Public Support for Lobbying and Transparency Rules

Which rules drive popular support for political disclosure? Lobbying disclosure rules are discussed in many countries as means to increase transparency and curb conflicts of interests of politicians, but calls to strengthen these rules often face staunch opposition from policy-makers. In the context of campaign finance, experimental and quasi-experimental studies show that transparency affects candidate choice (Wood 2022), and that transparency audits which show non- compliance with campaign finance rules profoundly impact legislators’ behaviour and re-election chances (Wood and Grose 2021). Moreover, bureaucratic transparency can lead to improved project performance, under certain institutional conditions (Honig, Lall, and Parks 2022). However, we know little about whether voters actually support increases to political disclosure and transparency, and if so, which design features of disclosure system drive public support. In addition to the lobby register, we will also investigate preferences for politician behavior which could contribute to transparency of potential conflicts of interest, such as cooling off periods between holding a public office and starting to work as a lobbyist/in the private sector, or side jobs of politicians. The conjoint will force the respondent to choose between and rate two politicians proposing different rules for for 1) a lobbying register and 2) rules of conduct for politicians. In particular, we focus on the institutions covered by the proposed rules, the strength of possible sanctions in the case of non-compliance, and the detailedness of disclosed information. We evaluate how these different policy dimensions affect vote choice, politician support, and political trust. Prior to the conjoint, we will prime relative comparisons to other countries by displaying information on the stringency of lobbying register rules in Germany/the UK, in comparison to other countries and organisations (Ireland, United States, European Commission). We expect respondents to support more extensive rules of they perceive their country to have less extensive rules, compared to other countries. In addition, we want to investigate how respondents trade off dimensions of political transparency. While citizens are likely to support more stringent transparency measures as a means to strengthen accountability and good governance, they might perceive certain rules as too bureaucratically burdensome or as inhibiting political compromise, as stricter transparency could make informal consensus-seeking between politicians and stakeholders more difficult (Fehrler and Hughes 2018; Harden and Kirkland 2021). The results of our study have important implications for the design of accountability and transparency mechanisms and the electoral costs to policy-makers who wish to introduce or reform these rules.