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This article provides an empirical test of an informational model of lobbying. The model predicts when lobbyists provide useful information to policy makers and when policy makers follow lobbyists' advice. The predictions are assessed against data on the policy positions and lobbying activities of firms and other organised groups in the context of 28 policy proposals advanced by United Kingdom governments between 2001 and 2007. The results suggest that the interactions between policy makers and lobbyists are driven mainly by the expected policy costs for policy makers, providing lobbyists with strong incentives to provide correct advice to policy makers. There is little support for the expectation that lobbyists can successfully persuade policy makers to take a course of action that is beneficial to the lobbyist at the expense of wider constituencies. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article provides an empirical test of an informational model of lobbying. The model predicts when lobbyists provide useful information to policy makers and when policy makers follow lobbyists' advice. The predictions are assessed against data on the policy positions and lobbying activities of firms and other organised groups in the context of 28 policy proposals advanced by United Kingdom governments between 2001 and 2007. The results suggest that the interactions between policy makers and lobbyists are driven mainly by the expected policy costs for policy makers, providing lobbyists with strong incentives to provide correct advice to policy makers. There is little support for the expectation that lobbyists can successfully persuade policy makers to take a course of action that is beneficial to the lobbyist at the expense of wider constituencies.

Questions about the political influence of organised interests are at the heart of democratic theory and political science. Yet comparatively little is known empirically about the effectiveness of different power resources in policy struggles and how organised interests succeed or fail to employ these resources to achieve desired political outcomes. The main factors behind the empirical neglect of political influence include problems of measurement and a scarcity of relevant data. To address this problem, a newspaper analysis was conducted to compile a data set of 163 policy proposals advanced by UK governments between 2001 and 2007 and to record the reported policy position of organised interests. The data are used to assess frequently voiced expectations in the literature about organised interest politics and political influence in a new light. The results show that support from interest groups is positively related to a proposal becoming policy. The positions of business groups are no better reflected in policy outcomes than those of non-business groups. Donations to political parties are unrelated to the extent to which policy outcomes are in line with a firm's policy positions. Adapted from the source document.

In this paper I examine the political influence of business in the context of environmental politics by comparing the explanatory role of three distinct sources of business power: political organization, a structurally privileged position in politics, and informational advantages. Using data on fifteen OECD countries between 1981 and 1999, the analysis shows that business organizational strength and information asymmetry in government–business relations are important determinants of observed differences in air pollution across countries and over time. By contrast, there is no support for the claim that the structural dominance of business constrains political efforts to improve air quality. By analyzing the role of asymmetric information and systems of interest intermediation simultaneously, the paper contributes to our understanding of the causal mechanisms that link corporatism to environmental performance.

Questions about the political influence of organised interests are at the heart of democratic theory and political science. Yet comparatively little is known empirically about the effectiveness of different power resources in policy struggles and how organised interests succeed or fail to employ these resources to achieve desired political outcomes. The main factors behind the empirical neglect of political influence include problems of measurement and a scarcity of relevant data. To address this problem, a newspaper analysis was conducted to compile a data set of 163 policy proposals advanced by UK governments between 2001 and 2007 and to record the reported policy position of organised interests. The data are used to assess frequently voiced expectations in the literature about organised interest politics and political influence in a new light. The results show that support from interest groups is positively related to a proposal becoming policy. The positions of business groups are no better reflected in policy outcomes than those of non-business groups. Donations to political parties are unrelated to the extent to which policy outcomes are in line with a firm's policy positions.