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By Frank R. Baumgartner - Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why
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First published July 15, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 12, 2016
Very interesting study based on a sampling of registered lobbying activity over the course of four years that seeks to understand the factors that contributed to changes in legislation (executive branch administrative actions are essentially omitted from the study). The authors find that in most cases, the status quo in fact prevails without any change. When changes do occur, though, they are more likely to be major rather than iterative – a process of “punctuated equilibrium” or a case where “the things Congress does best are nothing or overreacting”.
One major factor in preserving the status quo is the difficulty for proponents of policy change to secure a place on busy Congressional gatekeepers’ agendas, a finding which accords with my own personal experience working in Washington that policymaker time is the most valuable commodity available. Because policies or legislation essentially never start from a blank slate, the decision to take any new action at all is often the hurdle on which policy initiatives die, in part because the policymakers and government actors often represent the coalition of interests that helped to establish the status quo in the first place, in part because of the many other competing priorities facing policymakers, and in part because of the coordination challenge of bringing other actors (Congressional or executive leadership, other members of the policy community) on board for collective action.
Despite the money, information, and competing policy frames sloshing around DC on any given day, the amount of lobbyist coalition resources, the study also finds, are actually not strongly predictive of policy advocacy success – in part because these tend to be matched by coalitions of interests who take opposing positions. “Reframing” or spinning an issue, though common practice, is rarely successful, because proponents and opponents of policy changes usually possess the same information, follow each others’ arguments, and are constantly working to counterbalance each other. The authors conclude that policy change cannot be understood monocausally but that when it occurs it usually follows a bandwagoning process of “social cascade” that makes it more likely for significant action to be taken on the issues that manage to make it onto the actual agenda. Because instances of policy change are low-probability but high risk/reward for competing constituencies, they continue to invest in lobbying and information monitoring, even if the default normally remains the status quo.
I’m still thinking over the degree to which this framework could be generalized to non US-legislative decision-making processes – where there might be less formalized procedures for enacting policy changes, more exogenous shakeups in the balance of interest group powers, or more or fewer actors involved in coordinating around policies – but but in general I think it is a very useful way to think about how the U.S. system works.
One major factor in preserving the status quo is the difficulty for proponents of policy change to secure a place on busy Congressional gatekeepers’ agendas, a finding which accords with my own personal experience working in Washington that policymaker time is the most valuable commodity available. Because policies or legislation essentially never start from a blank slate, the decision to take any new action at all is often the hurdle on which policy initiatives die, in part because the policymakers and government actors often represent the coalition of interests that helped to establish the status quo in the first place, in part because of the many other competing priorities facing policymakers, and in part because of the coordination challenge of bringing other actors (Congressional or executive leadership, other members of the policy community) on board for collective action.
Despite the money, information, and competing policy frames sloshing around DC on any given day, the amount of lobbyist coalition resources, the study also finds, are actually not strongly predictive of policy advocacy success – in part because these tend to be matched by coalitions of interests who take opposing positions. “Reframing” or spinning an issue, though common practice, is rarely successful, because proponents and opponents of policy changes usually possess the same information, follow each others’ arguments, and are constantly working to counterbalance each other. The authors conclude that policy change cannot be understood monocausally but that when it occurs it usually follows a bandwagoning process of “social cascade” that makes it more likely for significant action to be taken on the issues that manage to make it onto the actual agenda. Because instances of policy change are low-probability but high risk/reward for competing constituencies, they continue to invest in lobbying and information monitoring, even if the default normally remains the status quo.
I’m still thinking over the degree to which this framework could be generalized to non US-legislative decision-making processes – where there might be less formalized procedures for enacting policy changes, more exogenous shakeups in the balance of interest group powers, or more or fewer actors involved in coordinating around policies – but but in general I think it is a very useful way to think about how the U.S. system works.
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November 18, 2018Baumgartner et. al. make a very good account of how policymaking is done in D.C. and how the asymmetries of power and issue/policy networks function in the U.S. politics at the federal level.
May 21, 2020
Great research design, and, as a former lobbyist, feels more realistic than many studies I have read
June 12, 2009
When it comes to lobbying, it's really hard to change the status quo.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews