UC San Diego

An increasing portion of lobbyists in American politics have a history of employment in government, a major facet of the wider “revolving door” phenomenon that connects government office and non-governmental sectors. An elite slice of these lobbyists held public office as elected or appointed officials, while former government staff make up the far more numerous category. How may revolving-door lobbyists help organized interests, which already enjoy important advantages over the disorganized, influence government decisions? Existing research argues that government experience gives revolvers advantages in political connections and knowledge about policy and processes.

I advance a distinct theory: What distinguishes revolving-door lobbyists from conventional lobbyists without government experience is the ability to think like politicians, for which working in government provides the best training. In particular, government experience teaches one to claim credit effectively for policy outcomes – demonstrating that one’s actions and efforts are responsible for good results – in order to survive the election cycle. When former government officials and staffers become lobbyists, they do not leave this intangible skill set behind. If effective credit claiming helps politicians win elections whereby they are evaluated by voters, it helps lobbyists survive their own hiring and firing cycles whereby they are evaluated by clients. In Chapter 2, I demonstrate that corporations prefer revolvers to conventional lobbyists in the face of policy uncertainty. Interest groups’ need for revolvers to help manage uncertainty provides an ideal environment for their credit-claiming behavior.

Revolvers claim credit by expending resources efficiently to achieve lobbying goals. I examine two concrete manifestations of this behavior in the following chapters. In Chapter 3, I show that revolvers make campaign contributions to political candidates more efficiently and succeed more in purchasing access to legislators. In Chapter 4, I show that revolvers exercise more restraint when lobbying on congressional appropriations and consequently hit their announced targets more often. These advantages help revolvers secure lobbying clients’ satisfaction and make them loyal customers. To show this, in Chapter 5 I liken lobbying transactions to election results and demonstrate that revolvers are more likely to be “reelected” by clients than conventional lobbyists.