Understanding the Relationship between Health PACs and Health Lobbying in the American States

We examine how health PAC activity in the states is connectedto lobbying. Is the political money that health interest organizationsbring to the policy process a powerful, independent means ofinfluence or is it better understood narrowly as a tactic usedto support lobbying? We examine the relationship between campaigncontributions and lobby activity and the limited work that hasbeen conducted on them and raise a number of questions aboutthe process by which they are connected. We utilize 1998 dataon state lobbying and PAC activity, allowing us to answer causalresearch questions generated from existing studies at the nationallevel. We conclude that PAC activity is best viewed as an adjunctof lobbying rather than an independent form of political activity.     

Who Lobbies Whom? Special Interest Politics under Alternative Electoral Systems

Why do some interest groups lobby politicians and others lobby bureaucrats? We theorize lobbying venue choices and intensity as a function of contract enforceability with policy makers, politicians, or bureaucrats. We argue that organizational structures of interest groups, in particular, whether they are centralized or decentralized, substantially affect their lobbying strategies because they are associated with different ability to monitor and enforce contracts with policy makers and punish them when they fail. We further demonstrate that the effect of centralized versus decentralized structure on venue choices is conditional on the types of electoral system: majoritarian, semiproportional (single, nontransferable vote: SNTV), or proportional representation systems. We test this argument using longitudinal survey data on lobbying which span two decades and cover around 250 interest groups in various sectors and issue areas in Japan. The results lend strong support to our argument about contract enforceability under alternative electoral systems.     

Legislators,organizations and ties: Understanding interest group recognition in the European Parliament

What explains Members of European Parliament's (MEPs’) decisions to recognize some interest groups as relevant policy actors? Addressing this question is fundamental for understanding the role of political elites in shaping patterns of interest representation and interest groups’ role in legislative decision making. Building on theories of legislative behaviour and informational theories of legislative lobbying, we argue that MEPs give recognition to those organizations that are instrumental for achieving key political goals: re-election, career-progression and policy influence. The pursuit of these goals generates different patterns of MEP recognition of interest groups. We contribute to the literature in three ways. Conceptually, we propose interest group recognition as a key concept for understanding interactions and links between legislative and non-legislative actors. We illustrate the high conceptual relevance of recognition for interest groups research while noting its conspicuous neglect in the literature. We address this gap and place the concept central stage in understanding legislators’ attention to and behaviour towards interest organizations. Theoretically, we build on a classic framework explaining legislators’ behaviour and refine it through the lenses of informational theories of legislative lobbying. We argue and show that legislators recognize organizations that enhance electoral prospects in their home Member States, and that legislator–group ideological proximity and an interest group's prominence in a specific policy field affect MEPs’ decisions to recognize some organizations as relevant actors. Our argument acknowledges the importance of the broader context in which MEPs operate and pays attention to how they react to and interact with it. Empirically, we propose an original and innovative research design to identify and measure recognition with the help of social media data. Our measurement strategy constitutes a significant improvement insofar that it reduces the challenges of measurement bias usually associated with self-reported data generated through interviews, surveys, or the textual analysis of newspaper articles and official documents. Our research design allows using fine-grained measures of key dependent and explanatory variables and offers the very first analysis of MEP interest group recognition that holds across decision-making events and policy areas. We test our argument on a new dataset with 4 million observations recording the recognition of more than 7,000 organizations by 80 per cent of MEPs serving in EP8. We find that MEPs are more likely to recognize organizations from their Member State, particularly under flexible- and open-list electoral institutions. MEPs are also more likely to recognize organizations that share their ideological affinities and are prominent actors in policy areas legislators specialize in.     

Kyoto Protocol cooperation: Does government corruption facilitate environmental lobbying?

Does environmental lobbying affect the probability of environmental treaty ratification? Does the level of government corruption play a role for the success of such lobbying? In this paper, we propose that a more corruptible government may be more responsive to the demands of the environmental lobby. We use several stratified hazard models and panel data from 170 countries on the timing of Kyoto Protocol ratification to test this hypothesis. We find that increased environmental lobby group activity raises the probability of ratification, and the effect rises with the degree of corruption.     

Commercial Lobbying in Australia: Exploring the Australian Lobby Register

Politicians and policy makers routinely engage with lobbyists and see them as crucial agents in the political process. But how much do we really know about the Australian lobby system? Although there are a range of reviews of lobby regulation schemes and discussions about the work of lobbyists, a comprehensive contemporary picture of the commercial lobbying system in Australia is missing. Using data from the ‘federal lobby register’, this article sets out to map the commercial lobbying scene at the national level. Using this as a backdrop, the article goes on to discuss what questions this raises and how we might develop a deeper understanding of the commercial lobbying system in Australia.     

Social heterogeneity and wasteful lobbying

Using a general equilibrium model with endogenous policy, we explore how heterogeneity affects wasteful lobbying by sectoral interest groups. With the help of a simulation approach, we first investigate the impact of information heterogeneity on how lobbies react to a shift from a soft to a strict government budget constraint. Next, we examine how lobbying is influenced by heterogenous perception of the general equilibrium implications of lobbying effort. Finally, we explore the consequences of heterogenous specialization in households' asset portfolios. We conclude that social heterogeneity in information, perceptions, and portfolio compositions increases incentives to lobby.     

Public interest lobbies: membership and influence

In this paper we examine empirically the determinants of membership in Common Cause and Public Citizen, two “public interest” lobbies. We find that the only variable significantly associated with membership in these organizations is number of college graduates in a state. We also examine voting by Congressmen on five issues on which one of the lobbies had taken a stand, and we find that in four cases the number of members in a state in the lobby is significantly associated with voting on the bill by Congressmen from the state, after adjusting for all economic variables. We interpret these results to indicate that participation by citizens does have some impact on the legislative process.     

Regulating lobbying activities in the European Union: A voluntary club perspective

This article offers a systematic exploration of why interest groups sign up to the European Union Transparency Register, a non‐binding lobby regulation system. We distinguish between instrumental and normative perspectives to explain voluntary compliance, and find that concern for one's reputation represents the most important motivational driver. Based on this, we suggest that the Transparency Register can be understood as a “voluntary club” sponsored by European institutions. This theoretical perspective captures the appeal of the instrument among lobbyists, but also a number of inconsistencies in its current design, which make it unviable in the long term. We outline implications for the ongoing reform of the Transparency Register, and more generally for the regulation of lobbying activities. The analysis draws on semi‐structured interviews with various types of lobbyists active in Brussels, and on data from public consultations organized by the European Commission.     

Cooperative lobbying and endogenous trade policy

This paper considers trade policies in a small open economy in which two influential interest groups lobby the government. Since competitive lobbying leads to excessive rent-seeking expenditures, the lobbies have an incentive to cooperate. The outcome of cooperative lobbying is characterized in terms of lobbying and bargaining power of the two groups. Two important results are derived. First, if the power of competing interest groups is balanced, then cooperation leads to free trade. Second, if it is unbalanced, cooperation may, on the contrary, increase protection.     

The instrumental power of transnational private governance: Interest representation and lobbying by private rule‐makers

While scholars have researched transnational private governance for over two decades, we still know little about some of the specific political activities in which private rulemaking schemes engage. This article addresses this topic by bringing together hitherto separate literatures on private governance and interest groups. I argue that examining private governance's instrumental power, and interest representation and lobbying specifically, complements the literature's dominant focus on the structural and discursive power of private governance. The article makes three contributions. First, it conceptualizes private governance schemes as interest organizations by analyzing similarities and differences with traditional interest groups. Second, the article examines instrumental power empirically by assessing the participation of 48 transnational private governance schemes in the European Union's lobby register and variation among private governance schemes in this respect. Finally, the article contributes to developing a new research agenda to continue bridging the gap between the private governance and interest group literatures.     

Congressional certification: How firms use former Congress members to lobby on their behalf

This paper models the effect of firm-level profitability (earnings before interest and taxes and return on sales) against certification by former members of the U.S. Congress. Although some scholars have studied certification, none have studied certification in the public policy market as is done in the current work. Likewise, although scholars have studied the effects of lobbying and political connections on firms' outcomes, none have studied lobbying through former Congress members specifically. The findings confirm that, after controlling for numerous factors, firms can use former Congress members to effectively lobby and certify their intentions. Both firm-level earnings before interest and taxes and return on sales were significantly associated with prior lobbying efforts by these former elected federal officials in several different estimation techniques employed in the study.     

The Declining Value of Revolving-Door Lobbyists: Evidence from the American States

‘‘Revolving-door” lobbyists are individuals who transition from governmental positions into lobbying for private entities. Such lobbyists thrive on the insider connections and political knowledge that they developed while in government. These assets afford former lawmakers more access to and influence over incumbent lawmakers. The value of their connections and knowledge, however, is contingent on former colleagues remaining within the legislature. As new legislators enter the assembly, the connections and knowledge of former members expire and lose value. Whereas increases in turnover or assembly size generate more former lawmakers who might lobby, such increases negatively affect former members’ value as lobbyists. Interest groups accordingly hire fewer former legislators to lobby. Other factors, such as longer cooling-off periods or increased legislative staff resources, produce slight or no substantive effects on rates of revolving. Legislative characteristics mostly determine rates of revolving for former lawmakers.     

The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Political Economy of Hedge Fund Regulation in the European Union

The traditional literature on interest group behaviour presumes that private interests develop lobbying strategies based on the principle of effective allocation of resources. However, nearly 400 private interest groups actively lobby the Council of Europe, a classical intergovernmental organisation with weak decision-making powers, where no significant policy pay-off is expected to occur. This analysis aims to explain the seeming puzzle of private interest groups seeking to influence an institution which is generally perceived as having no strong decision-making powers in European political space. It does so by exploring three explanations from the existing literature, namely ‘policy overlap’, ‘venue shopping’ and ‘epistemic community’, and considers another explanation not hitherto fully developed, suggesting that the ‘ideological motivation’ of interest groups helps to explain their behaviour. Taking the ideological motivation of interest groups into account when analysing lobbying strategies can in fact shed light on certain lobbying preferences that would otherwise appear to defy the logic of interest representation. This paper therefore suggests that an ‘ideological motivation’ explanation potentially plays a crucial role in the analysis of the behaviour of any interest group.     

Autonomy or Privilege? Lobbying Intensity of Local Business Associations in China

This article examines the relationship between the state and society in contemporary China by analyzing the lobbying behavior of business associations. Particularly, it asks whether and how autonomy and/or privileged access exert/s influence on their lobbying frequency. A formal model is developed that focuses on the trade-off between lobbying intensity and the private provision of collective goods. The hypotheses are tested against the original survey data from Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces. The research finds that self-established associations lobby less, and those with consultant status assigned by the government lobby the government more often. In contrast, the impact of “autonomy” in a narrow sense is weaker than is commonly claimed in the Chinese lobbying literature.     

Lobbying and (de)centralization

This paper presents a positive theory of (de)centralization of policy decisions in an international union -defined as a supranational jurisdiction that may exercise a policy prerogative on behalf of member countries. I build a benchmark model where national lobbies can coordinate (i.e. form a trans-national lobby) at no cost and show that lobbying does not affect the fiscal regime. On the other hand, when interest groups cannot coordinate, decentralization emerges as a political equilibrium with lobbying. Policy centralization hurts national lobbies by increasing competition for influence. At a constitutional stage, interest groups induce politically motivated governments to reject centralization. Three extensions show that this result depends on the level of cross-border externalities; the voting rule at the constitutional stage; and the details of the institutional decision mechanism under centralization.     

The decision to lobby bureaucrats

Despite a good deal of interest in lobbyists?? tactics, virtually no research has been published examining the conditions under which interest groups lobby the bureaucracy rather than or in addition to the legislature. Using two comprehensive datasets, I show that lobbying increases in both branches when conflict is higher and when the lobbyist has professional or political connections to that venue. In addition, certain conditions cause lobbyists to specialize in one branch or a particular branch only, depending on the issue area being lobbied, the interest group type being represented, the lobbyist??s resources, and other factors.     

Opaque transparency: an analysis of the Israeli lobbying regulatory regime of 2008

After some failed attempts to regulate the lobbying, the Israeli Parliament—the Knesset—passed the Lobbyist Law on April 2nd 2008. Although lobbying is a common and legitimate part of the democratic process, it raises issues of trust, equality of access, and transparency. What motivated the MKs to regulate lobbying—public interest, private interest, or symbolic politics? The MKs claimed that the law was needed for improving transparency whereas MK Yechimovich declared that it balances the strength of the rich, represented by lobbyists and the wide public. Assessing the achieved transparency in the comparative framework of other lobbying regulatory regimes, we see that the law confers tangible benefits on powerful interest groups, while providing only symbolic gestures to the public. Lack of information available for MKs creates a need for lobbyists for political intelligence and MKs need to identify the interests in play to guarantee for themselves the necessary legislative subsidy. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Persuasive Lobbying with Allied Legislators

Why do interest groups lobby allied legislators if they already agree? One possibility is that allies are intermediaries who help persuade unconvinced legislators. To study the role and value of intermediaries, I develop a formal model of persuasive lobbying where interest groups use public cheap talk and provide verifiable information to a strategically selected coalition of legislators. Interest groups face a trade-off: Lobbying aligned legislators is advantageous as they are more willing to endorse the group's preferred policy, but those who are too aligned cannot persuade a majority of their peers. The model illustrates how intermediaries are especially valuable if interest groups cannot persuade a majority themselves. Counter to previous work, the results demonstrate how a legislature's ideological composition determines the use of intermediaries. Groups may lobby intermediaries even if access to legislators is free and unrestricted.     

The contribution of lobby regulation initiatives in addressing political corruption in Latin America

For most of its history, Latin America has lived under authoritarian and elite rule where public decisions were often crafted in the shadows by cabinets and parliaments to the benefit of a small minority. Recently, the development of participatory political systems has brought some transparency to the policy-making process. Such scrutiny reveals evidence of the capture of aspects of policy-making by private interests that use obscure strategies to achieve their political goals. As a consequence, a widespread movement for regulating the role and tactics of interest groups emerged, which is seen as a necessary step to address the root causes of political corruption. This article provides an overview of efforts to regulate lobbying in Latin America. It explains attempts at regulation in four countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru), evaluates the level of success of these efforts, and assesses prospects for the future regarding reducing corruption through the instrument of lobby regulations. The authors argue that such regulations alone cannot eliminate political corruption. However, lobby regulations can contribute to increased transparency and aid in developing an anti-corruption culture. It will be shown that lobby laws in Latin America exhibit many of the problems long identified with similar regulations across western democracies. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How multinational civil society organisations and non‐governmental organisations lobby policy for human rights in Africa

In recent years, the number of international non‐governmental organisations (INGOs) and international civil society organisations (ICSOs) trying to influence policy processes in Africa has increased considerably. These players increasingly play an important role in socio‐political and life of many African countries. To achieve certain political results, INGOs and ICSOs often lobby governments, using a variety of techniques. Though lobbying as a public relations (PR) technique is widely discussed in academic spheres, the debate on the relationship between transnational advocacy and lobbying as a PR practice is still marginal. This paper explores how INGOs and ICSOs lobby governments in Africa and examines via a case the effectiveness of activist lobbying in the continent.