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Commentary on “Lobbying and Legislative Organization: The Effect of the Vote of Confidence Procedure”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

David P. Baron
David P. Baron*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
*
Graduate School of Business, 518 Memorial Way, Stanford University, Stanford, CA94305-5015, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
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Extract

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that U.S. lobbying expenditures substantially exceed interest group campaign contributions, without including the lobbying that is not required to be reported to the government. Although it has grown in Europe, particularly with respect to the European Union, lobbying is less important than in the United States. Bennedsen and Feldmann (BF) provide an important and insightful explanation for the difference in terms of the institutional structure of governments. They present a model of informational lobbying in client politics where an interest group provides information to a majority-rule (three-member) legislature. The legislature chooses the scale of a program whose benefits can be distributed among legislative districts. The legislative agenda setter has a vote buying problem and allocates benefits to one other legislator to obtain her vote. BF compare legislatures operating with and without a confidence procedure that allows the agenda setter to tie passage of its proposal the continuation of the government. This commentary considers the method for comparing these two institutions, assesses the implications of the theory, and considers future research related to the theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , August 2002 , pp. 205 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2002 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

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References

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