BEYOND LOBBYING: REFLECTIONS ON THE PRIVATE APPROPRIATION OF BUREAUCRATIC CAPITAL

Abstract

A significant body of research in social sciences has been focused on developing our insight into the practice of lobbying. Nonetheless, there is consensus about the fact that lobbying and the broader concept of influence remain elusive in character. By mobilizing the notion of bureaucratic capital, this article considers lobbying to be one of the means by which firms try to orient the administrative production of economic rationalities to enhance their profits. The appropriation by firms of both knowledge of the administration and of various bureaucratic resources plays a central role in the construction of political alliances and the consolidation of their position in the economic field.