Thank you for lobbying. Suggestioni simbolico-politiche su potere e democrazia

It is generally accepted that the crisis of parties and intermediate bodies has produced a void increasingly filled by intermediaries between society and the State. That’s one of the faces of political pluralism, at the same time ideal and pathological condition of the democratic corpus. In this context, lobby organizations have long been the subject of study by political, legal and social sciences, as well as communication and public opi-nion experts. The hypothesis underlying my reflection will highlight a sort of paradigma-tic character of the lobby as an essential category in political relationship. Taking symbolic inspiration from the film Thank you for smoking – which also inspired the title of this paper – this paper focus on the theme of lobbying, on the direction of democratic processes and critic questions concerning political consensus and crucial issues of power restored to its elementary structure.