Activities devoted to informing politicians of the views of various interest groups, and persuading them to draft legislation or to vote in accordance with these views. Lobbying is conducted by numerous interest groups; the methods vary greatly. Some lobbying is purely informative; no reasonable objection can be made to this, as it is clearly desirable that legislators should know about people’s problems, and how any proposed legislation will affect them. At the other extreme lobbyists can use criminal methods such as bribery and blackmail. In between are methods involving financial support for political activities, which many countries believe cannot be prohibited but need to be regulated.