The amount of defense of lobbying in this thread is interesting.
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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It's the split between people who see all lobbying as corruption and those who see lobbying as trying to influence elected representitives, encompassing both the immoral and the benign.
No one really disagrees that we shouldn't allow people to buy votes and that we should make it possible for a representatives constituents to communicate with them.
Another way to phrase it is that there's a lot of "voting is pointless, we should get rid of it and just ask people what they want to do instead" energy.
The question is the answer. If you don’t have lobbying you have corruption because that’s how people work. By providing the legal route it’s visible, provides opportunity for oversight and regulation.
Problem being when that lobbying comes with lots of money and media in hand and that money outweighs the ability of citizens to compete with the uber-wealthy corporations and people. When regulating lobbying fails or is captured by the rich it’s no better than corruption.
Denmark being at the top of these lists is always so fucking funny to me. We just hide the corruption in a few layers of abstraction and whoops look at that, we're rated extremely well on all the charts!
Yeah. I laughed seeing Sweden up there. It’s as if our right wing Nazi collaborator government hasn’t been privatising and selling our welfare.
They’re currently vowing to double the amount of surveillance cameras. Oh, and what powers the police force? Palantir. Nevermind the fact that chat control originated with a Swedish politician.
I guess the scale works if corrupt and morally bankrupt is the top of the scale.
Nazi collaborator? what???
The only reason we have a right wing government is because they are actively choosing to work with the Nazi party. Otherwise they’d be a minority.
Table of Nazis and all that.
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I don't think we agree on what corruption is. I hear this a lot from Danes in the context of "The farmers and bankers have whole political parties in their pockets" and "all our MPs are career politicians" and "you can't get a nice job unless you know someone".
While these statements aren't fully true, they're definitely real issues. But I would suggest these are not corruption. You could consider them problematic, sure, but corruption is about using your public authority to steal and misappropriate resources to enrich yourself. Stuff like bribes, embezzlement, etc. Which happens far less in Denmark than most other places I'd say.
The main exception is the royal house, which is super duper corrupt.
The first paragraph quotes are complaints about influence peddling, kickbacks, regulatory capture, cronyism, and nepotism, all of which are absolutely forms of corruption. I'm sure others forms probably apply as well.
I'm not sure what first paragraph quotes you are referring to, first paragraph of the report? Or of some comment here on Lemmy? Sorry if I'm missing something.
The quotes in the first paragraph of your comment that you were passing off as mildly unpleasant but not corruption. They definitely are corruption.
Ah, of course, thanks.
But are they? If the farmers band together to form a political party which gets voted into parliament doesn't seem like definite corruption to me. If the farmers had judges and officials in their pockets that would be corruption.
If the majority of MPs have educated themselves within law, economics and social science to pursue a career of representing their communities, and they are then elected due in part to their experience ane expertise on state and governance matters, that's not definite corruption to me. It's not clear to me that someone like that cannot earnestly represent their electorate.
If someone is looking to make a hire, and they have many qualified candidates, them choosing to hire someone recommend by their peers in the field doesn't seem like definite corruption. If they were to hire their family members or friends based despite lower qualifications, that would be nepotism.
The problem is all those ifs, and they're giant ifs. Always assuming the best case scenario is the best possible way to get completely fucked over. Obviously those strawman statements are not proof alone of corruption, but to entirely ignore them as potential warning signs is beyond foolish. And to say they don't describe corruption is demonstrably false.
Always assuming the best case scenario is the best possible way to get completely fucked over.
I agree, but here we are talking about reality, not assumptions. In this particular context, the majority of cases are as I describe. It's completely justified to keep these things under intense scrutiny (Denmark is relatively transparent and has a functioning critical press across interests and political spectra), but if you assume the worst you start seeing corruption where there might be none.
And to say they don't describe corruption is demonstrably false.
I'm not sure I see that, but I could well be wrong. Would you care to demonstrate?
Oh yeah, no problem! Sorry I don't have a webcam or anything, so it'll have to be a textual demonstration.
Web searches the phrase "forms of political corruption"
Clicks most relevant link, probably Wikipedia
Reads the webpage, processes the words thereon
Notices how people in politics committing fraud, graft, influence peddling, bribery & kickbacks, regulatory & state capture, nepotism, patronage, and cronyism (see, I knew more applied) would very reasonably cause their constituents to have complaints like "private minority interests have major political parties in their pockets" and "lots of our politicians have been in their positions of power for an unreasonable amount of time" and "you can't get a good job or government contract or research grant or get a pothole filled unless you 'know somebody'"
Demonstration complete, now it's your turn! Let me know if you need to "see" any of that again, I can always s l o w i t d o w n for ya ;)
Notices how [corrupt] people [...] would very reasonably cause their constituents to have complaints like [...]
Thanks. Sounds like you're saying the issues I mentioned could be signs of corruption, but are not corruption in themselves? Which is true for sure, but they don't necessarily imply corruption.
And in this particular case, they get scrutinized and very little actual corruption is found.
Not signs of, examples of. Like you say, not every case of these issues is corruption, but plenty (worldwide) are. And yeah, I'm not arguing about the actual statistics in Denmark, I've no idea and you've presented no actual data. Which is fine, I probably wouldn't read it anyway, my Danish is more than rusty. You're welcome.
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The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) aggregates data from a number of different sources that provide perceptions by business people and country experts of the level of corruption in the public sector.
Each data source that is used to construct the CPI must fulfil the following criteria to qualify as a valid source:
• Quantifies perceptions of corruption in the public sector
• Be based on a reliable and valid methodology, which scores and ranks multiple countries on the same scale
• Performed by a credible institution
• Allow for sufficient variation of scores to distinguish between countries
• Gives ratings to a substantial number of countries
• The rating is given by a country expert or business person
• The institution repeats their assessment at least every two years
Okay so definitely some institution bias there.
13 data sources were used to construct the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2025:
African Development Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment 2023 (AFDB)
Bertelsmann Stiftung Sustainable Governance Indicators 2024 (SGI)
Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index 2026 (STI)
Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Service 2025 (EIU)
Freedom House Nations in Transit 2024 (FH)
S&P Global Insights Business Conditions and Risk Indicators 2024 (GI)
IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2025 (IMD)
Political and Economic Risk Consultancy 2025 (PERC)
The PRS Group International Country Risk Guide 2025 (PRS)
World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment 2024 (WB)
World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2025 (WEF)
World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 (WJP)
Varieties of Democracy Project 2025 (VDEM)
Looking over the short blurbs in their methodology reads like a list of "freedom index think tanks" that are the exact people that claim it's not corruption it's lobbying. Especially when they land on conclusions like Israel is basically as corrupt as South Korea because we just mark the west bank and Gaza as no data...
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In france is not lobbying, is "asking an exception to the prefecture" ... exception to the application of the law, and you have to pay for that. So only wealthy people and big firm could ask for it.
Phew, we wouldn't want the poor getting a say.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and be pedantic. Lobbying doesn't purely mean bribery. By its strict definition, lobbying means influencing. Was the civil rights movement corrupt for lobbying to allow equal rights for black Americans? They did donate and promise to elect the Democratic Party in exchange for passing the Civil Rights Act. Unions has and always lobbied as well. Environmental groups lobbied to pass stricter environmental regulations.
Lobbying has understandably gained a bad connotation, but not all lobbying have evil intentions and consequences. It ultimately depends on the context. If lobbying disproportionately empowers only a select few at the expense of others' rights, like billionaires lobbying to dilute worker's rights and environmental protection because it affects all of us, then it is unquestionably bad.
I think we can compare it to advertisements. Not all advertisements are bad. Some advertisements are about public service announcements which could be good. However the vast majority of advertisements are about how to increase demands for products we dont need and manipulate us into thinking better about bad corporations.
The nuanced picture is therefore that advertisements isnt all bad, but the big picture is that it is mostly bad.
We can also compare corporations. Not all corporations are bad, but in the big picture they are mostly bad.
Don't compare it to advertisement, compare it to the medium that contains the advertisement.
Some TV is advertising. Some TV is the shows you wanted and got the thing for to begin with.
The goal isn't to eradicate the medium, it's to get rid of the ads, or at least limit them to a reasonable and regulated set of public service announcements.
The problem isn't your right to petition the government. It's that it's easy for a business to likewise petition them, and they can make it clear that people who support their policies often get seats on boards with nice perks later, when they're out of office.
You want to keep your right to petition. That's called lobbying. Outlawing lobbying is saying it should be illegal for you to try to get your representative to vote in a particular way.
And that's why Im an horizontalist. I dont believe we should channel our force into a beatling that enforce their will upon vast lands. Corruption is inevitable. We should rather strive for democratic confederations where we rule democratically in participation with our neighboring communities.
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I call I corn holing.
My wife doesn't let me out much
Please, thank your wife for me 😉
As does much of the rest of the county. I slip my chains a few times a week when the cats distract her with snuggles and bringing her lizards for her to eat (my wife has the strangest diet). (it is very light on the lizard but please do not tell my cats it will hurt their feelings).
didn't know norway was cool like that
Many politicians take jobs in pr firms when they leave. They retain their access badges to Stortinget for life for some unfathomable reason. So the lobbyists trained by being career politicians have unmitigated access to our current ones.
There have also been articles lately about how the right side parties have received orders of magnitude more money in donations than the left.
Both of those things reeks of corruption if you ask me.
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No they still have corruption
I’m pretty sure it’s not just the countries colored red. Even China allows lobbying
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Hey skill issue not our fault we have the best marketing departments. /s
Anyone know how the neoliberal sunglass smiley became a symbol for neoliberalism?
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