Comparing the Evolution of Lobbying Legislation in Lithuania and Ireland, Whither Regulatory Robustness?

This paper examines the evolution of the laws regulating lobbying in Lithuania and Ireland using the Centre for Public Integrity’s (CPI) “Hired Guns” quantitative index for assessing/evaluating the robustness of lobbying legislation. This index, measuring transparency, accountability and enforcement, is a scoring system developed in 2003 to assess lobbying disclosure laws in United States (US) states that has since been applied in many other countries and jurisdictions. Employing the CPI’s index enables the findings here to be compared with those of other countries, states and territories that possess lobbying regulations. The paper shows that, first, Lithuanian legislation initially scores higher on the CPI index than Irish legislation; second, Lithuania’s CPI score declines longitudinally, whereas Ireland’s remains unchanged; and third, amendments introduce additional rules, sanctions and close loopholes – representing incremental improvements to lobbying regulations – often too subtle for the CPI index to capture.