Lobbying Legislatures

Abstract

We analyze informational lobbying in the context of a multimember legislature that decides on the allocation of a public good. First, we observe that a majoritarian legislature provides widely different incentives for interest groups to lobby than a single decision maker does. Second, we compare a decentralized legislature, such as the U.S. Congress, to a parliament with strong party cohesion. Congress's decentralized nature allows the strategic formation of policy coalitions among high-demand districts and the exclusion of low-demand districts. This increases the incentive to provide information about districts' demand relative to a legislature in which the governing coalition is fixed.