Abstract
In the recent years, lobbying as a political practice has become a policy problem in its own right and has triggered policy processes aiming at its regulation. These policy initiatives being particularly concrete and abundant in the Central European countries, I have chosen to root the general research question in their contexts.
Why have the policy-makers resorted to regulating the old informal practice of influence that is lobbying? And what does the choice of instruments of regulation reveal about the cognitive landscape of policy-making that pertains to the public action upon the influence of private actors in the public realm? In other words, considering that instruments of public policy „carry a concrete conception of the relation between society and politics and are supported by a conception of what regulation means“ , I intend to infer all possible cognitive and normative implications from the fact that lobbying is being regulated in a particular way.