Today’s New York Times “Idea of the Day Blog” features this sensationalist headline: “Lobbying Often Yields Nothing” — followed by this provocative summary
The real outcome of most Washington lobbying is … nothing. Until the right party or person comes to power. So finds a 10-year study.
Actually… according to Lobbying and Policy Change (the landmark book by five political scientists that the post references), 40 percent of the time, lobbyists succeeded. So yes, technically, 60 percent of the time is most of the time and so it is correct to say that most of the time lobbying yields nothing.
But, to me, 40 percent is actually an astonishing success rate.
Sure, this may not look like much if your starting assumption is that special interests own Washington, and that all a clever lobbyist needs to do is approach a Congressman with the promise of a campaign check and that poor helpless Congressman will practically be begging to fete that lobbyist with most indefensible corporate giveaway.
But, on the other hand, if you’ve spent any time in Washington, and you know how hard it is to get just about anything done, 40 percent is definite batting champion territory.
And the big point of the study is actually about the difficulty of change: the status quo is really, really sticky in Washington, in good part because on most important issues there are forces mobilized on both sides, and every action on one side provokes an equal but opposite reaction on the other side. Forces fight each other to stalemate for years. But then then, suddenly, there is movement – and whoever has won the war of positioning is likely to win the war of motion.
But the problem is that nobody – not even the cleverest of lobbyists – really knows which ideas and issues are likely to break and when. Which means the keys to success in the Washington wars of influence are a long-term strategy and the patience and resources to carry it out. One must build a compelling case, nurture allies, and be in position to take advantage of the rare windows of opportunity when they do arise.
Still, the more one works at it, the more likely the success. As the authors of this study note: “The passage of time increases the odds of policy change among our cases. We observer policy changes on significantly more issues after four years than after just two years” (237) (This study only covered a four-year period (1999-2002). Had it looked at a longer period of time, perhaps the success rate would have topped 50 percent. Would the headline then have been “Lobbying Often Yields Something”?)
Interestingly, the study finds that having more resources is no guarantee of success, partly because there are often large resources on both sides of an issue. But that doesn’t mean that money doesn’t matter – it just suggests the price of entry to even get in the fight is quite high. Overall, lobbying is now a $3.5 billion industry, with corporations and business associations accounting for about two-thirds of the expenditures.
Ultimately, any attempt to simplify lobbying as either fundamentally influential or not influential misses a very basic point: lobbying is a process, a conversation, a multi-dimensional chess game that sometimes never ends. Nobody in Washington carries a magic wand that can make policy happen with a mere wave. Not even lobbyists. Influence happens in more subtle and patient ways, something that anybody who might be concerned about the role of lobbyists needs to understand.
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