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Lobbying and Legislative Organization: The Effect of the Vote of Confidence Procedure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Morten Bennedsen  and
Sven E. Feldmann
Morten Bennedsen*
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School & University of Chicago
Sven E. Feldmann
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School & University of Chicago
*
Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School and CEBR. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

This paper analyzes how the structure of the legislature affects interest groups' incentives to lobby. Lobbying is modelled as the strategic provision of information by an interest group to a multi-member legislature, and the effectiveness of lobbying lies in the ability of information to change the winning policy coalitions. We show that with a long enough time horizon for policymakers, the distinguishing feature between the U.S. Congress and European parliamentary systems—the vote of confidence procedure—reduces an agenda setter's willingness to change policy coalitions, and thus significantly lowers the incentives for interest group lobbying.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , August 2002 , pp. 187 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2002 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

We would like to thank David Baron, Francesco Caselli, Urs Fischbacher, Christian Schultz, Ken Shepsle, Elu von Thadden, and Barry Weingast for helpful comments.

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