In the lobbying literature, the effects of competition—two or more interests lobbying on opposing sides of a policy debate—have not been assessed with regard to government agency policymaking. Consequently, neither the amount nor the effect of competitive lobbying is well understood. Using nearly 1,700 comments on 40 federal agency rules, we evaluate two questions: Do government agencies respond to lobbying by changing agency policies? and Does lobbying on one side of a policy issue beget lobbying on the opposing side? We demonstrate that agencies change the content of final rules in favor of the side that dominates the submission of comments. Thus, it seems the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” during rulemaking. We find no evidence, however, of counteractive lobbying during agency rulemaking. Our results suggest that interest groups may further their policy goals by observing more closely the actions of opposing groups during agency policymaking.

Abstract:Government watchdog groups and the government itself have shown concern about the "revolving door" of employees moving from Congress to private lobbying organizations. As of yet, the academic literature analyzing who becomes a revolving door lobbyist is small but growing. We contribute to this literature by examining which former members of Congress become lobbyists. We construct a dataset of all members of Congress who left the institution between 1976 and 2012, identifying those who go on to register as lobbyists. We observe several trends. Among these: there is not a significant difference in the rates at which former House members and senators become lobbyists; institutional standing (in the form of party leadership and other such positions) has a profound effect on which former House members become lobbyists, but less so among former senators; and there is some evidence that Republican former senators are more likely to become lobbyists than Democratic former senators, but this party difference is virtually absent among former House members.

This study tests the common assumption that wealthier interest groups have an advantage in policymaking by considering the lobbyist's experience, connections, and lobbying intensity as well as the organization's resources.Combining newly gathered information about lobbyists' resources and policy outcomes with the largest survey of lobbyists ever conducted, I find surprisingly little relationship between organizations' financial resources and their policy success-but greater money is linked to certain lobbying tactics and traits, and some of these are linked to greater policy success.

Lobbying, Interest groups, Bureaucracy, Congress, Policymaking,

What explains policy outcomes? Using a data set containing the actions and assessments of 776 lobbyists working closely on 77 policy proposals, combined with newly collected data on each proposal, I show that the intensity of lobbying against a proposal is a powerful predictor of the likelihood that the proposal is adopted in Congress or a federal agency. This negative lobbying is more effective than positive lobbying: it takes 3.5 lobbyists working for a new proposal to counteract the effect of just one lobbyist against it. Negative lobbying is a more important predictor of the policy outcome than the level of conflict, the preference of the majority of lobbyists, and differences in interest group resources. Several institutional factors—presidential support for the measure, congressional polarization, and whether the proposal was initiated by a federal agency—are found to affect policy outcomes, but only presidential support matters more than negative lobbying.