendtové a u deliberativních demokratů nám pomáhá odhalit příčinu této absence – zdá se, že jí je struktura Arendtové pojetí participace, zapuštěna v silně normativních dichotomiích zájmu/názoru a sociálna/politična. Tyto dichotomie pak hrají klíčovou roli v Arendtové pojetí participace, které nazýváme „participací jako nezaujatou angažovaností“.

Hannah Arendt’s stress on civic participation contrasts with her absence as a reference from works on deliberative democracy, which otherwise share many of her normative assumptions. A comparison of the ways in which Arendt and deliberative democrats conceive of participation helps us explain this absence by pointing to the strongly dichotomist structure of Arendt’s conception of participation. Normative dichotomies (interest/opinion, the social/the political), then, lead Arendt to advocate what we call participation as “disinterested engagement”.