K Street on Main: How Advocacy Cost and Competition Cultivate a Professional Lobbying Elite

Abstract

We develop and demonstrate evidence for a theory of how interest groups hire lobbyists. Interest groups are frequently faced with the decision of how best to represent their interests in government: should they hire professional, hired gun lobbyists or instead call upon current employees to conduct government relations? We suggest that institutional constraints increase the cost and competitive nature of lobbying, leading interest groups to abandon the use of in-house advocates in favor of professional contractors. Relying on the fact that contractors represent multiple clients at a time, and using an original data set compiled from state ethics documents and registration lists from 1988 to 2013, we find support for our theory. Specifically, we demonstrate that groups turn to contract lobbyists when regulatory compliance costs are high, when legislatures are unprofessional, and when small legislative chambers are responsible for representing large swaths of the economy. This study is the first to advance a theory of interest group hiring decisions, and it informs a long-standing debate on the effects of lobby laws on state interest communities. Finally, it uncovers a representational challenge stemming from the recent emergence of a professional lobbyist class in many American states.