DEMOCRACY AND TRANSPARENT LOBBYING: MEASURING THEIR RELATIONSHIP

In the present paper, we discuss a link between transparent lobbying and democracy. We assume that a better definition and a deeper understanding of attributes of the transparency of lobbying contribute to a more accurate assessment of quality of democracy and might help to develop more complex tools of measurement of quality of democracy in the future. The article proceeds as follows: first, after defining basic terms, we briefly introduce five common indices of quality of democracy and analyze its indicators in terms of transparency requirements. Second, we introduce the results of our existing research and propose a catalogue of measures supporting transparent lobbying. Third, we identify sub-indicators in the five introduced indices of democratic quality related to transparent lobbying and assign a value to each individual indicator in the indices to determine whether measures of transparent lobbying have relevance with respect to these indicators. Fourth, we carry out a rudimentary statistical analysis and discuss it. The analysis produces five findings which are significant for our understanding of indicators of democracy and tools of transparent lobbying