Jaclyn J. Kettler

Lobbying from Inside the System Why Local Governments Pay for Representation in the U.S. Congress

Why do cities spend scarce resources lobbying the federal government? The hierarchy of U.S. government provides various pathways for local representation. Nevertheless, cities regularly invest in paid representation. This presents a puzzle for American democracy. Why do cities lobby, and do they lobby strategically? We quantify for the first time the extent of this phenomenon and examine its determinants using new data on 498 cities across forty-five states from 1998 to 2008. We find that economic distress pushes cities to lobby, but does not impact expenditures. Cities in competitive congressional districts, and therefore crucial to national politics, spend more on lobbying.

Independent Spending in State Elections, 2006–2010: Vertically Networked Political Parties Were the Real Story, Not Business

Abstract This article examines independent spending in state elections before and after the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC. We find that the decision did not have much of a direct effect on business spending, despite public expectations. Increases were higher in the aggregate in states that prohibited corporate spending before the decision. However, the major growth was not in the business or labor sectors, but in the network organizations of political parties – and most particularly the national organizations of state elected and party officials. Contrary to some contemporary views, these developments cannot be understood as a displacement of within-state money from parties to interest groups. Instead, national party organizations were operating across state lines, deciding whether to contribute to formal party committees or their party allies as local circumstances might dictate. This complex movement of money belies any theorizing that would treat a decline in the proportional role of formal party spending as equivalent to a zero-sum increase in the non-party power of interest groups. Rather, we see the pattern of independent spending as part of a larger story of change in American political parties. These changes now include vertically networked parties operating across levels of jurisdiction, alongside the horizontal networks receiving attention in recent scholarship.

Lobbying from Inside the System: Why Local Governments Pay for Representation in the U.S. Congress

Why do cities spend scarce resources lobbying the federal government? The hierarchy of U.S. government provides various pathways for local representation. Nevertheless, cities regularly invest in paid representation. This presents a puzzle for American democracy. Why do cities lobby, and do they lobby strategically? We quantify for the first time the extent of this phenomenon and examine its determinants using new data on 498 cities across forty-five states from 1998 to 2008. We find that economic distress pushes cities to lobby, but does not impact expenditures. Cities in competitive congressional districts, and therefore crucial to national politics, spend more on lobbying.

Lobbying from Inside the System

Why do cities spend scarce resources lobbying the federal government? The hierarchy of U.S. government provides various pathways for local representation. Nevertheless, cities regularly invest in paid representation. This presents a puzzle for American democracy. Why do cities lobby, and do they lobby strategically? We quantify for the first time the extent of this phenomenon and examine its determinants using new data on 498 cities across forty-five states from 1998 to 2008. We find that economic distress pushes cities to lobby, but does not impact expenditures. Cities in competitive congressional districts, and therefore crucial to national politics, spend more on lobbying.