The Good Lobby Business Associations Initiative (REBASE)

Business associations are often the most influential, yet least scrutinized corporate lobbying actors. Their funding and internal governance remain typically opaque. Their agenda is often obstructive, unaligned with many of their members’ stated policy positions. The Good Lobby Business Associations’ Initiative seeks to raise expectations for what responsible conduct by and governance of business associations should look like and how this can be further encouraged. Through both a gap and bright spot analysis, stake-holder interviews and the incubation of a coalition for reform it seeks to (i) identify priorities for improvement, (ii) surface existing good practices and (iii) flag feasible pathways for reform. With a focus on the governance and responsibility of business associations REBASE directly builds on and is highly complementary to a flurry of current initiatives that focus on companies and encourage them to address misalignments in their business association membership.

Aims & Scope

REBASE intends to envision and provide benchmarking guidance on what constitutes good governance practices, by

identifying and exploring pathways for reforming business associations beyond recalibrating individual policy positions;
adding a layer of systemic, actionable information to concurrent initiatives;
and equipping a wide range of stakeholders with practical and granular policy asks for making business associations more responsible, responsive, and accountable.

While its privileged geographical scope is Europe, its research outlook extends to OECD countries.

The Project

REBASE pursues these aims by exploring the following questions:

What internal governance features are essential for a credible claim that business associations represent their members and their interests?
How do emerging expectations for companies to behave responsibly in the political sphere translate to business associations?
What public-facing reporting and governance standards should apply?
Which sectors, types of business associations show progresses, where are promising examples that provide inspiration for the larger community?

The main expected outcomes will include:

A much clearer, more granular picture of what responsible conduct by business associations should and can look like;
A set of good practice examples as both proof of concept and inspiration that change is possible and underway;
A strong sense of where progress is lacking and a first basis to assess and benchmark the conduct of specific business associations
A network of practitioners, researchers, advocates and other stakeholders that are committed to working on responsible business associations