The impact of legislator attributes on interest-group campaign contributions

Legislators possess political assets that economic interest groups may find valuable in pursuing their goals. This paper examines the effect these legislative assets have on the campaign contributions made by two large and easily identifiable interest groups: corporations and labor unions. Committee assignment, voting record, and electoral security are significant predictors of both corporate and union contributions to House incumbents, while party affiliation and years in office also influence the behavior of union political action committees.     

Competitive lobbying for a legislator's vote

This paper develops a model of interest group lobbying based on the central premise that such lobbying is fundamentally an exercise in strategic information transmission. Lobbyists typically possess information that legislators do not and, inter alia, such information is relevant to legislators when it concerns the consequences — either policy or political — of supporting one bill rather than another. However, given that the interests of lobbyists do not necessarily coincide with those of legislators, the extent to which a lobbyist is able to persuade a legislator to act in his or her interest is moot. The paper explores the extent to which lobbyists can influence a legislative decision in such a setting; in particular, we are concerned with the incentives for interest groups to acquire costly information and lobby a legislator when there exist other groups that do not share the same interests. Among the results are that a legislator will on average make better decisions with lobbying than without, and that the more important is an issue to a special interest group, the more likely is the legislator to make the correct full-information decision.Herb and Gloria Weiss are indirectly responsible for this paper. Unfortunately, neither they nor the anonymous referees can be held responsible for any errors or omissions the paper might contain.     

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIAN LEGISLATOR IN U.S. TRADE POLICY: A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

In this historical analysis of U.S. trade policy, we apply the median voter model to explain legislative decision making. In this model, the level of tariff protection is expected to change with changes in the median legislator. We show that this simple model does a remarkable job if explaining trade policy until the mid-1930s, when it breaks down. We offer several possible explanations for the breakdown of this model, focusing particularly on the impact of domestic and international institutional changes that may have altered the role of the median legislator in trade policy formation.     

DOES PUBLIC ATTENTION REDUCE THE INFLUENCE OF MONEYED INTERESTS? POLICY POSITIONS ON SOPA/PIPA BEFORE AND AFTER THE INTERNET BLACKOUT

We investigate the role of public attention in determining the effect that campaign contributions by interest groups have on legislators' policy positions. We exploit the shock in public attention induced by the Internet service blackout of January 2012 that increased the salience of the Stop Online Piracy Act/Protect IP Act (SOPA/PIPA) bills aimed at stronger protection of property rights on the Internet. Using a new dataset of U.S. congressmen's public statements, we find a strong statistical relationship between campaign contributions funded by the affected industries and legislators' positions. However, this relationship evaporates once the two bills become primary policy issues. Our results are consistent with the notion that legislators choose positions on secondary policy issues in order to cater to organized interests, whereas positions on primary policy issues are driven by electoral support. (JEL D72, L82, L86)     

Constituent diversity and congress: the case of NAFTA

An important finding of legislative research is that constituency variables are more important predictors of a legislator’s vote when constituent preferences are homogeneous, as opposed to when the various elements of the legislator’s constituency are pulling the legislator in opposing directions (Goff & Grier, Public Choice, 76, 5–20; Bailey & Brady, American Journal of Political Science, 42, 524–544). We examine these expectations on a highly salient vote, the 1993 senate vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement. While we find support for the view that constituency variables are more important in homogeneous than heterogeneous constituencies, we also find that by confining constituency variables to economic factors scholars overlook the importance of constituent ideology on legislator behavior in homogeneous constituencies.     

Sincere versus sophisticated voting when legislators vote sequentially

Elsewhere (Groseclose and Milyo 2010), we examine a game where each legislator has preferences over (i) the resulting policy and (ii) how he or she votes. The latter preferences are especially important when the legislator is not pivotal. We show that when the game follows the normal rules of legislatures—most important, that legislators can change their vote after seeing how their fellow legislators have voted—then the only possible equilibrium is one where all legislators ignore their policy preferences. That is, each legislator votes as if he or she is not pivotal. The result, consistent with empirical studies of Congress, suggests that legislators should tend to vote sincerely, rather than sophisticatedly. In this paper we examine how outcomes change if we change the rules for voting. Namely, instead of a simultaneous game, we consider a game where legislators vote sequentially in a pre-determined order. We show that, opposite to the simultaneous game, an alternative wins if and only if a majority of legislators’ policy preferences favor that alternative. Our results suggest that if Congress adopted this change in rules, then sophisticated voting would become frequent instead of rare.     

Children's participation in national policymaking: “You're so adorable,adorable, adorable! I'm speechless; so much fun!”

Policymaking is one of the most challenging arenas in which children's participation rights are implemented. The goal of this study is to portray patterns of children's participation in public policymaking and characterize various adults' reactions to children's participation. The study draws on protocols of committees operating in the Israeli parliament and interviews with an advisory group of children and young people who had participated on the committees. The findings show the potential of children's participation in national policymaking to mobilize policy change and to contextualize policy discussions. They also demonstrate that children's comments in policy discussions may evoke extreme responses, expressed as either fawning or dismissing. The conclusions offer practices that may assist in preparing both the participating children and the policymakers and in diversifying the children's voices.     

Varieties of Democracy: Interest Groups and Corporatist Committees in Scandinavian Policy Making

Corporatism may be seen as variety of capitalism in which specific structural prerequisites such as unionization, centralization, and strong states combined with bargaining and concertation produce certain economic outputs. Corporatism may also be seen as a variety of democracy in which interest groups are integrated in the preparation and/or implementation of public policies. Departing in the last position, we measure the strength of Scandinavian corporatism by the involvement of interest groups in public committees, councils, and commissions. Corporatism in relation to the preparation of policy has gone down in all three Scandinavian countries whereas corporatism in implementation processes are more varied among the three countries.     

Support for campaign spending limitations in the U. S. senate: The role of party,ideology and electoral security

Recent media disclosures of American campaign funding raising practices in the 1996 election have renewed political interest in campaign finance reform. This paper examines senatorial support for the McCain/Feingold measure that would have established voluntary spending limits on senate candidates and banned unlimited campaign contributions through political party organizations. While party affiliation and senator ideology are very important in explaining support for the McCain/Feingold measure, various measures of electoral security are not significant. This is important because the public choice literature emphasizes that electoral security is the primary goal of legislators. Additionally, the electoral self-interest of legislators is probably much more accurately measured by the various electoral security measures used in this study than by the constituency measures typically employed in the public choice literature. Nevertheless, personal legislator electoral security is not a powerful explanatory factor.     

Unions,PAC contributions,and the NAFTA vote

Political action committees (PACs), especially those controlled by organized labor and business, have been shown to affect Congressional voting. We explore how PACs influenced the House of Representatives’ vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA vote is analyzed because organized labor strongly opposed the treaty while business generally supported it and because of the straight-forward voting generated by its fast-track status. Probit analysis of a unique, unpublished data set containing information about PAC and non-PAC contributions to the 1992 House election campaigns demonstrates that Representatives who depended largely on labor PACs tended to oppose NAFTA, while Representatives who derived a large proportion of their campaign contributions from business PACs tended to favor its passage.     

Interlegislator Relations and Policy Making: A Sociological Study of Roll‐Call Voting in a State Legislature1

Legislative roll‐call voting is crucial in policy making. Standard approaches to studying roll‐call voting focus on legislator attributes, ignoring how social factors, such as legislator relations, may drive voting. Using original data based on a state legislature, I adopt a relational approach to examine how legislator relations impact roll‐call voting net of attributes. Results show that relations strongly influence voting, adding significantly to the explanatory power of the models. These results imply that standard approaches to studying roll‐call voting should incorporate consideration of social factors, suggesting the value of social influence models in studies of political phenomena.     

Constituents’ economic interests and senator support for spending limitations

Peltzman [Peltzman, S., 1984. Constituent interest and congressional voting. Journal of Law and Economics 27, 181–210] argues that if constituents’ economic interests have well-defined “winners and losers” and are appropriately measured, then constituents’ economic interests, and not legislator ideology, are the most important determinates of legislator voting. We test Peltzman's theory by examining senatorial voting on three mandated spending limitation bills. We find, consistent with Peltzman's theory, that the ratio of federal spending in a senator's state to federal taxes paid by that state, and not a senator's personal ideology, matters on legislation where there are well-defined economic “winners and losers.” This is particularly important because unlike other constituents’ economic interest measures that only impact a fraction of the constituency, the ratio of federal spending to federal taxes in a state represents the economic interests of all the constituents in a state.     

A signal-jamming model of persuasion: interest group funded policy research

This article analyzes a simple model of policy making under uncertainty in the presence of an interest group that may fund and lobby research. In the model, if research is not disclosed via lobbying it enters the public domain and, subsequently, is randomly observed by the policy maker (PM). Consequently, the interest group strategically chooses both whether to fund research and whether to lobby it versus let it be randomly observed. The main result is that for a range of parameter values, in equilibrium the interest group sometimes funds, but never lobbies, research. This behavior effectively “jams” the public signal of the PM, making the policy choice worse on average. This occurs despite all research being unbiased. The results provide qualified theoretical support for the value of research funding transparency and implications for the interpretation of interest group funded research.     

Federalism and aging policy in the 1980s: implications for changing interest group roles in the 1990s

Shifts in the American political landscape during the 1980s had impacts on aging policy and on the behavior of aging interest groups through that decade. But perhaps even more important are the likely effects of those changes on aging policy and on the roles of age-related groups in the 1990s--and probably beyond. First, some of the major policy trends of the 1980s are sketched out, especially the renewed emphasis on federalism. Then, an assessment of their effects on aging policy and aging interest groups is provided. Next, a rationale for focusing on state-level policy and a discussion of current aging interest-group mobilization at the state level are presented. Last, the prospects for aging interest-group influence in the 1990s--a period in which the prior decade's emphasis on dual federalism is likely to continue--is addressed.     

The evolution and formation of amicus curiae networks

This paper sheds light on two age-old questions of interest group behavior: how have interest group coalition strategies changed over time and which factors determine whether interest groups work together? Through the creation of a new network measure of interest group coalitions based on cosigner status to United States Supreme Court amicus curiae briefs, we illuminate the central players and overall characteristics of this dynamic network from 1930 to 2009. We present evidence of an increasingly transitive network resembling a host of tightly grouped factions and leadership hub organizations employing mixed coalition strategies. We also model the attribute homophily and structure of the present-day network. We find assortative mixing of interest groups based on industry area, budget, sales and membership.     

Does Anti‐Hispanic Bias Motivate Opposition to Non‐English Languages?*

Contemporary political debates about language policy in the United States focus on three primary policy issues: bilingual education in public schools, English‐only legislation, and the access of non‐English speaking citizens to political rights. Using the “Multi‐Ethnic United States” module from the 2000 General Social Survey (GSS), this article tests multiple attitudinal, behavioral, demographic, and contextual hypotheses for how Anglos and African Americans view bilingual policy issues. We examine the role of linguistic contact, self‐interest, group threat, and discriminatory views of Latinos, finding that the latter—as measured by the “Three Ds” (Derogation, Disrespect, and Distance)—are the strongest predictors of attitudes toward bilingualism. Distance (social distance from Latinos) is consistently significant, disrespect (doubts about Latino contributions to the United States.) is mostly significant, and derogation (Latino stereotypes) is occasionally significant. Also, political ideology and knowledge of a non‐English language play important roles in the formation of favorable bilingualism opinions. However, the self‐interest and group threat variables were largely insignificant. Taken together, these findings indicate the importance of understanding how policy views may be structured by opinions about out‐group individuals and cultures. Language can serve as a proxy for immigrants themselves, as negative attitudes toward Latinos are associated with negative attitudes toward bilingualism.     

THE REACTION OF INTEREST RATES TO UNANTICIPATED FEDERAL RESERVE ACTIONS AND STATEMENTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MONEY ANNOUNCEMENT CONTROVERSY

This paper examines the reaction of long- and short-term interest rates to monetary policy surprises that influenced market expectations of the future behavior of the federal funds rate in the period after October 1979. We find that the relative reaction of long- and short-term rates to policy surprises is similar to the relative reaction of these rates to money announcements. Consequently, we conclude that the large reaction of long-term interest rates to money announcements in the period after October 1979 is consistent with the "policy anticipations hypothesis" which views this reaction as a movement in real interest rates.     

Competitive lobbying for a legislator’s vote: A comment

 This comment deals with some imperfections of the analysis presented by Austen-Smith and Wright [1]. It is argued that in [1] being informed is incorrectly identified with being informative, yielding an incomplete equilibrium analysis, and leading to bias in the kind of equilibrium behavior predicted. After correcting for this bias, the results obtained corroborate their main conclusion – legislators are often lobbied by just one of two competing groups, typically the a priori disadvantaged group. The comment also strengthens their case for counteractive lobbying; the a priori favored group typically only lobbies to counteract the influence of an opposing group. Another conclusion, however, is qualified; an increase in the groups’ stakes can make it less, rather than more, likely that the legislator makes the correct decision. Received: 26 January 1996/Accepted: 27 March 1996     

Diversified committees in hiring processes: Lab evidence on group dynamics

In recent years, committee quotas have been introduced to combat the underrepresentation of women in male-stereotyped environments. However, the lack of clarity surrounding in-group preferences and gender differences in group dynamics calls into question the inclusion of women as a solution to the gender gap in labour market outcomes. In this paper, I provide experimental evidence to show: a) how the gender composition of committees affects the probability of female candidates being recruited in a hiring process; and b) how men and women behave in group dynamics as a mechanism explaining the outcome of the policy. I designed a laboratory experiment in which groups of three subjects had to jointly select two candidates from a pool of six to perform a task. Female candidates’ probability of success did not improve as the number of women in the committee increased. I found that male-majority committees were the most beneficial for female candidates. In these groups, men and women exhibited a similar level of voice and influence during deliberations, proposing both male and female candidates for recruitment. Conversely, female-majority groups were the most detrimental to female candidates. Women in female-majority groups exhibited a similar level of voice, but men, who proposed more male candidates, were more influential, which limited the contribution of women. The paper suggests that having more women in the committee does not necessarily benefit female candidates and calls for caution when it comes to designing policies for equality in the labour market.     

Why Do Social Workers Become Policy Actors?

The study examines factors related to social workers’ involvement in policy practice by examining their engagement in legislative advocacy in Israel. Based on the three components of the Policy Practice Engagement Framework—opportunity, facilitation and motivation—the study focused upon a group of social workers who were actively involved in legislative advocacy as part of their professional job. In order to learn more about their features and the circumstances of their legislative advocacy, they were asked about their testimonies and were then compared to a group of social workers who have never participated in the deliberations of legislative committees. The sample consisted of 190 social workers evenly divided between the two groups. The findings underscore that the intersect of opportunity, facilitation, and motivation created a context that encouraged the involvement of social workers in a specific form of policy practice. The study findings emphasize the opportunity and facilitation components of the framework over the motivational.