Web exclusive: MSU professor finds lobbying not correlated to legislation passing

Despite a common belief interest groups are responsible for partisanship in U.S. Congress, MSU political science assistant professor Matt Grossmann found that is not the case.

After analyzing the amount of time different lobbyists spent pushing legislation, Grossmann concluded time spent lobbying has no direct correlation to whether legislation passes. Grossmann worked with Casey Dominguez, a political science assistant professor at the University of San Diego, to determine the efficiency of lobbyists to see if the interest groups were able to help further the legislation.

“We knew that interest groups join strange bedfellow coalitions, but it is surprising that there is no partisan structure at all to the patterns of interest group alliances in Congress,” Grossmann said. “It’s also quite surprising that interest group coalitions and lobbying do not seem to help legislation pass in the House or Senate.”

Grossmann’s research was presented before the American Political Science Association and will be published in American Politics Research within the next six months.

Although there are about 3,000 interest groups involved in lobbying in Washington, D.C., Grossmann said their effect on passing legislation is minimal.

“The public would be surprised that (lobbying) is not a major factor in Congress,” Grossmann said. “Scholars have a hard time showing campaign contributions on legislative voting and this is sort of the same. It’s certainly not what the public believes.”

Although lobbying doesn’t further legislation, advertising professor Bruce Vandenbergh said lobbying is a preventive strategy.

“It’s like, ‘We’re not making any progress, but we’re not trying to,’” Vandenbergh said. “It’s just to keep the other guy from making progress.”

Vandenbergh said one of the reasons lobbying might not help is because politicians turn a deaf ear to the lobbyists.

“They adapt to it and don’t believe it,” Vandenbergh said. “It’s less of an impact because political pressure of lobbyists has diminished over time.”

Horticulture junior Juliana Baker said she isn’t surprised lobbying doesn’t help. It’s all about money, she said.

“Unless the person doing the lobbying has money and power, they aren’t going to listen and pass it,” Baker said.