Who meets whom: Access and lobbying during the coalition years
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Author | Matthew Wood,Andrew Hindmoor,Katharine Dommett |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117701755 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117701755
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2017, Vol. 19(2) 389 –407
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117701755
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Who meets whom: Access
and lobbying during the
coalition years
Katharine Dommett, Andrew Hindmoor
and Matthew Wood
Abstract
In 2010, the incoming Coalition government announced that it would publish details of meetings
between ministers and outside interests. We have collated and coded these data and, in this
article, describe patterns of access between 2010 and 2015. In some respects, access is notably
fragmented. No single organisation attends more than 2.5% of the 6292 meetings held by ministers.
On the contrary, business, collectively, attends fully 45% of all meetings: more than twice the share
of any other category of organisation. We also find evidence of distinctive policy communities
characterised by high levels of access between particular interests and ministers within specific
departments.
Keywords
access, business, coalition government, lobbying
Introduction
There is a venerable tradition within political analysis of studying actors who seek to
influence policy-makers. From interest groups to think tanks, lobbyists to professional
networks, the literature has categorised a diversity of different actors and theorised about
the distinctions between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, iron triangles, policy networks and
advocacy coalitions (Beer, 1969; Gais et al., 2009; Rhodes and Marsh, 1992; Smith,
2009). Much of this work has come in two forms. On one hand, there is a rich, empirically
informed literature that discusses the systemic form and activities of these bodies.
Denham and Garnett (1996) have studied the nature and impact of think tanks in Britain.
Baumgartner and Leech (2001) have examined patterns of interest group involvement in
US politics, and Baumgartner et al. (2009) have traced the relationship between lobbying
and policy change. On the other hand, there is a plethora of detailed case-studies that
explore how particular groups in particular policy areas have interacted with the
Department of Politics, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Corresponding author:
Matthew Wood, Department of Politics, The University of Sheffield, Elmfield, Northumberland Road,
Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.
Email: m.wood@sheffield.ac.uk
701755BPI0010.1177/1369148117701755The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsDommett et al.
research-article2017
Article
390 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19(2)
machinery of government. Somerville and Goodman (2010) have, for example, studied
the role of networks in informing migration policy; Hawkins et al. (2012) have examined
the influence of the alcohol industry on UK health policy; and Hacker and Pierson (2002)
have explored the influence of business on the formation of American welfare policy.
These traditions of study have provided key insights into the operation and influence of
different groups, and yet they have tended to deliver either systemic-level analyses con-
centrated on one type of actor (i.e. studies of interest groups or lobbying organisations) or
more detailed case study accounts of influence. Less common are synoptic studies across
government detailing comprehensive informal access via meetings with ministers, rather
than access via inputs to party political, legislative and consultation procedures.
Against this background, we present a new study of governmental access in the United
Kingdom that draws on systematic data covering over 6000 ministerial meetings released
by the Coalition government between 2010 and 2015. Building on initial work under-
taken by Labour, the Coalition government established access to a wide range of new
sources of government information (Institute for Government, 2015). Indeed, in 2016, the
United Kingdom was judged to be the world-leader in the provision of open data (Open
Data Barometer, 2016). In this article, we focus on data released by the Coalition govern-
ment relating to the meetings held between ministers and representatives of outside inter-
ests. These data, published on a quarterly basis on departmental websites, allow a new
perspective on debates around ministerial access and what Weiler and Brändli (2015) call
‘insider lobbying’. To date, this information about meetings has provided occasional fod-
der for newspaper stories on the access achieved by business interests in general and by
media barons such as Rupert Murdoch in particular (see, for example, Ball et al., 2011;
Martinson and Rawlinson, 2015). It has also been used, in a limited manner, by charities
and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to highlight trends in access.1 Within this
article, we present the first systematic analysis of this dataset, using it to show which
interests get access to which ministers, resulting patterns of equality and inequality in
access to ministers, and the existence of distinctive policy communities between interests
and ministers in specific departments.
A key concept within the article is access. Access is defined here as ‘the frequency of
contacts between interest organisations and … institutions’ (Eising, 2007: 331) and is
measured in terms of the number of meetings with ministers. Within the existing litera-
ture, it is common to find access used as a measure for influence. Dür and De Bièvre
(2007), for example, have studied access to meetings of the European Union Civil Society
Dialogues on this basis, and Chubb (1983), Langbein (1986) and Bailer (2010) also sug-
gest that access can be used as a proxy for influence. We are, in some respects, wary of
such claims and do not want to be seen to be suggesting that higher access is always and
everywhere an indicator of higher influence. Indeed, at one point, we suggest that the
large number of meetings ministers held with the representatives of banks between 2010
and 2015 may be a measure not of their political strength but of their vulnerability. Yet, at
the same time, patterns of access clearly do matter and are related to influence. There are
two parts to our argument here. First, ministers have a limited amount of time and so, with
the assistance of senior civil servants and via their diary secretaries, must decide which
groups to meet (Weiler and Brändli, 2015: 747). The resulting patterns of access can,
thereby, tell us something about the importance ministers attach to meeting with particu-
lar groups. One reason ministers may think it important to meet with a group is that they
judge that group to be an influential one they must, at the very least, listen to. Second,
meetings give interest groups a gilt-edged opportunity to persuade ministers of the merits
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