Persuasive Lobbying and the Value of Connections

Abstract

Interest groups are often highly selective regarding which policymakers to meet and when to meet them. How valuable are private meetings with policymakers as a function of their preferences and bargaining power, and when do interest group prefer access early or late in the legislative process? To answer these questions, we study a model of informational lobbying with a collective decision-making body and endogenous reforms. We show that the value of gaining private access to legislators depends not only on their ideological alignment with the interest group, but also on their ideological alignment with the median of the legislature and with the agenda setter. Moreover, the value of access to a particular legislator depends on the ideological alignment between the median and the agenda setter, even when that legislator is neither of them. Finally, we show that the agenda setter herself may not be a particularly valuable target and that she can be influenced by a simple cheap talk recommendation even though the interest group has transparent motives.

Understanding Influence in Informational Lobbying

“…If public communication is at most partially influential, the option of private conversations can ensure that interest groups increase their influence. Hence, an immediate empirical implication is that interest groups may be willing to pay a substantial amount to talk in private rather than in public (Awad and Minaudier 2023).…”