Ex Post Lobbying

Abstract

Nearly half of all lobbying activity targeting specific bills between 1998 and 2012 happened after the Congress passed legislation, yet existing theories of lobbying generally fail to account for lobbying that occurs after a bill is passed. I argue that ex post lobbying aims to influence the distribution of particularistic benefits that will arise from legislation by targeting regulatory rule-making processes. I develop a model that describes lobbying as a collective action problem among interest groups, who must trade off between spending money to lobby for a bill’s passage and spending money to lobby over the details of its implementation. The implications of the model suggest that bills with high proportions of particularistic provisions draw more ex post lobbying and that trade associations and larger firms bear a disproportionately large share of the ex ante lobbying burden. Empirical analysis of lobbying reports is consistent with these predictions.

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