| Summary/Abstract |
Much existing work on ideas in policymaking and lobbying has focused on how shared ideas can facilitate achievement of policy preferences. However, interviews with lobbyists and recent research indicate shared ideas may also hinder lobbying success—a topic largely ignored to date. I begin to address this gap by mapping two roles for shared ideas in lobbying processes: as icebreakers to facilitate communication with politicians and as instruments in pursuit of specific interests. I subsequently propose pathways via which shared ideas may facilitate or hinder lobbying success and illustrate these mechanisms in case studies examining British preference formation during G20 negotiations over tax reform. The analysis underlines the crucial role of strategic agency and the interaction of actor’s communication strategies when seeking to understand how ideas affect lobbying success. Likewise, it highlights the value of explicitly incorporating ideas’ multivocality into studies of ideas’ role(s) in politics.
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