Skip to main content
Log in

The two worlds of lobbying: Washington lobbyists in the core and on the periphery

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Interest Groups & Advocacy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

For decades, political scientists have had two divergent views on lobbyists in Washington. On the one hand they focus on the privileged access of a few groups in balkanized issue niches, and on the other they observe highly inclusive lobbying campaigns where hundreds of lobbyists vigorously compete for policymakers’ attention. Not surprisingly, these disparate observations lead to contradictory conclusions about lobbying tactics, relations with relevant policymakers and the nature of interest group influence. In this article, we make a simple, yet novel, empirical observation: these seemingly incongruent observations of lobbying at the micro level are not inconsistent when we uncover the structure of lobbyists’ interactions at the macro level. That is, both views are correct, depending on the policy context. Using data from 248 543 Lobbying Disclosure Act reports filed between 1998 and 2008 – which consists of 1 557 526 observations of 32 700 individual lobbyists reporting activity in 78 issue areas – we reveal that the Washington lobbying community has a fundamental and stable core–periphery structure. We then document how the empirically derived core–periphery mapping is a superior way to differentiate bandwagon or niche policy domains. As transaction cost theory suggests, we find that policy domains in the core have more in-house lobbyists and more revolving door lobbyists. And, on average, lobbyists active in core domains represent a greater diversity of interests and tend to be policy generalists. The converse is also true. Highly specialized contract lobbyists drift toward those sparsely populated domains in the periphery where they may focus on obscure policy minutiae, relatively free from public scrutiny. Our findings have important implications for the study of lobbying and interest representation. In Washington, there are really two worlds of lobbying. The first world, where most lobbying attention is directed, is one in which we see a great deal of interconnectedness and interest diversity. The second world, home to an overwhelming majority of policy domains, cultivates niche lobbying and policy balkanization. That these two worlds exist simultaneously is precisely why observers fail to agree on what ‘typical’ or ‘average’ lobbying is. We believe that this is why the political science literature on interest groups have been contradictory for so long. The abstract core–periphery structure we uncover also has important practical implications for influence in Washington. At first glance, those highly competitive policy domains in the core appear to embody the pluralistic ideal. However, we show that these conditions give interest groups the incentive to hire revolving door lobbyists, who sell access to former employers – not highly specialized expertise – at a premium. Existing lobbying disclosure and revolving door regulations do little to level the playing field. Washington’s most powerful interests know they need to staff up with large numbers of former government officials if they want to stick out in the crowd. Indeed, it appears to be one of the most effective ways to find a seat at the center of the conversation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Previous analysis (see Baumgartner and Leech, 2001; Leech et al 2005) suggests that using either lobbyists or groups as the unit of analysis makes little empirical difference, yet for our purposes lobbyist-issue area dyads are the only way to map affiliations between issue areas, as they reflect the actual unit of disclosed lobbying activity. Each lobbying disclosure report lists as many or as few individual lobbyists per issue area, and some lobbyists are often listed in multiple issue areas. This variation allows us to disaggregate the reports and create a relational database where lobbyists are the unit of analysis. We do not propose that analyzing lobbyists rather than interest organizations would fundamentally alter the relationships we uncover.

  2. The raw data set was collected and organized by the CRP. We manually corrected clear errors in collection affecting approximately 200 000 issue-area reports in 2000 and 2002, among other small errors. For analysis purposes, we also drop observations corresponding to individuals who acted as both in-house and contract lobbyists during the time period (3126 lobbyists).

  3. The original LDA form in 1996 included only 74 issue areas, and 4 more were added to the list over time. Two issues areas were added in 1997, and two more were added during our study: Homeland Security (HOM) in 2002 and Intelligence (INT) in 2007. A full list of LDA issue areas with their three-letter codes is included in Appendix A, along with the total number of report mentions.

  4. Under the LDA, reports were filed semi-annually between 1998 and 2007. Quarterly reporting began in 2008 following revisions made under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. We drop data from the first and third quarters of 2008 to maintain consistency with the prior period.

  5. This statutory definition most certainly undercounts the number of lobbyists in Washington, as many policy advocates maintain that they do not engage in ‘lobbying activities’ according to the LDA.

  6. Leech et al (2005) link LDA issue areas with the Policy Agendas Project topic system, but this approach prevents analysis of the full census of lobbying activity because only 56 issue areas were sufficiently good fits with the policy subtopic codes.

  7. Not all of the 32 700 lobbyists were active throughout the entire 11-year period. On average, 10 936.9 (SD=1118.34) individual lobbyists reported actively lobbying per year.

  8. We consider a lobbyist as reporting covered status when ‘official position’ information is listed on individual reports. We exclude observations that are recorded as ‘N/A’, ‘None’ and ‘Not applicable’ (with variations in capitalization). This information is aggregated by lobbyist to calculate a population-level statistic (reported in Table 1), while our subsequent analysis considers this information as listed on individual reports (that is, by issue area).

  9. These are raw data from all LD-2 forms filed with the Secretary of the Senate, which underreports revolving door lobbying (LaPira and Thomas III, 2014). We assume underreporting errors are distributed equally across issue areas.

  10. By definition, all lobbyists were active in at least one issue area, thus this value approaches 0 asymptotically. The number of issue areas varied by year, with 76 from 1998 to 2001 (4 years), 77 from 2002 to 2006 (5 years) and 78 from 2007 to 2008 (2 years), thus in theory the lowest possible value is (4(1/76)+5(1/77)+2(1/78))/11=0.01302.

  11. Network visualizations for each annual period appear similar, therefore we do not produce all of them here.

  12. See Appendix B for more detailed methodological procedures used in this article, along with additional network metrics that do not directly address the core–periphery derivation.

  13. Appendix B reports these multipliers and provides further detail regarding the reduction procedure.

  14. Data were obtained from www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2012&indexType=l on 18 March 2013.

References

  • Baumgartner, F.R. and Jones, B.D. (1993) Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baumgartner, F.R. and Leech, B.L. (1998) Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and in Political Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Baumgartner, F.R. and Leech, B.L. (2001) Issue niches and policy bandwagons: Patterns of interest group involvement in national politics. Journal of Politics 63 (4): 1191–1213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baumgartner, F.R., Berry, J.M., Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D.C. and Leech, B.L. (2009) Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Berry, J.M. (1999) The New Liberalism: The Rising Power of Citizen Groups. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blanes i Vidal, J., Draca, M. and Fons-Rosen, C. (2013) Revolving door lobbyists. American Economic Review 102 (7): 3731–3748.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borgatti, S.P. and Everett, M.G. (1999) Models of core/periphery structures. Social Networks 21: 375–395.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boydstun, A.E., Bevan, S. and Thomas III, H.F. (forthcoming) The importance of agenda diversity and how to measure it. Policy Studies Journal.

  • Browne, W.P. (1990) Organized interests and their issue niches: A search for pluralism in a policy domain. Journal of Politics 52 (2): 477–509.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, D.P., Esterling, K.M. and Lazer, D.M. (1998) The strength of weak ties in lobbying networks. Journal of Theoretical Politics 10 (4): 417–444.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, D.P., Esterling, K.M. and Lazer, D.M. (2004) Friends, brokers, and transitivity: Who informs whom in Washington politics? Journal of Politics 66 (1): 224–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Columbia Books. (2013) Congressional Communications Report, 2013. Washington: Columbia Books and Information Services.

  • Government Accountability Office. (2013) Observations on Lobbyists’ Compliance with Disclosure Requirements, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-437, accessed 26 June 2013.

  • Gray, V. and Lowery, D. (1996) The Population Ecology of Interest Representation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, V. and Lowery, D. (1997) Life in a niche: Mortality anxiety among organized interests in the American States. Political Research Quarterly 5 (1): 25–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grossmann, M. and Dominguez, C.B.K. (2009) Party coalitions and interest group networks. American Politics Research 37 (5): 786–800.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haider-Markel, D. (1997) Interest group survival: Shared interests versus competition for resources. Journal of Politics 59 (3): 903–912.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, J.M. (1991) Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919–1981. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heaney, M.T. (2004a) Issue networks, information, and interest group alliances: The case of Wisconsin welfare politics, 1993–1999. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 4 (Fall): 237–270.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heaney, M.T. (2004b) Outside the issue niche: The multidimensionality of interest group identity. American Politics Research 32 (6): 611–651.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heaney, M.T. (2014) Multiplex networks and interest group influence reputation: An exponential random graph model. Social Networks 36 (January): 66–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heinz, J.P., Laumann, E.O., Nelson, R.L. and Salisbury, R.H. (1993) The Hollow Core: Private Interests in National Policymaking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hojnacki, M. (1997) Interest groups’ decisions to join alliances or work alone. American Journal of Political Science 41 (1): 61–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D.C., Baumgartner, F.R., Berry, J.M. and Leech, B.L. (2012) Studying organizational advocacy and influence: Reexamining interest group research. Annual Review of Political Science 15: 379–399.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • LaPira, T.M. and Thomas, III. H.F. (2014) Revolving door lobbyists and interest representation. Interest Groups & Advocacy 3 (1): 4–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leech, B.L., Baumgartner, F.R., LaPira, T.M. and Semanko, N.A. (2005) Drawing lobbyists to Washington: Government activity and the demand for advocacy. Political Research Quarterly 58 (1): 19–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lowery, D. and Marchetti, K. (2012) You don’t know Jack: Principals, agents, and lobbying. Interest Groups & Advocacy 1 (2): 139–170.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richter, B.K., Samphantharak, K. and Timmons, J.F. (2009) Lobbying and taxes. American Journal of Political Science 53 (4): 893–909.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salisbury, R.H. (1990) The paradox of interests in Washington D.C.: More groups and less clout. In: A.S. King (ed.) The New American Political System, 2nd edn. Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, pp. 203–230.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Schlozman, K.L. and Tierney, J.T. (1983) More of the same Washington pressure group activity in a decade of change. Journal of Politics 45 (2): 351–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shannon, C.E. (1948) A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal 27: 379–423, 623–656.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, Jr. J.L. (1991) Mobilizing Interest Groups in America: Patrons, Professions, and Social Movements. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, O.E. (1981) The economics of organization: The transaction cost approach. American Journal of Sociology 87 (3): 548–577.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank Bird Loomis, Beth Leech, Lee Drutman, Suzanne Robbins and David Lazer, and especially Michael Heaney, for useful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Timothy M LaPira.

Appendices

Appendix A

LDA reports by issue area

Table A1

Table A1 Total number of LDA report-mentions

Appendix B

Lobbyist affiliation network methods and metrics

This appendix supplements the network methodological discussion in the manuscript to explain in greater detail how the annual lobbying affiliation networks were constructed and reduced to control for lobbying activity inflation and to derive comparable core–periphery structures over time.

Issue area affiliation networks

Generating the one-mode issue area affiliation networks involved a series of simple procedures outlined below. For each year, the full LDA data set was contracted into a standard ‘edge-list’ text file where observations included all unique lobbyist-issue area pairs and corresponding frequencies of occurrence in the data set. These edge lists were imported into Pajek using the txt2pajek utility and the networks transformed from very large two-mode networks (where all lobbyists and all issue areas are nodes) to the one-mode issue area affiliation networks pictured above. Core–periphery analysis was completed using the corresponding continuous core–periphery function in UCINET with the ‘minres’ algorithm, which produces a continuous value of ‘coreness’ and specifies the number of issues areas that meet the threshold for core membership. Table A1 reports the frequency of LDA reports and number of issue area nodes for each annual network. In addition, a series of standard network analysis descriptive statistics (including density, average degree and average weighted degree) are also reported. These statistics and all network graphs were created using Gephi visualization software (Table B1).

Table B1 Full issue area affiliation network metrics

Reduction procedure and reduced issue area affiliation networks

Table B2 reports the values we utilize to reduce the lobbying affiliations to adjust for over time increases in lobbying activity, as well as network metrics of these reduced networks for each year. The reduction procedure is as follows. First, we calculate an LDA report multiplier as the frequency of LDA reports filed in a given year divided by the frequency of LDA reports in 1998. Second, we calculate the average maximum number of edges as the mean number of ties that a given issue area has to its most frequently connected issue area pair. That is, for each year, each issue area has a maximum, mean and minimum number of connections to all other issue areas. Consider this hypothetical example: Accounting (ACC) may have a maximum 100 lobbyist-ties to Taxes (TAX), but a minimum of 0 ties to Immigration (IMM), whereas Federal Budget and Appropriations (BUD) may have a maximum 2500 ties to Taxes (TAX) and a minimum of 25 to Unemployment (UNM). Because minimum (and mean) values may be zero-inflated, we chose to use the maximum number of connections in order to reduce the networks for comparison. For each network year, we then calculated the mean of this value across issue areas.

Table B2 Reducing the lobbying affiliation network

Next, we simply multiplied the average maximum number of edges by the initial report multiplier. The resulting edge cutpoint is the threshold number of edges for each issue area below which edges were deleted to reduce the network. Thus, for the 1999 network, we eliminated ties between issue areas that had less than (17 2151999 LDA Reports/15 5691998 LDA Reports)*(578.47avg. number of maximum edges)=640 edges. Thus, for any issue area pair that had less than 640 lobbyists active in 1999, we eliminated those ties.

This process was repeated for each year, with annual cut-points listed in Table B2. The result is a series of 11 annual networks that are proportional to the overall amount of lobbying activity. Table B2 also reports the average degree, average weighted degree and the number of nodes empirically derived to be included in the core, for each reduced network (Table B2).

Appendix C

Table C1

Table C1 Issue areas by government function and network structure

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

LaPira, T., Thomas, H. & Baumgartner, F. The two worlds of lobbying: Washington lobbyists in the core and on the periphery. Int Groups Adv 3, 219–245 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/iga.2014.4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/iga.2014.4

Keywords

Navigation