Lobbying, Interest Groups, and Campaign Financing and its Influence on a Multi-party Structure in a Presidential Republic.

 Almost all Americans who are aware at all about politics have some kind of opinion about the issues of lobbying, interest groups, and campaign financing. As usual, it gets complicated, but there are some things to remember when thinking about how it might work in a multi party presidential republic.

First, let's try defining some terms. 

A lobbyist is a kind of person whose profession it is is to convince other people to support other things using the latter's power and authority. They usually for it for pay although sometimes do it pro bono, IE for free for some varying reason like personally being really interested in the subject, being able to put it on their resume in the future, or otherwise, although normally they would be paid if someone already had a good resume and didn't have a personal fascination or care for the topic. Lobbying is just the verb form of their profession, which some people might associate with the oldest profession. 

An interest group is any group that is organized, often incorporated as a legal entity (so as to have a bank account, their activities controlled by a collective group like membership or donors or a board of directors, the right to own property in their collective name, and to sue and be sued), that uses what influence they have, which can be lobbying, a very dedicated mass membership who will go out and personally use their time to do things like commenting on public consultations or show up to town halls, a tactic probably most associated with the National Rifle Association in the US (assuming it hasn't been dissolved by the NYAG), their ability to collect donations and use them to create advertising for or against someone's electoral campaign, both primaries and the general election, giving information and possibly conducting their own research or surveys or similar and giving it to those politicians and bureaucrats and even court brief submissions which they can use to justify their actions or decisions, and funding lawsuits and sometimes defendants which help their cause.

Campaign finance is just anything to do with the money and things of value used in conjunction with an electoral campaign or a referendum question to influence the outcome of the vote. 

It's also very easy for all of these actions to look extremely corrupt, and very many people worry about the influence of this on politicians, for good reason. It's not like it was invented yesterday, Crassus, known for having liquid gold poured down his throat, over 2000 years ago, bankrolled Julius Caesar's career up until he was killed by the Parthians. 

Some people defend it for their own side and abhor the other side, usually along some kind of justification for how the relevant donor resembles them.

The actual effect of this can go in many different ways. It is possible to win without spending the most, Donald Trump's campaign spent less than Clinton's campaign and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's campaign spent less than the House Democratic Chair, Joe Crowley. But a lot of campaigns do get lots of money.

It's generally more useful when you think of money in politics to remember population, and so normally I'll use a lot of per capita remarks, so as to help with comparisons. A billion dollars in America would be similar to the influence of 200 million dollars in the United Kingdom, at least so long as the amount is controlled by similar ratios of people, such as about 50 dollars each raised by twenty million people vs fifty dollars each raised by four million in the UK, controlled by the 428 members of the Democratic national Committee as opposed to just 38 of the NEC of Labour. 

OK, so let's start with some changes.

In a multi party system, you'll normally see most of the wings that you can see in today's parties be actually different parties. The progressive wing that Bernie Sanders is most associated with would probably be a different party. Some might go to the Greens too. The Republicans would probably split into nationalists, religiously conservative groups with mostly evangelicals but some Catholics too, especially those who ally on abortion issues, and some other groups, perhaps a government skepticism wing that is hostile to regulations and laws like gun control legislation, and probably still have a remnant of the old Republicans left. 

They also hold separate primaries as I've mentioned, have different elections for their committees in wards, townships, counties, precincts, districts, states, and the national committees, and same with their conventions and the elections to them. They hold independent elections to choose their relevant floor leaders in the legislature, picking among themselves who to be on committees, who will be their chair, whip, and nominees for speakerships and presidents pro tempore of the senate (more so in state senates I suspect). People don't need to think much about which branch of the party will be ascendant.

In this context, having campaign finance is not very necessary to ensure that a given branch of a party wins a primary, and it isn't a big leap to go from one candidate in a primary to another, so any allegations which have credibility can shift people from one candidate to another. It's not like it's a leap of faith for someone to have voted for Bernie Sanders but now feels like it's unethical to support a Biden based on their association with some idea of an establishment. Those who spend too much can look and feel like they are isolated from the people, and with many alternatives from different parties and likely many candidates within that party who also provide plausible alternatives, jumping ship is always a risk that any candidate faces. 

Campaign finance reforms of this nature also has another interesting consequence. To be able to comply with the technical rule that superpacs among others can't coordinate, they often just take the face of another politician, give them the name of the one of the two main parties (and normally one of two primary candidates, it's not as common to have more than two although there are examples to the contrary) and oppose them in some way, usually a vote on an incriminating bill or resolution or an incriminating quote, or the candidate they support and some generally positive words about them or how they voted in a record. 

In a new multi party system, supporting a person can help them but it often won't be enough on its own to ensure they win over others in the same primary with similar ideologies or in the general election where you likely will have several of the same party running on similar platforms, or other parties which are fairly similar as well. Opposing a candidate or party is also not necessarily going to induce the candidates you want to win. It might work better in relation to ethics problems where they would be an unusual example in an otherwise clean system who acts like a roadblock than to policy disagreements, which could prove to be some interesting changes, and sometimes those disloyal to a faction that otherwise has broad agreement and sees them as a roadblock; perhaps expect campaigns to be more so saying things like Pelosi is a dinosaur who is obstructing a progressive congress or some other candidates and movements. 

You also will have a practical limit on spending and revenue generation, because you only need a certain amount of votes to win in an STV system for a given candidate. It would be the droop quota. Extra votes don't really help you much and you can't often predict very well who else they will support with their transfer votes. Spending a lot more to win only a droop quota for voters, many of whom will have already made up their minds with less of the campaign spending or donations, can provide diminishing returns. But, you may be in a situation where you need to attract transfer votes from those who are willing to consider you as also good, even if not their first choice. 

Irish political parties are familiar with STV, and their campaign strategy, according to the information provided by the Electoral Reform Society of the United Kingdom in their pamphlet of how to campaign under STV, is to by the HQ of the party, is to vote for their candidates in the order you prefer. The party's organization at each level, precinct, municipality, ward, township, county, district, state, and nationally, will likely need to be pretty neutral in terms of which of their candidates they support unless they have a specific ethics problem or say something wildly out of line for the party, and may invite a condemnation, knowing they have other candidates left who could succeed and that any reduction in voting numbers or distrust, especially from whose who are already ranking the party's candidates as other than first preference and so need a reason to stick with them in the ranking process, could be dangerous to the health of the party. Overall, this may mean that the elected individuals of the party will not be given much of a blank cheque by their relevant party level's committees, fewer of their allies will be on these committees, and fewer of them will just take orders. Even a presidential candidate may find themselves out of favour if the party thinks that throwing, implicitly or explicitly, its support behind another similar party's candidate will benefit them more. In return, presidents and others may be less inclined to use these party institutions as a source of appointments and those who would be given benefits of winning.

The parties in congress also have campaign committees. In the Democrats, it's the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the House, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the Senate, and for the Republicans, it's the National Republican Congressional Committee in the House and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the Senate. These committees also have to be keenly aware that the candidates which they might try primarying out only needs a droop quota to be sure of winning, out of an already likely more homogeneous party membership, and that it's necessary to support multiple members in the general election per district. These committees also likely will need to be aware that being biased towards one part of the party or candidates over another could get them into trouble for their elections, worried that partiality may one day lead to them falling out of favour, and by using single transferable vote to elect the committees in the first place, will be more representative of all the wings of the party's legislators. Much the same happens the election of the committee's officers, such as chairs and the treasurer. These committees spend many millions of dollars, some having focuses on some kinds of candidates like the Young Guns of the Republicans' committees.

It also becomes necessary to spend your money very broadly by geography, where now you can often be more specific. Only a limited number of races are competitive these days. In STV, a vast number of races are competitive, as are many more primaries. And if your previous ability was to spend a lot of money per person on the narrow slices of people who could be necessary to win, well, you've got many more people who could change their minds and need appealing to, and as before, not in ways that are as predictable as today. One advantage of this is that richer and/or more powerful people have a hard time using their money to actually cause as much harm or bias in the system. As rich as a person with 100 million dollars is, or one corporation is, trying to influence a race with so many swing voters in so many places, and without much assurance that your money will be the essential part of the campaign, and not much assurance that the efforts of those they influenced will actually get the things they want enacted or appointments confirmed, it's a big liability. The tax credits the US does give for small donations are decently generous, and in conjunction with feeling like your vote counts, the ordinary person has more probability of being important. 

Those accepting these donations, employment of advisors, or loans or whatever things of value also have to make very careful choices. A single bad choice could mean they lose the seats, which can knock them out of being important later on during the negotiations that is relevant during legislation, and those within the party doing all this stand a greater chance of being fired or not elected to their organizations for their failure. It's a big gamble to accept a large donation from a wealthy source or loan from shady or out of touch people or to give employment to someone who looks like a conflict of interest or has a terrible reputation like lobbying or special interests which don't look sympathetic enough or genuine about caring rather than enrichment. People already on the verge of making different choices over who to rank in what order may put your guys down lower, and you face this both in the primary and general. Candidates know that the party can turn on them if they behave badly, and could at least get a candidate on good terms with the party elected and any remaining candidates if they condemn wrongdoing early, and don't want to do it as much. 

It also tends to be the case that as no one party would have the majority on their own for a president or a senate, the confirmation of an FEC commissioner or appointment or election of other election regulation officials and judges will be less dependent on a single party. Enforcement of the present and future rules can be broader and better. 

OK, now, let's move onto lobbying. 

Lobbying is still possible in a multi party system. But it may prove to be different in interesting ways. 

For one, parties will probably be more homogeneous, and so instead of today with one swingable in ideology, probably forgettable representative to bring in an amendment for the purpose, who is unlikely to be challenged in the primary and unlikely to lose in the election, a legislator keenly aware that their votes and motions will be quite strictly scrutinized, likely having the difference in opinion big enough to make it harder to betray a core value. People of different classes, races, faiths or no faith, genders, incomes, and geographies, and more, are also represented inherently by being proportional to the people, and so their advocates are probably already there in the legislature, and in the party that would have the idea more accepted, it's less like they need the information and inducements of a lobbyist to work on the idea, so lobbying is more redundant and especially paying a lot for lobbying. Lobbying might become cheaper and so the lower classes and their advocates can use as effectively as others can.

Even if you get legislators on board, you need to convince the others within your their party to support the idea as it goes through the rest of congress, also the legislators of other parties in the other house and the president, and a committee. The committee chairs and the speaker or president pro temp in the senate is known to be able to be overridden by a simple majority and are elected by a multi party body to get their respective majority vote to be elected with less risk of standing against a chair or speaker you get demoted within your party, so if there are questions about sneaking a provision through something through an arcane, obscure, or informal practice without really knowing who decided what, like miscounting a show of hands, a true assessment of the support is more likely. Being able to do this is quite hard without lobbying or influencing a lot of people. 

Appointing a person who has ties with these previous positions (or is reasonably expected to be given such rewards after) is also riskier. Your party is unlikely to have the majority to give consent to the appointment. The president also is elected through basically a coalition of many parties' supporters as well, but after that, they are not held together by any formal means, so they have to balance many different people's favourites to get what they want after the election, who may be less willing to act for the president's interests even though the president is responsible for their nomination and for many, dismissal, after their appointment. That's a lot of new opinions in the varying departments and branches who have to be given a chance, but there is also little that makes a person likely to be appointed given how many others need to be appeased. A person who donates or is a lobbyist who lobbied for a person, if it is even accepted by the recipient and not rejected for giving the recipient a bad name or association, has to wait in line like other people do. 

Politicians, congresspeople, senators, and presidents are also now under a stronger pull that ties them to the people with a much more immediate demand for satisfaction lest they be ousted and to give them the changes they want. Bills renaming post offices are not good enough anymore. Big bills to address the many issues in America, guns, healthcare, social security, the military, and more, need to be discussed and voted on more and more so in this system with fewer gatekeepers to prevent a discussion, people having to actively go on record and put themselves on a side. Lobbyists have to make their pitches in this context about the biggest issues of the day, and can't stray too far from opinion. 

Bureaucrats also often are lobbied these days. Federal rules are common. There are several new constraints here. First, congress has more of a policy role and shoulders more responsibility for actually enacting what happens and has less abdication of responsibility. The heads of the bureaucratic departments also face more political negotiations, and so represent more opinions, so any opinions the bureaucracy will have due to lobbying will be diverse. Congress also has a stronger ability to cancel rules with no one party likely to have the votes necessary for blocking a veto, if the president even wants to veto the bill rather than not veto it to keep congress friendly for other initiatives they may have. Civil servants themselves are also able to be part of multiple parties, and don't have the two party dichotomy. Congress doesn't want their initiatives to fail, and neither does a president who can be in much bigger hot water with real risk of their initiatives failing in congress or being removed or their subordinates removed if they don't vigorously check negative influence that undermines the whole people. 

Let's move onto interest groups. 

Interest groups often have a membership of some kind. As many people as the NRA has, it's almost literally the 1% of America, with a few million members. That can swing elections today, but it would be a smaller chunk out of any pie, and a person who doesn't like the NRA for instance has little risk by appealing to those who are against them and will be represented, even if their faction only gains a minority of the seats or votes. 

Parties are also today closely associated with particular interest groups, like the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People with Democrats, and the NRA, or also the Family Research Council with the Republicans. In a new world of multi party republican (lowercase) politics, these groups generally have to either be part of a specific group backing a single party which will be unlikely to influence practical majorities to govern alone, or will be less tied to a specific party and will have to influence multiple parties. 

This makes these interest groups, if they want to be effective, forced to change tactics. Supporting one candidate or another in a primary isn't as effective, with more homogeneous parties and any of their candidates likely being decent allies. The parties as a whole and their candidates in the general election also have to appeal to transfer votes in most cases to win, and so being too closely tied with just one party can hurt you if your interests can't represent reasonable people who are not a member or supporter of that one party.

In the case of an interest group interested in a lot of parties, it's an unstable coalition and parties may join or leave the appeal of the interest group over time. You have to be pretty effective at being neutral or at least reasonable with all the members of that coalition or else face alienation and abandonment of your interest by them. And those who join a given party or take up roles with them, or vice versa, will need more support within them to elect more of their kind to the many more roles to fill. That's also hard work.

I hope that you have an idea about what is possible, even without fundamentally changing things other than the specific electoral system, such as disclosures, more cool down times, providing more financial aid to candidates who are smaller donation dependent, or opening up the constitution.