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This study attempts to assess the degree of influence interest groups can exert on the state policy process, specifically via their lobbying activities. The analysis uses data from the 2005–06 Wisconsin Legislative Session to assess the association between lobbying activity and legislative outcomes in one state legislature. The study finds a direct association between lobbying activities and bill outcomes, while also exploring the potential influences of both key political actors and public attention. Public attention is found to reduce the effects of lobbying efforts, suggesting that lobbying is most effective when focused on less salient issues.

Although firms use various strategies to try to influence government policy, with lobbying and corruption chiefly among them, and political institutions play an important role in determining policy choices, very little research has been devoted to these topics. This paper tries to fill this gap. Using cross-country enterprise-level data, it investigates (1) the effect of a key political institution, namely electoral rules, on the probability that a firm engages in lobbying activities and (2) the impact of lobbying on influence, accounting for corruption and political institutions. The main conclusion is that lobbying is a significantly more effective way of generating political influence than corruption, and that electoral rules are a key mediating political institution. Our baseline estimate is that the probability of influencing government policy is 16% higher for firms that are members of lobbying groups than for those firms that are not.

The author analyses how big business interests groups influence the both EU legislative and policy making process, and by doing so how they distort pluralistic concept of public policy networking at the supranational level of governance. The enormous financial resources available to multinational corporations provide them the use of 'front group' strategy or the 'third party' strategy, manipulative public relations tactics, and an insider position in the European Commission's consultative fora, which all lead to exclusion of grass root groups. The author concludes that big business influence on the EU decision-makers will have negative effects on democratic legitimacy of the EU institutions, and he thinks that an efficient institutional control over lobbying activities in Brussels is needed.

Understanding why individuals participate in politics demands attention to more than just individual attributes and attitudes. Similarly, understanding how interest groups influence policy-making demands attention to more than just the financial donations and direct activities of Washington-based lobbyists. To answer fundamental questions about what determines when and why people participate in politics and how organized interests go about trying to influence legislative decision-making we must understand how and why political leaders recruit which members of the public into the political arena. Looking from the bottom up with survey data and from the top down with data from interest group interviews, Kenneth Goldstein develops and tests a theory of how tactical choices in a grass-roots campaign are made. In doing so, he demonstrates that outside lobbying activities deserve a place in any correctly-specified model of interest group influence, political participation, or legislative decision-making

AbstractHow much of lobbying activities disclosed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) actually represent foreign clients? What are their interests? By identifying the global ultimate owners of all corporate clients filing with the LDA, I find that majority‐owned subsidiaries of foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) account for nearly 20% of corporate lobbying spending in 2015–2016. This amount is comparable to the entire foreign lobbying spending reported under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Domestic subsidiaries of foreign MNCs are also found to lobby more frequently and spend more lobbying than American multinationals, after controlling for firm size, industry, and PAC contributions. These subsidiaries actively lobby on issue areas that clearly benefit their foreign parents. The findings suggest that foreign MNCs may actively influence U.S. policies through their domestic subsidiaries, and that the FARA captures only part of foreign lobbying in the United States.

AbstractAlthough firms use various strategies to try to influence government policy, with lobbying and corruption chiefly among them, and political institutions play an important role in determining policy choices, very little research has been devoted to these topics. This paper tries to fill this gap. Using cross-country enterprise-level data, it investigates (1) the effect of a key political institution, namely electoral rules, on the probability that a firm engages in lobbying activities and (2) the impact of lobbying on influence, accounting for corruption and political institutions. The main conclusion is that lobbying is a significantly more effective way of generating political influence than corruption, and that electoral rules are a key mediating political institution. Our baseline estimate is that the probability of influencing government policy is 16% higher for firms that are members of lobbying groups than for those firms that are not.

Although firms use various strategies to try to influence government policy, with lobbying and corruption chiefly among them, and political institutions play an important role in determining policy choices, very little research has been devoted to these topics. This paper tries to fill this gap. Using cross-country enterprise-level data, it investigates (1) the effect of a key political institution, namely electoral rules, on the probability that a firm engages in lobbying activities and (2) the impact of lobbying on influence, accounting for corruption and political institutions. The main conclusion is that lobbying is a significantly more effective way of generating political influence than corruption, and that electoral rules are a key mediating political institution. Our baseline estimate is that the probability of influencing government policy is 16% higher for firms that are members of lobbying groups than for those firms that are not. ; ISSN:1744-1374 ; ISSN:1744-1382

AbstractInterest groups face many choices when lobbying: when, who, and how to lobby. We study interest group lobbying across two stages of regulatory policymaking: the congressional and agency rulemaking stages. We investigate how the Securities and Exchange Commission responds to interest groups at the end of these stages using a new, comprehensive lobbying dataset on the Dodd-Frank Act. Our approach examines citations in the SEC's final rules which reference and acknowledge the lobbying activities of specific interest groups. We find that more than 2,900 organizations engaged in different types of lobbying activities either during the congressional bill stage, the agency rulemaking stage, or both. Meetings with the SEC and hiring former SEC employees are strongly associated with the citation of an organization in a final rule. Comments submitted by trade associations and members of Congress are cited more in a final rule compared to other organizations. While there is more variety in the types of organizations who lobby the bureaucracy than those who lobby Congress, presence does not necessarily lead to recognition or influence.

THIS PAPER GIVES THE CONDITION FOR A WELFARE IMPROVING MONOPOLY DEREGULATION WHEN THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS CANNOT BE INSULATED FROM TULLOCK ACTIVITIES AND PLAYERS ARE RISK NEUTRAL. IT CONSIDERS A MODEL WHERE THE DEREGULATION OF A MONOPOLY IS A CONTESTED ISSUE, IT ASSUMES THAT THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS CANNOT BE INSULATED FROM LOBBYING ACTIVITIES, AND DESCRIBES THE FRAMEWORK THAT ALLOWS FOR ONLY ONE WINNER.

We examine policies directed at regulating tobacco consumption through three types of instruments: (i) an excise tax hindering consumption by increasing the price of cigarettes, (ii) prevention programs helping consumers to make choices that are more time consistent when trading-off the current pleasure from smoking and its future health harms, and (iii) smoking bans directly restricting consumption. First, on normative grounds, we focus on the optimal design of public policies maximizing the economy's surplus. Second, in a positive perspective, we investigate how the lobbying activities of the tobacco industry, of smokers, and of anti-tobacco organizations may distort government intervention.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the developments in the European lobbying arena and its main actors. The thesis is based on the latest studies in this field. Along with the dynamic development of the European institutions, the number of interest organizations at European level increased. Besides the EU institutions, the private actors operating at the European level can be divided into two main groups: the group that protects business interests and the group that does not protect them. After the first direct elections for the European Parliament and the adoption of the Single European Act, an increase of lobbying activities in EU is noticed. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v4n1p445

"This paper empirically explores the relationship between firms' market behavior and their lobbying activities in a regulated market. In particular, we investigate whether the amount of contributions offered by cellular service providers to fund the campaigns of political parties affected market conduct in the early US mobile telecommunications industry. We structurally estimate market interactions while taking the potential endogeneity of lobbying decisions into account. Our results show that competition was more intense in those states where campaign contributions by the cellular industry have been higher. Furthermore, we reject the hypothesis that lobbying activities can be regarded as exogenous in the study of market conduct." (author's abstract)

AbstractCentral theories of public policy imply that lobbying is demand‐driven, meaning highly responsive to the levels of access that political gatekeepers offer to interest organizations. Others stress drivers at the supply side, especially the severity of disturbances which affect an organization's constituency. We test these central arguments explaining lobbying activities in a comparative survey experiment conducted in 10 polities in Europe. Our treatments vary the severity of two types of external threats faced by interest organizations: (1) barriers that restrict their access to decision‐makers and (2) disturbances that compromise an organization's interests. We operationalize these threats at the demand and supply side of lobbying based on an (at that point) hypothetical second wave of COVID‐19. Our findings show that while severe access barriers trigger a flight response, whereby groups suspend their lobbying activities and divert to protest actions, higher disturbances mobilize groups into a fight mode, in which organizations spend more lobbying resources and intensify different outside lobbying activities. Our study serves novel causal evidence on the important dynamic relationship between policy disturbances, political access and lobbying strategies.