The world of lobbying has evolved in recent years, coming out of the shadows and becoming a professionalised, more transparent field, capable of opening and strengthening democratic channels of communication and influence between companies, organisations and public authorities. One of the pioneers in the study of lobbying in Spain is Rafa Rubio, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Complutense University y Councillor President of the Transparency and Participation Council of the Community of Madridwho spoke to PROA Communication on the challenges in this field.
Rafa Rubio is also, among other responsibilities, director of the Technology and Democracy Research Group (i+dem) at Complutense University of Madridan experienced political consultant, y member of the Academic Committee of the Global Electoral Justice Network. For this reason, we address issues such as transparency, political communication and the regulation of technological platforms.
The world of lobbying has changed, and traditional lobbying has been followed by a strong interest in public affairs. Why is it important for a company or organisation to have a professionalised lobbying strategy?
Nowadays, almost every aspect of a person's life and of a company's activity has a direct relationship with public institutions. There are countless aspects in which any organisation needs to relate to public administrations and public authorities. So doing so in a professional and expert manner is the best way to defend your interests.
In other words, as companies can no longer live without institutions to develop a business, it is advisable that they engage with them in a professional, structured way, and not in an improvised manner or in the old style of the so-called "getters" who promised access to certain contacts.
Faced with these new needs and challenges for companies, what characteristics should an ideal provider of public affairs and corporate communications services have?
Lobbying has four essential ingredients: a strong communicative element; a capacity for dialogue with public actors, both in terms of knowledge of the people who make decisions and of the procedure by which they are made; good expertise in the matter to be influenced; as well as good legal knowledge, which is a clear competitive advantage. In addition, all of this must be supported by a strategic vision that brings these four elements together in a coherent way.
In other words, we could speak of a team of communicators, political scientists and lawyers, but integrating these specialities in the same strategic approach.
In other countries important brands have taken an activist role in social and environmental issues, etc. Do you think that this opportunity exists in Spain?
Large Spanish companies live in this global climate, many are investee or directly international companies, and are therefore affected by this trend. The activism of the CEO takes on different forms and often goes beyond the figure of the chief executive, moving into the decisions and measures adopted by companies.
However, there is a sense that other countries are beginning to reconsider this strategy, and perhaps to some extent in Spain we are arriving late to something that could be in retreat. It is true that it has been very fashionable in recent years, but it seems to be softening, thinking about the strategic implications of these sometimes risky decisions.
Artificial intelligence and large technological platforms generate fear because of their capacity to transform reality, as well as because of the use of our personal data. Are we thinking through how to regulate these phenomena?
The line taken by the European Union is at the forefront of regulation, and the whole world, including the United States, has an eye on what is being done in this sensitive area in the EU. Being a pioneer entails risks, I am sure there will be changes in regulation, but I think a good effort is being made, both in regulating platforms and artificial intelligence. The EU is being brave and, in general terms, is moving in the right direction, but that does not mean that they are not going to make mistakes.
But one of the essential elements, since we are talking about communication platforms, has to do with freedom of expression. Given the apocalyptic or panicky climate we live in, I think we may be going further than we should. The EU's approach is to demand great responsibilities from social platforms to, among other things, control content, but we are not putting the same safeguards in place to ensure that those internal decisions taken by technology companies respect democratic principles.
The fact that these platforms are effective in the responsibilities being assigned to them by the authorities is no excuse for them not to be respectful of the fundamental rights at stake.
There is a lot of talk about transparency, but in the case of the private sector, what role is it playing in governance and corporate communication? How much progress do you see?
Transparency is no longer fashionable, we hear less about it, and what might seem like bad news is good news, because there is less posturing and more reality. Transparency has been consolidated as a necessary, obligatory element. We have seen how certain basic principles linked to transparency and governance have become normalised in business life. There is a series of information that it is unthinkable for a company not to provide.
So we are better off than we were five years ago, a basic culture of transparency in business has been established, but we need to move from transparency to accountability, and make it an instrument of governance. It's about a broader vision where it's not just about letting things be seen, but letting things be seen forces us to do them well.
In politics we are in a context of permanent campaigning, where communication strategies seem to phagocytise the real content of the democratic discussion. Have we gone from communicating to govern to governing in order to communicate?
Politics has three fundamental legs: public policy, politics understood as the art of negotiation and consensus, and communication. There is no modern politics without these three elements. But when one of them is predominant, it is like a stool that becomes unbalanced because one leg is longer than the others.
When communication becomes the main criterion for decision-making, when cabinet chiefs cease to have a political profile in order to have a communication profile, it is given a leading role that ends up deforming politics and policies. This means that public policies do not seek so much to transform reality as to have an impact on public opinion. And it means that politics is not done as a search for consensus and negotiation, but only in the face of public opinion.
The fact that everything is at the service of communication and its effects on the climate of opinion disrupts the logic of political activity in democracy, both government and opposition.
A good example is the use of co-official languages in Congress, which is a symbolic, communicational decision that does not affect better public policy-making or politics in the sense of favouring consensus. Politics today is above all symbolic.
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