Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Explaining Variation in State Lobbying of the Federal Government

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State governments have great potential as powerful interest organizations. Why have some states invested the resources to establish organized representation in the nation's capital when others have not? Is Washington representation effective?This Doctoral Dissertation Research project adapts exchange theory of private interests to an exchange theory of public interests. The project offers an explanation of why some states mobilize Washington lobbying offices and others do not. It expands prior work by considering environmental factors that might affect mobilization.The study empirically tests an exchange theory of interest groups and covers an entire population of interest organizations. The research also tests the relative importance of political and economic influences in the establishment of interest organizations. Finally, the project aids the understanding of states as sophisticated political actors.The project develops an event history model explaining what factors influence the creation of Washington lobbying offices, and uses regression analysis to determine the impact of Washington offices on federal funding to individual states. It uses in-depth interviews to explore thoroughly why and how certain factors matter.