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Lobbying in the United States

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The Political Economy of Lobbying

Part of the book series: Studies in Public Choice ((SIPC,volume 43))

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Abstract

This chapter reviews the U.S. political institutions relevant for understanding and analyzing lobbying and contribution activities. We provide an overview of legislation regulating lobbying activities and summarize the amount of lobbying expenditures over time. We also describe the legislation surrounding campaign contributions and expenditures and who contributes and how much to federal election campaigns. We report that the empirical evidence is mixed regarding how election outcomes and ballot initiatives respond to campaign expenditures and campaign finance legislation. We then briefly discuss some studies that analyze the effect of lobbying and interest groups providing campaign contributions to politicians that may affect political decisions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.opensecrets.org

  2. 2.

    https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/summary. Accessed: 15 April 2021.

  3. 3.

    https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/16090

  4. 4.

    http://www.cfinst.org/law/federal.aspx

  5. 5.

    https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bipartisan-Campaign-Reform-Act

  6. 6.

    https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/mcconnell-v-fec/

  7. 7.

    https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/filing-ssf-reports/multicandidate-status/#:~:text=A%20PAC%20generally%20qualifies%20as,at%20least%20five%20federal%20candidates.

  8. 8.

    https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/summ.php?cycle=2020&disp=O&type=S&chrt=P

  9. 9.

    https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=candidates

  10. 10.

    This term describes an organization defined under sect. 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. For a complete list of organizations and their exemptions, see https://www.irs.gov/charities-and-nonprofits

  11. 11.

    Further information regarding the types of outside spending groups and their requirements for disclosure and use of funds can be found at: https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/rules.php

  12. 12.

    Related work suggests that moneyed interests purchase time from Congressmen, that is, their legislative involvement (Hall & Wayman, 1990)

  13. 13.

    An example of theoretical work on buying a super majority in Congress is Groseclose and Snyder (1996). Stratmann (1992) documents that farm groups contribute most to the legislator with the median farm constituency, lending support to the hypothesis that interest groups contribute strategically as to have a majority of legislators voting in their interest.

  14. 14.

    While most studies consider PAC contributions a few studies consider contributions by individuals to election campaigns. Exceptions are Barber et al. (2017), Bonica (2016), Richter and Werner (2017), and Li (2018).

  15. 15.

    The “Jeffords effect” is named for a Vermont Senator, Jim Jeffords, who left the Republican Party in 2001 to become independent and caucus with the Democrats, changing the control of the Senate from a Republican to Democratic majority. This was the first time a party switch of a Senator changed the party control in the U.S. Senate.

  16. 16.

    https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16

  17. 17.

    https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/cost-of-election?display=T

  18. 18.

    https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_measure_campaign_finance,_2020

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Thomas Stratmann & Amberly Dozier

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  1. Thomas Stratmann
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Correspondence to Thomas Stratmann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Karsten Mause

  2. Department of Business and Economics, Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Andreas Polk

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Stratmann, T., Dozier, A. (2023). Lobbying in the United States. In: Mause, K., Polk, A. (eds) The Political Economy of Lobbying. Studies in Public Choice, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44393-0_14

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