A Theoretical and Emperical Study of Legislative Lobbying Strategies

长期以来，研究民主制度的学生一直担心私人权力进入公共事务。私底下的不平等不可避免地被利益集团政治的实践所捕捉，从而引发了格兰特·麦康奈尔（Grant McConnell）曾经所说的美国民主“最严重、最令人困惑的问题”。在今天的政治话语中，关于特殊利益集团的腐败影响的断言是司空见惯的。然而，关于利益集团影响的社会科学研究，值得注意的是其研究结果的非累积性和经常不一致的性质。游说对立法者的行为有什么影响？它在多大程度上放大或污染了代表的实践。利益集团获得影响力的手段之一是游说民选官员。第二种是为候选人的竞选活动捐款。第三是动员基层选民。这项研究考察了这三者对立法者行为的影响，但这个项目的基石是一个新的游说理论。关于游说的大量文献将其描述为一种旨在改变立法者偏好的策略，但这种方法被几个实证难题所破坏。首席研究员将游说建模为一种立法补贴形式——将工作人员的时间、政策专长、政治情报和其他立法资产有选择地给予国会盟友，使他们能够更有效地追求他们与该集团共同的政策目标。政治行动委员会的捐款和基层运动都是根据这一理论进行重塑的。该模型形式简单，假设现实，但其含义违反直觉。其中一个主要含义是，游说者应该游说那些已经同意他们的人。第二，他们应该游说那些最不可能改变主意的盟友。该模型还有助于澄清以偏好为中心的游说应该发挥作用的条件。PI对该理论进行实证研究，利用美国国会的数据检验其主要假设和替代假设。主要的因变量是立法者在特定法案上的活动水平及其对特定机构决策的干预，这是立法者专业知识和能力、选民利益以及团体游说和成员-团体协议的相互作用的函数。这些数据的性质表明，可以使用零膨胀泊松回归来估计模型。立法者的投票决定、团体的游说选择和团体政治行动委员会的捐款使用有限因变量的传统最大似然估计进行了分析。关于游说和基层竞选活动的数据来自对一项结构化调查工具的回应，该工具是在与团体游说者面对面访谈中进行的。其他数据来自政府文件、联邦选举委员会数据库、地区级人口普查数据和各种在线资源。这项研究有望提高我们对游说以及影响其行为影响的因素的理解，比如政治行动委员会的捐款和基层动员运动。但它也将对游说改革的设计和立法道德标准的制定产生实际影响。补贴已经承诺的立法者实际上是帮助他们完成他们的工作，这看起来与收买未承诺的立法者非常不同。因此，接受游说者的帮助不会给众议员带来道德困境。然而，游说资源的不平等仍然会扭曲代表，有利于金钱利益。事实上，这可能会给这些团体带来更多的立法优势，而不是他们对国会竞选的贡献。

Students of democratic institutions have long worried about the reach of private power into public affairs. Private inequalities inevitably get captured in the practice of interest group politics, giving rise to what Grant McConnell once called the "most serious and perplexing problems" of American democracy. In political discourse today, assertions about the corrupting influence of special interests are commonplace. Social scientific studies of interest group influence, however, are noteworthy for the non-cumulative, frequently inconsistent nature of their findings. What effect does lobbying have on the behavior of legislators? And to what extent does it magnify or otherwise contaminate the practice of representation.One of the means by which interest groups achieve influence is by lobbying elected officials. A second is donating to candidates' campaigns. A third is mobilizing constituents at the grass roots. This study examines the effects of all three on the behavior of legislators, but the cornerstone of the project is a new theory of lobbying. The large literature on lobbying characterizes it as a strategy intended to change legislators' preferences, but this approach is undermined by several empirical puzzles. The principal investigator models lobbying as a form of legislative subsidy - a grant of staff time, policy expertise, political intelligence, and other legislative assets - selectively given to congressional allies so that they can more effectively pursue policy objectives that they share with the group. PAC contributions and grass-roots campaigns are recast in light of this theory. The model is simple in form, realistic in its assumptions, and counterintuitive in its implications. One of the main implications is that lobbyists should lobby those who already agree with them. A second is that they should lobby most those allies who are least likely to change their mind. The model also helps to clarify the conditions under which preference-centered lobbying should work.The PI investigates the theory empirically, testing its main hypotheses and alternative hypotheses using data from the U.S. Congress. The main dependent variables are legislators' activity levels on specific bills and their interventions in specific agency decisions, which are modeled as a function of legislator expertise and capacity, constituency interests, and the interaction of group lobbying and member-group agreement. The nature of these data suggest that the models be estimated using zero-inflated poisson regression. Legislators' voting decisions, groups' lobbying choices, and group PAC contributions are analyzed using conventional maximum likelihood estimators for limited dependent variables. The data on lobbying and grass-roots campaign activity come from responses to a structured survey instrument, administered in face-to-face interviews with group lobbyists. Other data come from government documents, FEC databases, district-level census data, and various online sources.The study promises to improve our understanding of lobbying and the factors that affect its behavioral impact, such as PAC contributions and grass-roots mobilization campaigns. But it also will have practical implications for the design of lobbying reforms and the development of standards of legislative ethics. Subsidizing already committed legislators is, in effect, helping them to do their job, which looks very different than buying off uncommitted ones. Accepting lobbyists help thus poses no ethical dilemma for the representative. However, the inequality among groups in lobbying resources will nonetheless distort representation in favor of moneyed interests. Indeed, this may contribute more to the legislative advantages of such groups than their contributions to congressional campaigns.