Lobistinė veikla panaudojant visuomenės palaikymo skatinimo priemones Lietuvoje (grassroots lobbying)'' ; Grassroots lobbying in lithuania

Abstract

Lobbying includes all attempts to influence legislators and officials, whether by other legislators, constituents or organized groups. The terms lobbying and public affairs are often used interchangeably. Public affairs is a public relations specialism that seeks to influence public policy via lobbying and/or through the media. While public affairs is a specialized part of public relations, it is still closely connected with other parts of the public relations disciplines. For example, issue management, crises management. There is a particular skills set required to do lobbying. The core skills are those of identifying and analyzing issues, building a case in response, getting access to decision makers, aligning private and public interests, persuading officials and politicians in your favour and deciding on private or public routes of influence. Grassroots lobbying is pressure from bottom to top. From a public affairs viewpoint, grassroots lobbying is the mobilization of constituents to demonstrate public support for an organization's position. Grassroots lobbying consists of three essential steps: constituency building, constituency communication and constituency activation. Constituency building is the process of identifying and recruiting people who are willing to become politically active on behalf of an organization. Constituency communication means that when time permits, recruitment of constituents can be follow up by regular communication about pertinent political issues and stressing the importance of constituents involvement in the political process. Finally, constituency activation is not always distinct from constituency communications, its goal is to alert and mobilize supporters on issues of importance to the company. Grassroots lobbying is important to legislators because it provides information about their constituencies. Tools of grassroots lobbying are: conducting a media campaign (television, radio and newspaper advertisements), paying for billboards, films, speakers, writing letters to the editor, picket, signing a petition. Object, goal and tasks of master thesis. Goal of master thesis – to discuss and analyze lobbying in a juridical point of view and to analyze the lobbying activities that are implemented along with use of tools of public support stimulation. Object of master thesis – implementation of grassroots lobbying. The goal is being reached via the following tasks: 1. To disclose the meaning of lobbying as well as its juridical regulation and processes of implementation. 2. To analyze lobbying as a program of public relations. 3. To analyze grassroots lobbying as an activity of influence in governmental level of actions. 4. To disclose what tools of grassroots lobbying are used to accomplish specific programs of these actions in Lithuania and to compare the activity of tool usage in public and business organizations. This work will be useful for students studying public relations, for everyone, who is interested in grassroots lobbying.