Despite a wealth of theorizing and research about each concept, lobbying and norms still raise a number of interesting issues. Why do lobbyists and politicians engage in cooperative behavior? How does cooperative behavior in lobbying affect policy making? If democratic participation is good, why do we view lobbying as bad?

Lobbying engenders debate about its effects on the political process and on policy development.　 Sociologists and other social scientists remain concerned about how norms emerge, the content of norms, how widely they are distributed, and how they...