Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LOBCON-EU (Lobbying and Corporate Political Connections in Europe)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-07-01 al 2025-06-30
Lobbying plays a key role in the democratic process, but links between business and politics often raise questions of conflicts of interest. Yet, we know little about how corporate lobbying functions and how corporations influence politics in Europe. Current work focuses on the U.S. due to the availability of high-quality data. In contrast, there is a lack of quantitative research on corporate influence in Europe.
The overall objective of the LOBCON-EU project thus is to understand how corporate lobbying functions and affect politics and economic activity in Europe. This is divided into different sub-objectives: (1) How do business and politics interact in different institutional environments? (2) Who becomes a lobbyist under different institutional contexts and why? (3) Why do individuals transition between the private sector and politics and what incentives shape these transitions? To answer these questions, the project draws on big comparative data on lobbyists in Europe and the United States as well as cross-country survey data and analyses them using state-of-the-art machine learning and causal inference methods.
The overall objective of the LOBCON-EU project thus is to understand how corporate lobbying functions and affect politics and economic activity in Europe. This is divided into different sub-objectives: (1) How do business and politics interact in different institutional environments? (2) Who becomes a lobbyist under different institutional contexts and why? (3) Why do individuals transition between the private sector and politics and what incentives shape these transitions? To answer these questions, the project draws on big comparative data on lobbyists in Europe and the United States as well as cross-country survey data and analyses them using state-of-the-art machine learning and causal inference methods.
Over the course of the fellowship, the project resulted in three draft research papers. The first paper “Who becomes a Lobbyist?” collects big data on lobbyists’ in the U.S. and Germany to provide comparative evidence on lobbyists’ career paths across these two countries. The second paper, “Citizen Support for Political Disclosure Rules” studies citizens’ preferences for lobbying transparency using a conjoint survey experiment across ten developed and developing countries. The final paper “Can Interest Groups Shape Public Opinion?” uses a survey experiment in Germany and the United Kingdom to investigate the impact of interest group’s public media strategies on citizens’ public opinions. Results from the respective papers were presented internally at the host institution, as well as at conferences, such as the American Political Science Association meeting, the European Political Science Association, and the Copenhagen-Princeton Money in Politics Conference. As of now, one of the three papers is accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal, two are close to submission.
The project advances our understanding of the drivers of political representation by analyzing who becomes a lobbyist and why. While previous work has focused mainly on the effects of lobbyists’ connections and skills in the U.S. context, this project is the first to provide a comprehensive cross-national comparison using large-scale individual-level data from the U.S. and Germany. By combining descriptive analysis, machine learning predictions, and causal identification strategies, it shows that both skills and political connections matter for becoming a lobbyist, but that political connections matter more in the U.S. than in Germany. The findings advance the scholarly debate on the composition of the lobbying profession, while also providing insights into how lobbying markets operate in different institutional environments.
The project also breaks new ground in the study of citizens’ preferences for lobbying transparency by investigating support for political disclosure rules across ten developed and developing countries. Earlier research has focused on elite resistance to disclosure, offering little evidence on whether citizens support such reforms. This project fills that gap with a large-scale conjoint survey experiment of over 16,000 respondents. The results reveal widespread support for strict lobbying disclosure requirements and enforcement mechanisms across different country contexts. These findings provide robust evidence that political reforms to strengthen disclosure regimes would align with citizen preferences.
Finally, the project investigates how interest groups influence public opinion. Interest groups spend a lot of money on outside lobbying, such as media campaigns, to influence decision makers indirectly. However, it is unclear to what extent these costly public lobbying strategies can change public opinion. Moreover, previous studies have produced mixed and context-specific results. By conducting a well-powered factorial survey experiment in Germany and the UK, this project provides systematic comparative evidence that interest group messages can have a short-term influence on public opinion. However, the effects are not different from policy messages without interest groups and are only effective for certain policies. The findings deepen theoretical debates about lobbying strategies and inform policy discussions on the regulation of political advocacy and its impact on democratic accountability.
The project also breaks new ground in the study of citizens’ preferences for lobbying transparency by investigating support for political disclosure rules across ten developed and developing countries. Earlier research has focused on elite resistance to disclosure, offering little evidence on whether citizens support such reforms. This project fills that gap with a large-scale conjoint survey experiment of over 16,000 respondents. The results reveal widespread support for strict lobbying disclosure requirements and enforcement mechanisms across different country contexts. These findings provide robust evidence that political reforms to strengthen disclosure regimes would align with citizen preferences.
Finally, the project investigates how interest groups influence public opinion. Interest groups spend a lot of money on outside lobbying, such as media campaigns, to influence decision makers indirectly. However, it is unclear to what extent these costly public lobbying strategies can change public opinion. Moreover, previous studies have produced mixed and context-specific results. By conducting a well-powered factorial survey experiment in Germany and the UK, this project provides systematic comparative evidence that interest group messages can have a short-term influence on public opinion. However, the effects are not different from policy messages without interest groups and are only effective for certain policies. The findings deepen theoretical debates about lobbying strategies and inform policy discussions on the regulation of political advocacy and its impact on democratic accountability.