Lobbying Influence and Agenda Setting in Congress

Abstract

I propose a theory of lobbying influence that assumes that targets of legislative advocacy are biased information-processors when making policy priority choices. Legislators and their staff minimize cognitive effort and maximize information consumption by relying on heuristics about the credibility of interest group coalitions rather than the content of their advocacy claims. I test the theory by recruiting Washington-based congressional staffers to participate in a process-tracing experiment that simulates lobbying influence on health policy. The repeated measures within-subjects design includes two factors: (1) a credible or non-credible interest group coalition (the “who”) and (2) a normative or evidence-based advocacy claim (the “what”). The design nullifies the alternative hypothesis that individual-level policy agenda choices are based entirely on preexisting policy or partisan preferences. Analysis of variance shows that participants prioritize issues advocated by credible coalitions, and issues framed with evidence-based arguments if they adopt a noncompensatory decision strategy.

Keywords: influence, lobbying, advocacy, behavioral decision making, information processing, congressional staff, agenda setting

JEL Classification: H1, I18