position. It can be used either in an institutional setting, where a representative
of apressure groupmay lobby a parliamentarian, minister, or civil servant to
further the group’s interest. It may also be used among equals, where, for
example, one member of a committee, interested in a forthcoming issue, may
lobby fellow members to seek their support, or even where the executive
assistants of the US president may attempt to lobby congressmen to seek their
vote on some impending legislation.
As a noun the word refers to established institutional arrangements for such
transmission of information and pressure on issues. There is, in the USA, for
example, an official register of lobbyists, whose full-time occupation it is to
represent the arguments of their clients, whether they be the armaments
industry or some fund-starved university, to the federal government. Lobbyists
have become increasingly important in Western government everywhere. The
parliamentary lobbying profession in the United Kingdom, for example, is
thought to have increased tenfold in the 1980s. Who is lobbied depends on the
structure of power in a society, so that in most European governments (and in
theEuropean Union) the targets of the lobbyists tend to be civil servants and
ministers, while in the USA and other countries with weak party discipline
elected legislators are assiduously courted by professional lobbyists.
In the UK, uniquely, the noun ‘lobby’ has an additional meaning, referring
to the established and accredited group of media correspondents who are made
privy to government secrets as a means for ministers to communicate discreetly
with the public. They are often given highly confidential briefings on the
understanding that they will exercise very great discretion in what they print
and in concealing their source of information.
Local Government
Local government is a system of administration for small political units—
towns, counties and rural districts, for example. It operates within a larger
governmental framework but, unlike the relationship between state govern-
ments and the federal government within a federal system (seefederalism),
the powers of the local government usually derive fromdelegationby the
national or central government. The powers of local government bodies,
which are traditionally democratically elected, vary both between countries
and within individual states over a period of time. They generally extend over
such matters as local environmental health, refuse collection, parks and
recreation, traffic regulation and matters to do with town and country planning
applications. However, in unitary states the degree of real power over sensitive
areas of policy, such as education, may be limited. In France before the election
as president of Franc ̧ois Mitterrand the government appointed prefects who
possessed the power of financial veto over the mayoral decisions in the
Local Government