Legislative Informational Lobbying

80 Pages Posted: 16 Sep 2020 Last revised: 23 Nov 2022

See all articles by Arnaud Dellis

Arnaud Dellis

Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Date Written: November 22, 2022

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

Suggested Citation

Dellis, Arnaud, Legislative Informational Lobbying (November 22, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3686620 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3686620

Arnaud Dellis (Contact Author)

Universite du Quebec a Montreal ( email )

315 St. Catherine Street East
Montreal, Quebec H2X 3X2
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://sites.google.com/site/arnauddellis/

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