3 | 2018 DPCE, pp. 631-664 ISSN 1720-4313 © Società editrice il Mulino Rafael Rubio Núñez, Margherita Sperduti The regulation of lobbying at sub-national level in Spain and in Italy The regulation of lobbying at sub-national level in Spain and in Italy. In this article, we have analyzed, according to a list of criteria identified following the 2010 OECD Recommenda- tions, the regulation on lobbying adopted by some Spanish and Italian regions in the last years. Our assumption is that, although there is a higher level of diversity among Spanish sub- national legislations, in many ways they appear to be more progressive than the Italian ones. Nonetheless, in order to overcome such fragmentation, which creates uncertainty among lob- byists and citizens, a homogenous legislative framework should be enacted at national level. Keywords: Regions, Lobbying, Interest groups, Decision-making process, Public servants. 1. Introduction As highlighted in the report “Lobbyists, Government and Public Trust” published in 2013 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (hereinafter, OECD) 1 , in the last decade there has been an increase in the number of countries approving and implementing regulation on lobbying 2 : in fact, up until the beginning of the 2000s only four countries had enacted such legislation 3 , but just five years later, ten 1 OECD, Lobbyists, Governments and Public Trust, volume 3: Implementing the OECD Principles for Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying, OECD Publishing, 2014. 2 For the purposes of the analysis, we will refer to the definition of“lobbying”proposed by Gi- anfranco Pasquino, according to which «it is a process through which interest representatives, acting as mediators, bring to the attention of legislators and decision-makers their demands». The author also recalls the definition of“interest groups”given by David Truman, who identifies them as «groups that, based on one or more shared attitudes, engage in influencing politi- cal decision-making, in order to successfully implement certain political goals or values» (D. Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1951, 33); this notion is kept distinct from the concept of “pressure groups” which refers to «groups seeking to influence decision-makers, through threat or use of sanctions, in order either to change the distribution of goods or to safeguard the status quo against other groups or the public power itself», G. Pasquino, Gruppi di interesse, di pressione, lobbying e partiti, in N. Bobbio, N. Matteucci (Eds), Dizionario di politica, Utet, Turin, 1976, 450 ff. In this study, we will indistinctly employ the terms lobbies, pressure or interest groups. 3 United States (1946), Germany (1951), Australia (1983) and Canada (1989).