Ex Post Lobbying and the Dynamics of Legislative Attention

• In Event: Lobbying and Strategy

Abstract

A large fraction of all lobbying on a legislative bill appears to occur after that bill has already been enacted as law (You 2017). A leading explanation for this phenomenon is that such lobbying aims to influence the rulemaking process, however in this paper I develop a simpler explanation rooted in the dynamics of legislative attention. I show that, perhaps surprisingly, the probability of subsequent Congressional action on a particular issue or topic is highest immediately after a first action on that topic. It decays rapidly thereafter. This trend is robust to multiple systems for coding laws, including those that disaggregate laws to the title or section-level, and is not driven by variation in salience. I further explore how variation in the volume of ex post lobbying relates to ex ante measures of the likelihood of subsequent legislative action, and also how the timing and volume of ex post lobbying relates to the timing and volume of rulemaking activity. A simple model of investment under uncertainty is used to formalize how legislative attention dynamics can explain ex post lobbying.

Author

• Brian Daniel Libgober, University of California, San Diego