You’re often going to have a client who has a message that key decision-makers in the commission, the Parliament, and the Member States, just don’t care about. When you run your case by them, your audience eyes glaze over, they look up into the air, and cross their arms, or turn their focus to their iPhone.
If you want to get your policy co-opted or win a vote, you need to persuade the people who are making the decision or preparing the voting list. If you choose to say “they are either with me for my reasons, or they are against me”, you are going to find out that most people are against you.
This is a shame, because you could try an alternative option, and get critical numbers backing you. You can do this and try alternative framing that the people who matter find interesting, powerful, and back you. If your client takes this approach, you will land up getting what you want. You’ll get support for reasons that don’t fully align with your worldview.
Personally, I’ve never really minded how you get the necessary support, just as long as you get it.I’ve never really cared if policy makers and politicians back the preferred legislative policy solution on a given issue for totally different reasons than the client wanted. If I can re-frame the issue to garner key support and votes, it is all for the good.
You are going to have clients who insist on running on a line of argumentation that leads to support evaporating. When this happens, you have a problem. These are the clients who want you try your hand at political conversion therapy. I’ve never seen conversion therapy work in lobbying. It amounts to getting someone to accept your world-view and interests in seconds. It’s like a form of hypnosis performed over Zoom calls.
If you want to win, and by that I mean getting the law in place that you want, and getting it implemented, it makes sense to roll with the opportunities. The alternative is running into a wall., usually at great speed.
It is useful to see how the message is landing early on. I find asking the people who you have met, or their colleagues, if the case landed with them and will they lend their to support you, an easy way to find out. If they say “it works for me/us”, that is great. If you hear them say ” No, it does not work for me/us”, it is time to change.
Often you are going to have to tell your client it is time to adapt or politically die. That’s not a nice message to take, especially if your client has been taking the case to the key decision makers and politicians. You need to do it because it gives the campaign time to amend the framing. If you don’t, you are dealing with a political dead man walking. You know you can’t win, but are going through the motions. And, if the client does not want to adjust the framing, you at least know that your chances of getting what you want are slim to nil.
I’ve found it best to talk to groups about the interests and values that resonate with them. If that involves talking about Mises to classical liberal MEPs on the vice of fisheries subsidies, or social democratic MEPs on the large scale industrial fleet benefiting from fishing subsidies, it matters not. Their support was won and they voted the right way when it mattered.
The options are clear. You can embrace the option of being a beautiful loser and pure, or engage in terms that resonate with your audience.