Spinning Fast and Slow: The Moral Careers of Revolving Door Lobbyists

• In Event: 50416 - Political Organizations

Abstract

The revolving door, or the circulation of personnel between government and private sector lobbying, has received significant attention as a potential source of corporate influence and corruption. Most individual-level explanations of revolving doors typically frame political elites as rational and self-interested, either as public servants seeking higher paying roles in the private sector, or as lobbyists pursuing political power and notability. However, these accounts overlook that policy professionals tend to be morally-driven, public-service motivated professionals who operate in a labor market characterized by uncertainty and significant hiring constraints. In this paper, I will characterize two ways of moving through the revolving door: spinning fast or slow. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 58 policy professionals, I illustrate how revolving door career moves result from both unexpected events, as well as intentional career changes. Individuals deploy logics of resume-building, alienation, and compromise to align their moral careers with their objective careers. My findings complicate individual-level factors driving the revolving door and suggest that proposed solutions to address revolving door lobbying need to account for the structural and cultural contexts in which policy professionals pursue their careers.

Author

• Wendy Y. Li, Johns Hopkins University