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Interest groups often seek to influence legislators and legislative behaviour. We argue that the likelihood of legislators taking interest group requests and preferences into account is shaped by how -with what tactic -they are conveyed. We expect that more direct, real-time, contact increases legislators' receptiveness to interest group demands. To test this argument, we introduce and take advantage of uniquely nuanced lobbying data that provide extensive disclosure on all 217,886 lobbying attempts targeting individual members of the Irish Parliament between 2015 and 2019, and link them to data we collected on 167,347 parliamentary questions tabled by Irish legislators. The evidence suggests that lobbying does impact legislative behaviour, particularly when communication involves higher levels of 'social presence.' Moreover, our results indicate that approximately 20% of all parliamentary questions can be attributed to lobbying.

Interest groups (IGs) recruit incumbent parliamentarians to their boards to influence policy, improve their resources and signal political connectedness. To detect parliamentarians’ characteristics that drive recruitment, this study analyses three decades of annual data (1985–2016) of 903 Swiss parliamentarians and their board seats. It compares 5249 cases of parliamentarians’ successful recruitment by 3291 different organisations to counterfactual cases where no recruitment took place. The results show that IGs recruit parliamentarians for both knowledge and networks (professions, other board seats) and influence (committee seats) in IGs’ policy areas. Moreover, recruited parliamentarians are more likely newcomers, ideologically proximate to IGs, moderate and from the same district as them.

Interest groups do not only attempt to influence European legislation by devising and executing their own strategies, or relying on their allies. Almost 50% have also experience in hiring political consultants. Using novel survey data from the policy formulation stage, this study shows that business interest groups are more likely to hire consultancies than non-business interest groups. It suggests that business associations’ higher likelihood of hiring consultancies is linked to membership promotion. For firms, it likely relates to their need for specialised lobbying tools and trust-building measures when seeking private goods from policy-makers. Furthermore, the results indicate that consultancy hiring by business interest groups becomes less likely the more they focus on lobbying. This moderation effect highlights that business interest groups show awareness of principal–agent problems and take mitigating action.