I especially appreciate the summary of the empirical research. Some of those findings seem really impressive to me and that has increased my optimism about lobbying. I look forward to reading through your spreadsheet with summaries of other papers.
(80%) Well-resourced interest groups are no more or less likely to achieve policy success, in general, than their less well-resourced opponents.
I was very surprised by this claim… it was part of what spurred me to read the piece immediately rather than save it to my reading list. But I don’t recall seeing evidence for the claim in the post. What has encouraged this high confidence in this claim (which seems very counterintuitive to me)? Apologies if I just missed it.
Yet in some cases there simply is no organized opposition, and a relatively small investment can meaningfully alter wording, put a policy on the agenda, or cause a bill to become law.
The suggestion for the spending strategy in the “Effective lobbying” section seems to rest on this claim. But again, I don’t recall seeing much empirical support in the review; does this rest on the theoretical discussions that you summarise? Actually, Baumgartner et al. provide some contrary evidence to this hypothesis:
“The table [table 3.1, page 58] shows that a surprisingly large number of issues (seventeen cases) consist of a single side attempting to achieve a goal to which no one objects or in response to which no one bothers to mobilize. Ironically, the lack of countermobilization is a good predictor of failure. Many of these reflect efforts to put an issue on the agenda, but these efforts are either too early in the process for anyone yet to have reacted or they are clearly not moving so others have not gotten involved in the issue.”
They discuss this a little more on the following pages. They note that 17 cases had only one side -- 15 of these were 1 opposing the status quo, none defending it. Unfortunately, from a quick look back, I can’t see the proportion of these 15 cases that did result in a policy change.
With respect to your first point, I’m considering striking this conclusion upon reflection—see my discussion with @jackva elsewhere in this thread. In any case, my confidence level here is certainly too high given the evidence, and I really appreciate your close attention to this.
With respect to your second point, I don’t mean to imply that the lack of organized opposition is the only thing that justifies lobbying expenditure, and think my wording is sloppy here as well. I used “lack of an organized opposition” to refer broadly to oppositions that are simply doing less of the (ostensibly) effective things — lower “organizational strength” as in Caldeira and Wright (1998), number of groups, as in Wright (1990), or simply lower relative expenditure, as in Ludema, Mayda, and Mishra (2018).
The evidence in Baumgartner et al that you reference about the apparent association between lack of countermobilization and success is also related to @jackva’s concern about my underemphasis on potential lobbying equilibria here. On the one hand, I think this is clearly evidence in favor of the hypothesis that there is some efficiency in the market for lobbying- perhaps most lobbyists have a good idea of which efforts succeed, and don’t bother to countermobilize against less sophisticated opposition. On the other hand, lobbying is a sequential game, and, since the base rate for policy enactment is so low to start with, it makes sense that opposition wouldn’t appear until there’s a more significant threat.
EDIT: I’ve actually struck the first bit, with a note. I wanted to add one more thing, which is that I don’t know how much you’ve adjusted your prior on lobbying, but I wouldn’t say this has made me “optimistic” about lobbying. The core thing I’ve come away with is that lobbying for policy change is extraordinarily unlikely to succeed, but that marginal changes to increase the probability of success are (1) plausible, based on the research and (2) potentially cost-effective, based on the high value of some policies.
Thank you for this review! Ever since I did a literature review of mostly political science literature on “Is the US Supreme Court a Driver of Social Change or Driven by it?” I’ve been interested in comparable reviews of legislative tactics.
I especially appreciate the summary of the empirical research. Some of those findings seem really impressive to me and that has increased my optimism about lobbying. I look forward to reading through your spreadsheet with summaries of other papers.
I was very surprised by this claim… it was part of what spurred me to read the piece immediately rather than save it to my reading list. But I don’t recall seeing evidence for the claim in the post. What has encouraged this high confidence in this claim (which seems very counterintuitive to me)? Apologies if I just missed it.
The suggestion for the spending strategy in the “Effective lobbying” section seems to rest on this claim. But again, I don’t recall seeing much empirical support in the review; does this rest on the theoretical discussions that you summarise? Actually, Baumgartner et al. provide some contrary evidence to this hypothesis:
“The table [table 3.1, page 58] shows that a surprisingly large number of issues (seventeen cases) consist of a single side attempting to achieve a goal to which no one objects or in response to which no one bothers to mobilize. Ironically, the lack of countermobilization is a good predictor of failure. Many of these reflect efforts to put an issue on the agenda, but these efforts are either too early in the process for anyone yet to have reacted or they are clearly not moving so others have not gotten involved in the issue.”
They discuss this a little more on the following pages. They note that 17 cases had only one side -- 15 of these were 1 opposing the status quo, none defending it. Unfortunately, from a quick look back, I can’t see the proportion of these 15 cases that did result in a policy change.
Thanks for your response!
With respect to your first point, I’m considering striking this conclusion upon reflection—see my discussion with @jackva elsewhere in this thread. In any case, my confidence level here is certainly too high given the evidence, and I really appreciate your close attention to this.
With respect to your second point, I don’t mean to imply that the lack of organized opposition is the only thing that justifies lobbying expenditure, and think my wording is sloppy here as well. I used “lack of an organized opposition” to refer broadly to oppositions that are simply doing less of the (ostensibly) effective things — lower “organizational strength” as in Caldeira and Wright (1998), number of groups, as in Wright (1990), or simply lower relative expenditure, as in Ludema, Mayda, and Mishra (2018).
The evidence in Baumgartner et al that you reference about the apparent association between lack of countermobilization and success is also related to @jackva’s concern about my underemphasis on potential lobbying equilibria here. On the one hand, I think this is clearly evidence in favor of the hypothesis that there is some efficiency in the market for lobbying- perhaps most lobbyists have a good idea of which efforts succeed, and don’t bother to countermobilize against less sophisticated opposition. On the other hand, lobbying is a sequential game, and, since the base rate for policy enactment is so low to start with, it makes sense that opposition wouldn’t appear until there’s a more significant threat.
EDIT: I’ve actually struck the first bit, with a note. I wanted to add one more thing, which is that I don’t know how much you’ve adjusted your prior on lobbying, but I wouldn’t say this has made me “optimistic” about lobbying. The core thing I’ve come away with is that lobbying for policy change is extraordinarily unlikely to succeed, but that marginal changes to increase the probability of success are (1) plausible, based on the research and (2) potentially cost-effective, based on the high value of some policies.