Legislative Informational Lobbying

Abstract

Whom should an interest group lobby in a legislature? I develop a model of informational lobbying, in which a legislature must decide on the allocation of district-specific goods and projects. An interest group chooses to search and provide information on districts' valuations of the goods. The setting is one of distributive politics, where the proposed allocation of goods and projects is endogenous to the information provided by the interest group. I characterize the information search strategy of the interest group. I furthermore establish that the relationship between informational lobbying and legislative majority requirement is non-monotonic. I also determine who gains and who loses from lobbying, identifying circumstances in which legislators would unanimously prefer to ban informational lobbying. Finally, I provide an informational rationale for why interest groups sometimes lobby legislative allies (friendly lobbying).

Keywords: Lobbying; Interest group; Persuasion; Legislative policymaking; Distributive politics

JEL Classification: C72, D72, D78