Lobbying in Context: New Measures to Understand Lobbying Goals and Success

To understand what types of interest groups are successful, I estimate progress toward three objectives that can be adapted to the contexts of most lobbying efforts.;1. Which organizations are able to work on the policy issues that are most important to them? 2. Which organizations are able to engage in key categories of lobbying activities? 3. Which organizations successfully achieve or block passage of specific policy goals identified at the beginning of a legislative session?;Through two sets of interviews conducted with lobbyists during the 111th Congress, I demonstrate that organizations that form partnerships with legislative champions and allied coalitions are better able to spend time working on the issues in their policy portfolios. I demonstrate that organizational resources mattered at the beginning of the congressional session, but that influence waned as the congressional agenda narrowed.;I also show that business organizations maintain clear advantages when it comes to greater use of the majority of lobbying techniques. Even after controlling for relative resources, groups representing memberships composed of business or industry are more likely to engage in direct legislative lobbying, indirect (or grassroots) lobbying, campaign or advertising spending, and executive branch lobbying. In addition, my research demonstrates that organizations representing businesses hold advantages when it comes to policy outcomes even after controlling for differences in resources such as organizational revenue or the presence of political action committees and the issue's position on the congressional agenda.;Groups representing business and industry are more likely to achieve their stated goals when it comes to advancing or preventing the movement of policy initiatives in Congress and in changes to federal policy making.