Assessing business advantage in Washington lobbying

Abstract

Popular accounts of business involvement in politics typically suggest that business interests enjoy relatively unfettered success in getting what they want from government. Scholarly work is more equivocal. In this article we use a random sample of 98 policy issues between 1998 and 2002 to examine whether business interests and other advocates get what they want from the policy process, and how their rate of success varies when they face different types of opponents. We find that business' efforts to affect public policy typically draw challenges from other types of interests. In the face of opposition, business is less likely relative to citizen interests to achieve its goals. But business does appear to have an advantage in the relatively rare instances when it acts to advance its interests on issues that do not draw opposition or interest from other actors. Under these circumstances, it is much more likely than other types of advocates who face no opposition to realize its policy goals. Our findings clarify how the nature and framing of issues and a favorable political climate can prove essential to business' prospects for achieving policy success.

Lobbying Across Venues: An Issue-Tracing Approach

“…With respect to our multivenue organizations, we find that all types of groups participate across venues and repeatedly within venues, but that public interest groups are more likely to advocate relentlessly as power players, and business groups less so. Contrary to the common expectation that given their resources, business organizations control the policymaking process across venues, this finding supports the idea that multivenue mobilization on the same issue over time may be one mechanism by which public interest groups counter business interests, and are at least as likely to achieve policy success when we examine the debate over time, as identified by Hojnacki et al (2015) and earlier in Baumgartner et al (2009).…”

“…Regarding this latter point, these policies were all debated at the state level over the same two decades in California. This allows to control for institutional-level variables (such as the impact of a change in the administration, the importance of which is illustrated in Hojnacki et al 2015) and contextual variables (such as economic growth, but also culture and ideology). In sum, whereas we did not proceed to a random sampling, the “diverse cases” strategy implemented here shall nevertheless guarantee a useful variation on the dimensions of theoretical interest.…”

The Influence of Corporate Lobbying on Federal Contracting

“…Wright () argues that contributions do not influence votes at all, but open doors, giving lobbyists opportunities to build relationships with legislators. Yet while relationships with lawmakers are certainly valuable to corporate lobbyists, their usefulness in policy battles can prove inadequate when confronted with the grassroots and media tactics employed by public interest groups and labor unions (Hojnacki et al., ).…”

“…We argue that scholars have still been looking at the wrong kinds of activity. Most of the research has been in the context of contentious issues, instances where other organized interests are fighting to blunt corporate influence (Hojnacki et al., ). Yet corporations only sporadically lobby on broad questions of public policy, preferring to leave that work to their trade associations (Hansen and Mitchell, ; Brasher and Lowery, ).…”

Public affairs practice and lobbying inequality: Reform and regulation of the influence game

“…Public opinion or electoral outcomes have been found to be more influential than business interests by Smith (). When corporate lobbying focuses on issues ignored, or unseen, to other groups, they are frequently influential, but if corporate lobbying prompts opposition from nonbusiness groups, they are unlikely to be successful (Hojnacki et al, ).…”