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Are PAC Contributions and Lobbying Linked? New Evidence from the 1995 Lobby Disclosure Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Micky Tripathi ,
Stephen Ansolabehere  and
James M. Snyder Jr
Micky Tripathi
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Boston Consulting Group
Stephen Ansolabehere*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Boston Consulting Group
James M. Snyder Jr
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Boston Consulting Group
*
Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Building E53, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 01239–4307, USA. E-mail: sda@mit.edu
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Abstract

This paper uses newly available data from the 1995 Lobby Disclosure Act to assess the argument that PAC contributions are used to gain access to legislators. First, we find a much stronger connection between lobbying and campaign contributions than previous statistical research has revealed—groups that have both a lobbyist and a PAC account for 70 percent of all interest group expenditures and 86 percent of all PAC contributions. Second, we find that groups that engage in relatively large amounts of lobbying-and therefore presumably have a high demand for access—allocate their campaign contributions differently than groups that do not. Groups that emphasize lobbying pay more attention to members' positions of power inside Congress, and less attention to members' electoral circumstances, than other groups. Groups that emphasize lobbying also appear to be more bipartisan and less ideological than other groups, giving more equally to both parties and more broadly across the ideological spectrum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , August 2002 , pp. 131 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2002 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

*

Professors Ansolabehere and Snyder gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation, SBR-9609300. Professor Ansolabehere wishes to acknowledge the support of the Camegie Corporation through the Camegie Scholars program.

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