Grass-roots lobbying and the provision of information-processing resources in state legislatures

Abstract

ABSTRACT Citizens lobby state legislators about policy issues frequently. Political science research holds conflicting findings regarding the efficacy of grass-roots lobbying messages; some studies find that legislators ignore lobbying by constituents that they do not agree with (Butler et al., 2012), while others find that legislators act based on the cost constituents bear. In environments where the costs of contacting legislators are flattened (Cluverius, 2017), trust becomes the primary heuristic that legislators use to process information. Information processing requires resources: time, pay, and staff for legislators to better understand the information they are receiving. I use a series of interviews and free-text survey responses to evaluate how these resources affect how legislators view grass-roots lobbying messages. I find that legislators with longer sessions are less influenced by grass-roots lobbying, that legislative staff make legislators more likely to be influenced, and that legislator pay has no meaningful effects on legislator influence.