Contenu du sommaire : Lobbying et lobbyists.

Lobbying is an integral part of the American political system at all levels and is here to stay in spite of the harsh criticisms leveled at special interests and of the development of the « revolving door » system. The primary targets of interest groups are members of Congress (especially members of the HR & Senate powerful committees) accused of being bought by gifts and PAC contributions. But the methods (expertise, grassroots mobilization, media campaigns, gifts, campaign contributions and legal action) are also used by the President, public-interest groups and foreign firms and governments. The best example is Japan which spends more than 500 million $ a year in order to create a « Japan-friendly » climate and is blamed for America's loss of competitiveness.

This paper questions the position and the role of the lobbies within the American political system. All democracies must handle, in their own way, general and special interests. But the American political culture has its own specificities, and the general public's attitude, regarding lobbies, is deeply ambivalent. Mistrust towards any attempt to capture power on the part of social actors, availing of powerful financial means, co-exists with a concept of the State which conveys to particular interests a kind of legitimacy of which they are deprived in France. The author tries to set up a typology of pressure groups in the United States, analyses their specific inner workings (revolving door, iron triangle, dollar politics), as well as the diversified functions they carry out.

Bill Clinton has termed an overhaul of the US health care system « the nation's most urgent priority ». However, the medical industrial complex, which has successfully lobbied against it for decades is sparing no effort to preserve its interests ; and PACs' contributions to congressional campaigns have reached record levels. Can this lobby's current divisions, the weakening of the traditional business-doctors-insurers alliance, and the growing influence of public-interest groups create a context favorable to the most sweeping social reform since the New Deal ? The issue is far from settled.

While military force has long been regarded in the American tradition as a threat to liberty, democracy and peace, the notion of a military-industrial complex (MIC) appeared on the scene as late as 1961. It owed much to the power elite thesis offered a few years earlier by C.W. Mills. In the 1970s, however, the much weakened consensus on defense and foreign policy, changes in the international context and the substitution of neoclassical for keynesian paradigms combined to limit the legitimacy and influence of a MIC in which fault lines became apparent. At the time of the Reagan defense build-up, a military reform movement led frontal attacks on 'waste, fraud and mismanagement'. In the last five years, the two components of the MIC have become increasingly dissociated in analyses of the issues involved. The recent period has shown that influence can be derived from a position of relative weakness as well as from one of strength, which certainly bears out the notion that civil-military relations are best approached in institutional rather than in quantitative terms.

Aipac, the leading pro-Israel lobby in Washington has become a major force in shaping United States policy in the Middle East, although the perception of its strength may be larger than the reality. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, founded in 1954, is the only American Jewish organization officially registered with the U.S. Congress to lobby on behalf of legislation affecting Israel. Aipac is not a Political Action Committee and does not directly contribute funds to political campaigns. The root strength of Aipac lies not so much in its skills in public relations, access to media, and ample financing, as in the congruence of the lobby's objectives with elite perceptions, coalition building with non-Jewish groups and deep pro-Israeli sentiment in public opinion.

In 1992, the New York City Council voted a waste management plan which called for the building of a giant incinerator in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and an extensive recycling program to help reduce New York's waste. The vote was the outcome of intense brokering. For more than a decade, the plan had been held up by political conflict pitting city officials against environmentalists and community groups. The case-study which chronicles the decision-making process demonstrates how grassroots lobbying was ultimately defeated and evaluates whether the current disjunction between the formal requirements of citizen participation and political representation and the informal power structure of the « urban regime » does not pose a threat to the democratic nature of the global city.

Created by David Rockefeller in 1973, the Trilateral Commission became famous through its report on the Crisis of Democracy in 1975 and when 26 of its members entered the Carter administration in 1977. It was accused of acting as an organisation aiming at the full control of the world for the profit of transnational corporations. But observers had lost sight of its parent think tanks : The Round Table, the Council on Foreign Affairs — which organized the new world order after 1945 — and the Bildeberg Club, all still « alive and going strong. » Much various intelligence is traded in its speeches, reports and talks during its separate and annual general meetings when the future is conjectured. Even if inside information may be used in advance by participants, a world government power must be looked for elsewhere (IMF, G7) ?

Lobbying in Europe is not limited to lobbyists : regions, industries, unions and European Union institutions all participate in the decision-making process. Their action starts with information gathering and includes grass-roots operations. The development of such practices has led to abuses (« revolving door » for instance) of which the Commission and Euro M.Ps are well aware and that they try to limit.