Lobbyists as Gatekeepers: Theory and Evidence

Abstract

Lobbyists are omnipresent in the policymaking process, but the value that they bring to both clients and politicians remains poorly understood. We develop a model in which a lobbyist's value derives from his ability to selectively screen which clients he brings to a politician, thereby earning the politician's trust and preferential treatment for his clients. Lobbyists face a dilemma, as their ability to screen also increases their value to special interests, and the prices they can charge. A lobbyist's profit motive undermines his ability to solve this dilemma, but an interest in policy outcomes-due either to a political ideology or a personal connection-enhances it, which paradoxically increases his profits. Using a unique dataset from reports mandated by the Foreign Agents Registration Act, we find that lobbyists become more selective when they are more ideologically aligned with politicians, consistent with our prediction.

Dynamic lobbying: Evidence from foreign lobbying in the U.S. Congress

“…Despite the fact that the three firms lobbied on behalf of the same country on the same issue during a similar time period, the set of contacted politicians differed, with a small overlap. Politicians granted access to only a limited set of lobbying firms (Hirsch et al, 2022) and there was a local monopoly of access to specific politicians. Commercial lobbying firms with access to different politicians allow lobbying clients to expand the set of lobbying targets, if necessary.…”

“…It could be more challenging to gain access and provide information in a credible way to members who hold ex ante negative priors on the proposal. Existing work argues that connections to politicians, formed by campaign contributions, work history, and/or ideology, could solve this problem because connected lobbyists could bring “credibility or political savvy, in the transmission of information” (Bertrand et al, 2014) or provide more screening in presenting the interest group's case to the connected politicians (Hirsch et al, 2022).…”

“…I find that members who are weakly or strongly opposed free trade are contacted by lobbyists who are more closely aligned with them, especially during the agenda‐setting stage. This suggests that by contacting members through aligned lobbyists, especially at the stage when persuasion is critical, interest groups can credibly deliver information to and extract it from members who had negative prior beliefs on the agenda to advance the issue in the legislature (Bertrand et al, 2014; Hirsch et al, 2022). These findings highlight the role of intermediaries in persuasion, and potential informational gains that lobbyists could bring by linking two audiences (policymakers and interest groups) (Ainsworth & Sened, 1993).…”

Persuasive Lobbying and the Value of Connections

“…2 Related work studies the value of lobbyists from the perspective of special interest groups. Hirsch et al (2023) study a model in which the value of an intermediary lobbyist stems from their ability to screen information, ensuring that they are more persuasive than the interest group itself. In Ellis and Groll (2022), the value of lobbyists as intermediaries stems from the profit motive and the threat of losing access after lying to the policymaker.…”

Going into Government: How Hiring from Special Interests Reduces Their Influence

“…the tech industry), and go into government positions. We analyse a formal model of policymaking that, like Groll and Ellis (2014), Groll and Ellis (2017) and Hirsch et al (2021), treats special interest groups separately from the individuals who work for them. In our model, an individual chooses whether to keep working for a special interest or to take a job in government.…”