Informational Lobbying and Legislative Voting

Keith E. Schnakenberg

American Journal of Political Science, 2017, vol. 61, issue 1, 129-145

Abstract: I analyze a model of interest group influence on legislative voting through information transmission. The model shows how interest groups may craft different messages to target different winning coalitions in order to influence the outcome. If access to legislators is costly, then interest groups prefer to coordinate with allied legislators by providing them with information that helps them to persuade less sympathetic legislators. The model reconciles informational theories of lobbying with empirical evidence suggesting that interest groups predominantly lobby those who already agree with them. The model also makes new predictions about the welfare effects of interest group influence: From an ex ante perspective, informational lobbying negatively affects the welfare of legislators. The results highlight the need for more theories of persuasion that take collective choice institutions into account.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12249

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:amposc:v:61:y:2017:i:1:p:129-145

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().