Political Activism, Trust, and Coordination

Bénabou, Roland and Marco Battaglini
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Roland Benabou

No 3611, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study political activism by several agents (lobbyists, unions, etc.) who have private but imperfect policy-relevant signals, and seek to influence the decisions of a policy maker. When agents can share information and coordinate their actions, the equilibrium is shown to be equivalent to that with a single lobbyist, and even though activism conveys valuable information, it always reduces social welfare. When interest groups act independently, two main scenarios arise. In a ?bandwagon? or low-trust equilibrium, agents have a high propensity to lobby even when it is unwarranted, and conversely the policy maker does not react unless all of them are actively lobbying. In a ?mutual discipline? or high-trust equilibrium, by contrast, each agent?s behaviour is more informative, and the policy maker?s response threshold correspondingly lower. The key difference is whether the event in which an agent can expect to be pivotal is one where others will be providing supporting evidence by their own activity (thus allowing him to be less truthful), or contrary evidence by their inactivity (thus forcing him to be more credible). We show that when the expected degree of conflict between the lobbyists and the policy maker is relatively high the unique equilibrium is of the ?mutual discipline? type; when ideological distance is relatively low, it is of the ?bandwagon? type; within some intermediate range, both equilibria coexist. We also examine the welfare implications of the different equilibria and study the optimal organization of influence activities, examining when the policy maker and the activists would prefer that the latter coordinate their actions, or act separately.

Keywords: Lobbying; Interest groups; Activism; Political economy; Signalling games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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