Lobbyists, Relationships, and Legislators’ Votes
نویسنده
چکیده
For lobbyists, success is about who you know rather than what you know. Forming and maintaining relationships with legislators is key to public policy success for interest groups and lobbyists. In this paper, I examine how to operationalize the relationship between a legislator and a lobbyist. Disclosure forms on gifts may be a way to operationalize the relationships between legislators and lobbyists. From the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), I analyzed the disclosure process in all 50 states to determine accessibility of information on personal relationships.
منابع مشابه
Vote Buying: Legislatures and Lobbying
We examine the consequences of lobbying and vote buying, assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma. Two lobbyists compete for the votes of legislators by o¤ering up-front payments to the legislators in exchange for their votes. We analyze how the lobbyistsbudget constraints and legislator preferences determine the winner and the payments. JEL classi cation numbers: P16, C72 Keyw...
متن کاملVoting Power in Weighted Voting Games: A Lobbying Approach by
We report experiments on the following lobbying game. Two lobbyists have identical budgets and simultaneously distribute them across voters in a legislature. Each voter votes for the lobbyist who pays them most and the lobbyist who receives most votes wins a prize. Taking the share of the budget distributed to a voter as a measure of the voter‟s voting power we investigate how voting power vari...
متن کاملWhy Roll Calls? a Model of Position-taking in Legislative Voting and Elections
We develop a rationale for position-taking preferences in legislatures using a formal model of legislative vote-buying and elections. In our model, citizens and an interest group are motivated by policy, while legislators are motivated by holding office. The group may attempt to buy legislators’ votes by offering contracts based on their votes. If citizens cannot condition their re-election vot...
متن کاملCarrots and Sticks: Punishment and Party Power in Congress∗
This paper proposes a dual-utility theory of parties in a legislature. In this theory a legislator has preferences over both actions and policy outcomes. Specifically, a legislator’s utility is determined by position taking—his own votes—and by partisan utility which depends on policy implemented by the legislature. Party leaders design mechanisms that make legislators better off by co-ordinati...
متن کاملHow a Firm Can Induce Legislators to Adopt a Bad Policy
This paper shows why a majority of legislators may vote for a policy that benefits a firm but harms all legislators. The firm may induce legislators to support the policy by suggesting that it is more likely to invest in a district whose voters or representative support the policy. In equilibrium, no one vote may be decisive, so each legislator who seeks the firm’s investment votes for the poli...
متن کامل