Moneyed Interests, Information, and Policy Action in Congress: An Experiment

• In Event: Congressional Staff, Constituent Representation, and Legislative Behavior

Abstract

A growing body of research suggests that the legislative agenda in Congress favors the preferences and interests of wealthy Americans and well-organized corporate interests. But how do these groups influence legislative action? In this paper, we focus on the role of legislative staffers, developing a theory of information processing and judgment in which staffers weigh the costs of granting access to different constituents or interest groups against signaled informational and electoral benefits that those constituents or groups can offer. We then test this theory on an original, large-scale survey of more than 400 Washington, DC-based Congressional staffers who participated in the 2017 Congressional Capacity Survey. Using a survey experiment vignette about a policy ask by an outside interest to staff, we manipulate the identity of the individual or interest making the request, the substantive nature of the request, and the information provided by the petitioner to the staffer. We then explore the effort that staffers would expend on the hypothetical request, whether (and how) they would use the information provided by the outside interest, and how they would update their beliefs about public opinion in their constituency on the basis of the information. Together, our results shed light on debates over the nature of substantive representation of constituent preferences, lobbying influence, and legislative behavior in Congress in an era of rising political polarization and inequality.

Authors

• Lee Drutman, New America

• Alexander Charles Furnas, University of Michigan

• Alexander Warren Hertel-Fernandez, Columbia University

• Kevin R. Kosar, R Street Institute