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Interest group lobbying and partisan polarization in the United States: 1999–2016

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2021

Alex Garlick Open the ORCID record for Alex Garlick [Opens in a new window]
Alex Garlick*
Affiliation:
Political Science, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, New Jersey, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: garlicka@tcnj.edu
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Abstact

The lobbying activity of interest groups has been overlooked as a contributing factor to legislative party polarization in the United States. Using bill-level data from Congress and three state legislatures, I show floor votes on bills lobbied by more non-profit interest groups are more polarized by party. The state legislative data demonstrate the robustness of the relationship between lobbying and polarization, showing it is not an artifact of party agenda control, salience, or bill content. Increased lobbying from these groups in recent years helps explain high levels of partisan polarization in Congress and an uneven pattern across the state legislatures.

Keywords

American politicslegislative politicspolitical parties and interest groupsstate and intergovernmental politics
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 488 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RRC08M
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