Drawing Lobbyists to Washington: Government Activity and the Demand for Advocacy

Abstract

Using an agenda-setting approach, we show the interaction between the growth of groups and the growth of government. A pooled time-series analysis of more than 45,000 lobby registration reports from 1996 to 2000 and measures of government activity from the Policy Agendas Project indicates that groups become active in Washington, D.C., in large part because of pre-existing levels of government activity in the issue-areas that concern them. The growth in the range and number of activities of government has created incentives for organizations of all kinds to mobilize, whether they are supporters or opponents of new government programs. We find that levels of government attention in an issue-area explain the level of interest-group lobbying more consistently than does government spending or the number of business firms in that area. We conclude with a discussion of the need for theories of group mobilization to include attention to the demand-creating actions of government itself.

Full text

T
he growth and proliferation of interest groups in the
United States has long been considered a major cause
of growth in the size and scope of the U.S. govern-
ment. Scholars taking a historical approach have linked the
rise of social movements in the Progressive Era to govern-
ment expansion (Tichenor and Harris 2002/2003), while
across the discipline, public choice theorists have pointed to
rent-seeking by interest groups as a driving force behind
government regulation and spending (e.g., Buchanan and
Tullock 1962). The myriad social movements over the past
four decades have led to new programs affecting women,
minorities, consumers, and the environment, while profes-
sional communities have successfully convinced govern-
ment to get more involved in health care, education, trans-
portation, and other areas. Groups are, or should be, central
to any explanation of the growth of government. The
reverse is also true. Groups have mobilized in Washington
in response to the growth of activities of government. As
government has grown more active in a greater range of
areas of public policy, organized interests have followed.
Government can provide the incentive for new groups to
arise and for existing groups to mobilize around a particu-
lar set of issues. Governmental patrons have provided start-
up funds for new groups (Walker 1983, 1991; Smith and
Lipsky 1993, Cigler and Nownes 1995), while governmen-
tal programs have provided something worth organizing to
protect (e.g., Campbell 2003). Whether they are supporters
or opponents of new government programs, groups clearly
co-evolve with government in a dynamic progression that
leads each to affect the other.
Within this reciprocal process, a puzzle remains. How
and why do certain issues and certain issue-areas become the
focus of interest-group attention and lobbying? Baumgartner
and Leech (2001) have shown that among interest groups in
Washington, the majority of the lobbying is focused on a
small fraction of the issues. What causes that mobilization?
The exigencies of collective action suggest that it is unlikely
that groups could be driving this process alone, but that in
fact growth in the interest-group population must depend on
the growth of government itself. Although interest-group
entrepreneurs may be instrumental in suggesting new policy
alternatives, in most cases government actors must act on
those suggestions if the lobbying community in that policy
domain is to grow beyond a select few.
In this article we provide detailed evidence to document
this close relationship between government activity and
interest-group communities, and we work to further specify
the relationship.
1
The theory we develop draws on ideas
from theories of collective action, social movement mobi-
lization, and population ecology. Our focus is the role of the
political environment—and in particular, government
19
Drawing Lobbyists to Washington:
Government Activity and the Demand for Advocacy
BETH L. LEECH, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
FRANK R. BAUMGARTNER, PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
TIMOTHY M. LA PIRA, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
NICHOLAS A. SEMANKO, BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW
Using an agenda-setting approach, we show the interaction between the growth of groups and the growth of
government. A pooled time-series analysis of more than 45,000 lobby registration reports from 1996 to 2000
and measures of government activity from the Policy Agendas Project indicates that groups become active in
Washington, D.C., in large part because of pre-existing levels of government activity in the issue-areas that con-
cern them. The growth in the range and number of activities of government has created incentives for organ-
izations of all kinds to mobilize, whether they are supporters or opponents of new government programs. We
find that levels of government attention in an issue-area explain the level of interest-group lobbying more con-
sistently than does government spending or the number of business firms in that area. We conclude with a dis-
cussion of the need for theories of group mobilization to include attention to the demand-creating actions of
government itself.
NOTE: We would like to thank Jeff Berry, Marie Hojnacki, Bryan Jones,
David Kimball, David Lowery, and Christine Mahoney for their
comments on various versions of this article. The analysis pre-
sented here was made possible through work from many of our
previous projects, and we gratefully acknowledge the support of
National Science Foundation grants SBR-0111224, SBR-011161,
SBR-9905195, and SBR-9631232, as well as a grant from the Rut-
gers Research Council.
Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 1 (March 2005): pp. 19-30
1
Since this article was first drafted, two of us in other work have
approached this question by tracing the growth of the group system over
long periods of time and relating that to the growth of government
(Baumgartner, Leech, and Mahoney 2003). To date, few have studied the
interrelations between group and government growth, though Gray and
Lowery have begun to pay serious attention to this issue (see Lowery et
al. 2004, Gray et al. forthcoming). They find a significant relation
between the number of groups mobilized to lobby state governments
and the level of activity of the state governments in a range of issue-areas.
In sum, an emerging body of literature is beginning to address these
questions, but the literature is in its infancy.

attention or lack thereof—in encouraging or discouraging
interest group mobilization. We predict that levels of lobby-
ing will increase as government activity increases, but we
expect these processes to be issue-specific. Certainly there
are aggregate effects as well, and we will discuss some of
these in our conclusions, but our main focus is on a com-
parison across different issue-areas. Government involve-
ment in regulation of transportation should not be expected
to increase lobbying on trade policy; and proposals to end
tariffs on textiles should not be expected to raise the level of
lobbying on welfare policy. In essence, a governmental deci-
sion to become involved in an issue area sets the agenda for
existing and potential organized interests, who are thus
encouraged to come to the capital to defend their interests
and advocate particular solutions to perceived problems.
This, essentially, is the demand side of why interest groups
become active in particular areas of public policy.
GROUPS, INTERESTS, AND MOBILIZATION
While internal characteristics of organizations are clearly
important factors in mobilization (e.g., Olson 1971), an
emerging consensus within the study of political behavior at
many levels encourages us to look at the interaction between
those internal characteristics and the external political con-
text in which individuals and organizations find themselves.
Huckfeldt and Sprague (1987) pioneered the inclusion of
community as a variable in voting behavior studies. The
social movement literature has turned its attention away
from grievances and resources and toward such issues as
political opportunities and framing structures (McAdam,
McCarthy, and Zald 1996). Gray and Lowery’s (1996) popu-
lation ecology approach to interest-group populations
shifted the focus to the energy, stability, and area within an
interest-group environment, while a series of scholars has
begun considering the issue context in which particular
organizations make lobbying decisions (Baumgartner and
Leech 1996, 1998, 2001; Hojnacki 1997; Hojnacki and
Kimball 1998; Kollman 1998; Leech 1998). Finally, in the
study of policymaking more generally, scholars have moved
beyond the consideration of resources and individuals in
policy outcomes to also consider the broader effects of
agenda-setting and issue-definition (e.g., Baumgartner and
Jones 1993, 2002; Jones 1995; Leech et al. 2002).
The political context or environment is an essential part
of any explanation of the size and scope of the interest-
group system. Even in a hypothetically ideal pluralist world
in which all points of view were represented fairly, there
would be no reason to expect that all points of view would
mobilize and lobby equally. If government had no authority
over or involvement in an issue-area, then there would be
little point in forming an interest group to lobby in that area.
This suggests, therefore, that we should expect mobilization
to occur not when an opinion or need exists in the world,
but when that opinion or need and the possibility of govern-
ment action intersect. This, indeed, is the definition of “inter-
est” presented by Heinz et al. (1993: 24):
It is at the intersection of public policy and the wants and
values of private actors that we discover interests. What
we call the interests of the groups are not simply valued
conditions or goals, such as material riches, moral well-
being, or symbolic satisfaction. It is only as these are
affected, potentially or in fact, by public policy, by the
actions of authoritative public officials, that the valued
ends are transformed into political interests that can be
sought or opposed by interest groups.
If “interests” are created by the actions of government, then
interest-group mobilization must be affected as well. As
government becomes more active in a particular area, so too
will the interest groups that correspond to that area. That is,
we should expect government activity to affect lobbying
activity. If it does not—or if it does so for some types of
interests but not for others—then representation is threat-
ened. For this reason, studying populations of interest
groups and their policy context is equally as important as
studying individual groups and their resources.
Gray and Lowery (1996) explicitly focus attention on
these processes by adopting the ESA—energy, stability,
area—theory from population ecology. They argue that the
number of interest groups in a population will depend not
only on the number of potential members and other
resources organizations have (the area), but also on the
interests created by potential government goods, services,
and regulations (the energy). This energy term corresponds
closely with the concept of political environment or politi-
cal context that we use in this study.
Most studies of collective action have focused on the initial
formation of groups, but the problems of mobilization do not
end after an organization is formed. No organization has
unlimited resources, and no organization wants to expend
effort on a hopeless cause. Thousands of bills are introduced
each year, yet only a handful become the focus of attention.
Interest-group entrepreneurs working on an issue that is not
already the focus of government activity will find it extremely
difficult to mobilize other groups. The probability of success
seems small, hence other interest groups, whether for or
against the issue, will not mobilize. Studies as diverse as Bauer,
Pool, and Dexter (1963), Grier, Munger, and Roberts (1994),
and Martin (1995) all document such cases of free riding and
failed or sub-optimal mobilization by organizations. For
organizations planning lobbying strategies, the greatest uncer-
tainty in Washington is not whether their side will win or lose
a floor vote, but whether their issues will be attended to at all.
Government activity works to reduce this uncertainty and
therefore acts as a catalyst to mobilization. While mobilization
is certainly possible without government involvement, it will be
extremely difficult, and therefore rare. Day-to-day decisions
about lobbying are not made without great weight being given
to the government’s attention to the issue.
Olson (1971: 22) notes that a small group will mobilize
even without selective incentives or coercion if the potential
collective good is valuable enough to its individual mem-
bers and it is possible for the individual to attain success on
20 POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY

its own. This last point is important to our argument. If an
interest group can attain a benefit or favorable policy deci-
sion from government on its own, with little or no help
from other interest groups or legislators, it may lobby even
in the absence of government activity. This can sometimes
occur in the case of an interest group asking a legislator to
insert a non-controversial sentence or two into an existing
bill. The clause may go unnoticed and undebated in the
larger bill but will provide great benefits to the interest
group.
2
For most issues on which interest groups lobby,
however, the interest groups themselves cannot change
things single-handedly.
It is important to distinguish here between the role of
governmental patronage and the role of governmental atten-
tion. Our focus in this article is not on the role of direct gov-
ernment support of interest groups, but rather on the way
in which government involvement in a policy area helps
spark the mobilization of organized interests. Without
denying the importance of direct patronage, the indirect
effect of government attention is constant rather than occa-
sional, and thus is likely to have a greater overall effect. In
addition, it should be clear that government activity mobi-
lizes groups who oppose these developments just as it mobi-
lizes supporters and beneficiaries of the activity. There is no
ideological or pro-government bias to the process we
describe. For example, businesses affected by increasingly
tight regulatory environments may reluctantly, rather than
enthusiastically, establish a long-term Washington presence.
The process we describe is general. Groups cannot ignore
government even if they want to.
ANALYZING THE DECISION TO COME TO WASHINGTON
The demand theory of interest-group lobbying that we
propose here leads to a simple hypothesis: As government
attention to an issue-area increases, so too will lobbying in
that issue-area. However, government attention can be con-
ceptualized and measured in multiple ways; not every type
of attention should be expected to have the same effect on
levels of lobbying. In this article we consider both the
demand effects of general government attention to an issue-
area in the short and long term, and the subsidy-seeking
effects of an issue-area that involves proportionally large
amounts of the federal budget. In addition, we include as a
control measure the supply effects of the number of busi-
ness firms in an area of the economy.
We conduct this analysis using two large data sets that
previously have not been used in tandem: (1) the Lobbying
Disclosure Data Set (Baumgartner and Leech 2001), and (2)
the Policy Agendas Project (Baumgartner and Jones 1993,
2002).
3
The first data set allows us to identify the number
of organizations active in Washington in 74 government-
designated issue-areas, the number of issues lobbied on,
and the amount spent on lobbying. We can also trace, over
eight successive six-month reporting periods, fluctuations
in the number of organizations filing lobbying reports in
each of the 74 areas, enabling us to examine the time-
ordered nature of the data. The second data set, which con-
tains numerous indicators of government attention to more
than 200 distinct policy areas since World War II, allows us
to assess the degree of government activity in each issue-
area over time, as well as the amount of government spend-
ing in each area. To these sources, we add data from the U.S.
Economic Census on the number of existing firms in each
of these issue-areas. Our pooled time-series analysis is thus
based on lobby disclosure reports and congressional hear-
ings data from 1996 to 2000, covering an average of almost
6,000 registration reports in each of eight time-periods
across dozens of different issue-areas. We will discuss each
of these variables in turn, and explain how each of these
variables has been operationalized.
First, we consider general government attention to an
issue-area, in particular congressional attention to an issue-
area.
4
We expect lobbying to increase as the amount of con-
gressional attention increases; however, we expect the
effects to be different in the short and long term. An organi-
zation’s decision to lobby is time consuming and expensive,
especially if it involves setting up an office in Washington
(or Brussels, or a state capital, for that matter) or adding
permanent staff to that office. In addition, organizations are
not unitary actors—there may be multiple constituencies
within the organization to convince, and organizational
actors may not immediately recognize that their interests
have been threatened, or that an opportunity has arisen
because of government action (see Martin 1995). For these
reasons we expect long-term changes in government activ-
ity to be more important in affecting lobbying activity than
short-term changes in attention. It is, however, easier for
interest groups to hire contract lobbyists and public rela-
tions firms than to create their own Washington offices, and
therefore we expect the level of lobbying by contract lobby-
ists to be more sensitive to short-term changes in govern-
ment attention. The lobby disclosure reports allow us to
measure direct lobbying by organizations separately from
lobbying by contract lobbyists on behalf of paying clients.
To measure short- and long-term government attention,
we have two variables: The short-term variable consists of
the number of congressional hearings that took place
regarding that issue-area during the same six-month period
for which lobbying is reported in the disclosure reports. The
long-term variable reflects a 10-year moving average, lagged
one year, of past congressional hearings in that issue-area.
DRAWING LOBBYISTS TO WASHINGTON 21
4
We expect that any type of government involvement—congressional or
bureaucratic, national or local—should lead to increased lobbying activ-
ity. Our measure of lobbying activity, however, is primarily concerned
with congressional lobbying. We focus here, therefore, on the agenda-
setting role of congressional attention to issue-areas.
2
For the purposes of our argument, this benefit may be either private or
collective. The crucial thing is that it be attainable by the interest group
working single-handedly.
3
These two data sets are publicly available online at http://
lobby.la.psu.edu/~related and www.policyagendas.org/.

Second, we expect that issue-areas representing relatively
greater proportions of the federal budget will also experi-
ence higher levels of lobbying, as interest groups vie to
attract direct subsidies and contracts from the federal gov-
ernment. This variable is measured by the amount of the
federal budget, in billions of dollars, attributable to each
issue-area during the contemporaneous year.
Third, it is possible, of course, that the number of
active interest organizations in a given issue-area is not
the result of government attention or spending at all, but
is simply a reflection of how important that issue-area is
to the economy. If the supply of potential interest organi-
zations is greater in one issue-area than another, then that
would provide a potential rival hypothesis for the varia-
tion we see across issue-areas. Therefore we use economic
census data measuring the numbers of firms active in the
United States in different economic sectors as an indica-
tor of the potential supply of interest organizations in an
issue-area. While this measure does not include the
number of non-economic organizations potentially avail-
able to lobby, it does provide an indicator of the level of
economic activity. These data allow us to test whether it is
the supply effect of the number of firms that determines
the mobilization, rather than the demand effect of the
level of government activity.
Measures of Lobbying Activity
The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 requires organiza-
tions or individuals spending more than about $20,000
5
on
lobbying activities within any six-month period to file a
report indicating the areas in which they lobbied, the issues
on which they were active, and the amount of money spent.
There are 74 pre-defined areas of lobbying activity, and lob-
byists must file reports in each area in which they are active.
Baumgartner and Leech (2001) report detailed information
from an exhaustive analysis of every report filed for the
December 31, 1996, filing period. In this work we make use
of those publicly available data as well as summary data col-
lected from the Senate Office of Public Records consisting of
the number of filings in each of the 74 issue-areas in seven
subsequent time periods: December 31, 1997, and in each
six-month filing period through December 31, 2000. The
reports indicate the number of organizations filing in each
issue-area as well as the number of hired lobbying firms
working on behalf of paying clients.
What do these counts of lobbying reports represent? We
can use our more detailed analysis of all 19,692 reports
filed in 1996 to address this question. This initial analysis
reassures us that simple counts of the number of reports are
valid and useful measures of the amount of lobbying activ-
ity in these 74 issue-areas. The 1996 database allows us to
count the number of interest groups, lobbying firms, regis-
trations, issues mentioned, and money spent by each regis-
tered organization and each contract lobbyist, and to break
these numbers down by issue-area. Comparison of these
various indicators of levels of lobbying activity shows the
striking similarities of estimates of activity levels when
aggregated to the issue-areas that we analyze in this study.
For example, the total number of lobbying reports is nearly
perfectly correlated with the number of groups registering
in an area (reports = 1.4 * groups; R
2
= .99). Similarly, the
total number of issues mentioned by all groups equals 3.5
times the number of groups registered (R
2
= .98). Finally,
the total amount spent by groups is also highly correlated
with the number of registrants (r > .94). In short, an analy-
sis of several different indicators of levels of lobbying activ-
ity, drawn from a detailed analysis of the full set of reports
filed in a single reporting period lends credence to the idea
that the simple count of lobbying reports over the eight
time periods is a robust and reliable measure of total lob-
bying activity.
Linking Lobbying Activity Levels to Other Indicators
Our data on government attention to various issue-areas
come from the Policy Agendas Project (see Baumgartner and
Jones 1993, 2002), which contains information on all con-
gressional hearings as well as on congressional budget
authority. Since the Agendas Project codes each congres-
sional hearing since 1947 into one of 226 detailed
subtopics, we were able to match the majority of the 74 lob-
bying areas defined by the federal government in the Lob-
bying Disclosure Act to some combination of these
subtopics. In the end, about 85 percent of lobbying occurs
in areas where we can link to the data collected as part of
the Policy Agendas Project.
6
In some cases it fits neatly and
easily with a single major topic (for example, the lobbying
issue-area Agriculture fits with the Policy Agendas project
Topic 4, also called Agriculture). In other cases more
detailed codes provided single fits (the lobbying issue-area
District of Columbia, fits with Policy Agendas subtopic
2014, District of Columbia affairs, which is part of the
Policy Agendas major topic 20, governmental affairs). In
still other cases, such as Clean Air and Water Quality, a com-
bination of two or more Policy Agendas subtopics corre-
sponds to this issue-area. In this way, we can establish links
between 56 of the 74 areas.
The Policy Agendas Project also provides information on
government spending, taking the annual budget of the
United States and creating a consistently defined and infla-
tion-adjusted time series for each OMB-defined category of
spending. Using the same conservative approach as we used
with the congressional hearings, but being limited by the
22 POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY
6
Tables showing the linkages between the various data sets we use in this
study are available on our website, at http://lobby.la.psu.edu/~related.
5
Section 4(a)(3) of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 set the initial
threshold for registration at $20,000 spent by an organization lobbying
on its own behalf or $5,000 paid by an organization to a lobbying firm.
These amounts, however, were pegged to the Consumer Price Index, and
the threshold amounts in 2001 were $22,500 and $5,500.

smaller number of OMB categories in the budget dataset, we
can establish links in 27 out of 74 areas, or about 36 per-
cent of the categories. These categories in turn account for
almost exactly one half of the lobbying activity. While not
perfect, these data will allow us to analyze the degree to
which lobbyists are drawn to Washington because of the
level of government spending in an area.
Finally, we have information on the number of firms
active in different parts of the economy. We use economic
census data measuring the number of firms active in the
United States as an indicator of this concept in each of our
lobbying issue-areas. While this measure does not attempt
to include the number of non-economic organizations
potentially available to lobby, it does provide an indicator
of the level of economic activity, which allows us to test
whether it is the supply effect of the number of firms that
determines the mobilization, rather than the demand
effect of the level of government activity. Using data from
the U.S. Census Bureau and in particular its classification
of all areas of economic activity, we count the number of
firms in each issue-area that can be linked to the lobby dis-
closure data; we are successful in establishing these links
in 48 areas, representing 62 percent of the lobbying activ-
ity. Because of changes in the way the Census Bureau
counts these firms, these data are available for only two of
our five years.
Lobbying Across Issue-areas
Before moving on to the analysis of these variables, it is
helpful to take a look at the actual amounts of lobbying
activity we see in these issue-areas. Table 1 shows the mean
number of lobbying reports filed by interest groups during
the eight time periods for each of the 74 issue-areas. We
present the issue-areas in alphabetical order, with all those
areas where a corresponding set of congressional data are
available listed first. The later part of the table lists those
areas where we have lobby disclosure data but where there
are no corresponding topic codes from the Agendas Project.
Most areas of public policy are home to quite stable pat-
terns of interest-group involvement, with relatively little
time-series variation in the period we study. Take the exam-
ple of banking, a minimum of 107 and a maximum of 135
groups filed lobbying reports in that area during the eight
reporting periods; in the case of Medical and Disease
Research, between 62 and 83 groups filed lobbying reports
in each period. However, if one looks down the columns of
Table 1, one can see that there is great and consistent cross-
sectional variation in the data: Some areas were home to
much greater activity than others. For example, Taxation
issues show an average of 563 groups whereas Unemploy-
ment has an average of just eight lobbying reports. Com-
paring the means and standard deviations from the table
confirms the cross-sectional dominance of the variation. On
average, for the 74 issue-areas combined, the mean number
of lobbying reports is 16 times greater than the standard
deviation over the eight reporting periods. That is, very few
issue-areas show large changes in the number of lobbying
reports over time compared to their average, but there is
great variation across the issue-areas.
Table 2 is similar to Table 1 but reports data on hired lob-
byists (public relations firms, law firms, and others lobbying
on behalf of paying clients). These data show very similar
patterns to those in Table 1 except that there is greater vari-
ability over time in the number of lobbying reports. Since
these data represent the decision of a given client (e.g., Gen-
eral Motors) to hire a given public relations firm, some of
these may be long-term relationships, but others may be ad-
hoc decisions based on a single or a small number of lob-
bying campaigns for a limited period of time. In any case,
we observe, as in Table 1, much greater variation across
issue-areas than across time—Taxation and Budgeting have
sometimes more than 1,000 lobbying reports, whereas areas
such as District of Columbia Affairs, Unemployment, and a
few others typically attract fewer than 10 reports. While the
average number of lobbying reports remains greater than its
standard deviation, this ratio is only 5:1 here while it was
16:1 in Table 1. Thus, there is greater variation in the level
of lobbying by contract lobbyists.
Of course, we expect the relationships between govern-
ment attention and lobbying to be stronger in some areas
than others. Some areas will have a large amount of group
activity but little legislative action as measured by hearings.
These are such areas as Taxation, where major decisions are
made and massive numbers of lobbyists are active, but
where few hearings are scheduled. Other areas may be
home to considerable legislative activities but not much lob-
bying. This includes Government Issues, which in turn
includes ethics investigations, oversight, nominations,
claims against the U.S. government, and other routine
topics that require legislative activity and generate hundreds
of congressional hearings each year but are not home to the
equivalent level of lobbying intensity.
7
Lobbying in Time and Space
When it comes to data collection, interest-group scholars
have historically been on their own. With the exception of
data on campaign contributions, there have been no pre-
existing sources of data that allow analysis across time. Our
data set therefore offers an unprecedented opportunity to
examine the relationship between U.S. government activity
and interest-group mobilization across issue-areas and over
DRAWING LOBBYISTS TO WASHINGTON 23
7
Four of our issue-areas can be expected to systematically undercount
lobbying activity, since many of the organizations expected to lobby in
those categories are governmental entities like governor’s offices and
Indian tribes, which are not required to register (although if they hire a
contract lobbyist, that lobbying firm often will register them regardless).
Those four issue-areas are District of Columbia (DOC), Government
Issues (GOV), Indian/Native American Affairs (IND), and Urban Devel-
opment/Municipalities (URB). We have run all of our analyses both with
and without these four areas. In all cases our basic conclusions remain
unchanged, regardless of which version of the data are used. Here we
present the more inclusive version of the data.

time. By the same token, it also poses several challenges.
Time series cross-sectional models face not only the tradi-
tional time series problem of serial autocorrelation—in
which the errors at one point in time are likely to be related
to errors at another point in time—but also the problem of
spatial correlation and error heteroskedasticity—errors from
one unit at one point in time are likely to be related to the
same unit at another point in time, and the errors of the dif-
ferent units may have unequal variances (see Stimson
1985). To address these issues we adopt the approach rec-
ommended by Beck and Katz (1995, 1996): OLS with
panel-corrected standard errors, used with a lagged depend-
ent variable. As we noted earlier, however, variation across
time in our data is clearly swamped by the degree of varia-
tion across issues. In fact, because of this stationarity, our
measures of long-term hearings and short-term hearings are
24 POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY

TABLE 1
AVERAGE NUMBER OF INTEREST GROUPS PER ISSUE AREA, 1996-2000
Policy Area Avg. St. dev. Policy Area Avg. St. dev.
Part A: Issue Areas With Links to the Policy Agendas Hearings Data Set
Aerospace 26.5 5.4 Immigration 131.6 36.9
Agriculture 143.0 15.7 Indian affairs 18.4 2.3
Alcohol/drug abuse 23.4 3.7 Insurance 106.5 16.2
Aviation 67.5 6.9 Labor 289.5 42.8
Banking 123.4 9.8 Law/criminal justice 82.6 11.1
Bankruptcy 82.6 31.7 Medical research 73.9 6.0
Civil rights 56.0 4.8 Medicare/Medicaid 215.6 23.5
Clean air/water 161.1 20.4 Minting/money 4.8 1.7
Commodities 8.0 1.5 Natural resources 99.8 9.8
Comm./broadcasting 65.8 7.8 Pharmacy 40.6 8.3
Computer industry 60.8 14.5 Postal 34.5 5.6
Consumer issues 98.9 8.4 Railroads 46.6 11.1
Copyright/patent 141.8 13.1 Retirement 78.8 17.9
Defense 167.8 13.9 Roads/highways 31.0 6.8
District of Columbia 7.4 1.7 Science/technology 110.6 9.9
Disaster planning 27.1 5.8 Small business 55.0 9.8
Education 173.1 15.2 Taxation 562.5 36.0
Engineering 166.1 20.2 Telecommunication 138.8 19.0
Environ./Superfund 318.3 27.6 Tobacco 46.6 21.2
Family 42.6 3.3 Trade 354.4 24.5
Finance/securities 127.1 7.1 Transportation 203.0 21.6
Food 69.5 9.9 Travel/tourism 8.8 2.3
Foreign relations 96.5 2.9 Trucking/shipping 32.4 5.6
Fuel/gas/oil 51.4 7.3 Urban development 9.0 1.7
Gambling 11.5 4.8 Unemployment 7.6 2.1
Government issues 181.8 21.3 Veterans 37.1 4.0
Health issues 427.5 47.0 Waste 77.6 25.5
Housing 64.5 2.8 Welfare 45.8 20.8
Avg. biannual subtotal (N): 5,934; st. dev.: 359.7
Part B: Issue Areas Without Links to the Policy Agendas Hearings Data Set
Advertising 30.8 13.2 Economic develop. 126.6 56.9
Animals 24.0 5.4 Firearms/guns 21.5 3.4
Apparel/textiles 22.4 5.8 Manufacturing 55.6 14.5
Arts/entertainment 52.9 6.9 Marine/boats/fish 163.8 24.1
Automotive industry 36.9 7.2 Media/publishing 14.8 5.3
Beverage industry 29.3 9.4 Real estate/land use 101.3 36.0
Budget/approp. 1,154.4 258.7 Religion 2.9 2.0
Chemical industry 29.8 3.5 Sports 21.9 4.7
Constitution 11.4 8.6 Utilities 164.4 37.9
Avg. biannual subtotal (N): 990.8; st. dev. 65.3

highly collinear (Pearson’s r = .91) and cannot be used
together in the same analysis.
8
Our first set of models (in Tables 3a and 3b) shows the
relationship between the short-term effects of government
attention—as measured by the number of congressional
hearings held in an issue-area in the current year—and the
number of Lobbying Disclosure Reports filed by organiza-
tions on their own behalf (Table 3a) and by contract lob-
byists (3b). Looking first at Model 1, the coefficients indi-
cate that for every additional hearing in a year, we see about
DRAWING LOBBYISTS TO WASHINGTON 25

TABLE 2
AVERAGE NUMBER OF CONTRACT LOBBYISTS PER ISSUE AREA, 1996-2000
Policy Area Avg. St. dev. Policy Area Avg. St. dev.
Part A: Issue Areas With Links to the Policy Agendas Hearings Data Set
Aerospace 69.1 40.0 Immigration 91.8 21.4
Agriculture 273.5 57.4 Indian affairs 174.3 27.4
Alcohol/drug abuse 37.8 9.0 Insurance 103.8 13.1
Aviation 215.1 70.5 Labor 203.3 49.9
Banking 239.4 28.5 Law/criminal justice 138.3 41.0
Bankruptcy 78.3 37.0 Medical research 129.5 16.6
Civil rights 21.5 6.6 Medicare/Medicaid 386.8 99.9
Clean air/water 193.5 36.2 Minting/money 21.5 18.2
Commodities 7.4 2.4 Natural resources 273.9 75.9
Comm./broadcasting 143.3 42.5 Pharmacy 72.8 18.8
Computer industry 112.9 57.0 Postal 50.9 13.4
Consumer issues 111.8 19.8 Railroads 80.4 29.1
Copyright/patent 186.9 29.8 Retirement 56.8 22.1
Defense 723.6 164.0 Roads/highways 71.1 14.7
District of Columbia 8.6 3.4 Science/technology 141.6 39.9
Disaster planning 52.6 9.5 Small business 58.9 21.4
Education 300.5 71.9 Taxation 998.8 113.1
Engineering 362.9 98.2 Telecommunication 371.0 92.6
Environ./Superfund 629.3 123.7 Tobacco 104.1 48.6
Family 11.3 2.0 Trade 525.8 117.2
Finance/securities 187.1 46.4 Transportation 583.3 106.4
Food 104.9 29.9 Travel/tourism 32.9 5.7
Foreign relations 117.5 27.7 Trucking/shipping 26.5 3.5
Fuel/gas/oil 93.3 39.9 Urban development 91.1 37.5
Gambling 70.8 25.6 Unemployment 2.4 2.7
Government issues 236.5 34.6 Veterans 24.5 6.6
Health issues 709.6 150.6 Waste 111.6 23.4
Housing 158.8 37.8 Welfare 54.9 22.9
Avg. biannual subtotal (N): 10,439.4; st. dev.: 2,048.8
Part B: Issue Areas Without Links to the Policy Agendas Hearings Data Set
Advertising 30.8 13.2 Economic develop. 126.6 56.9
Animals 24.0 5.4 Firearms/guns 21.5 3.4
Apparel/textiles 22.4 5.8 Manufacturing 55.6 14.5
Arts/entertainment 52.9 6.9 Marine/boats/fish 163.8 24.1
Automotive industry 36.9 7.2 Media/publishing 14.8 5.3
Beverage industry 29.3 9.4 Real estate/land use 101.3 36.0
Budget/approp. 1,154.4 258.7 Religion 2.9 2.0
Chemical industry 29.8 3.5 Sports 21.9 4.7
Constitution 11.4 8.6 Utilities 164.4 37.9
Avg. biannual subtotal (N): 2,064.3; st. dev.: 428.9
8
Likewise, since the number of hearings in an area is dependent in part
on the number of committees available to hold such hearings, it is not
feasible to separately consider the role of venue dispersal in this analy-
sis. Our measures of attention (number of hearings) and dispersal
(number of committees) are highly correlated (Pearson’s r = .91).

one and a half additional lobbying reports filed by organi-
zations and three additional reports by contract lobbyists.
Since the number of hearings in an issue-area in a given
year range from 0 to 119 during the years we consider, with
a mean of 12, the potential effect of this relationship is far
from negligible. Going from the mean to the maximum
would bring more than 150 additional lobbying reports by
organizations and more than 300 additional reports by
contract lobbyists.
Moving to Model 2, the coefficients for the short-term
hearings stay the same (in the case of organizations) or
become slightly larger (in the case of contract lobbyists) once
the amount of federal spending in each issue-area is consid-
ered. Budget size (measured in billions of dollars) does not
have a statistically significant impact on the amount of lob-
bying by organizations, but does have an impact on contract
lobbying. Even in the case of contract lobbying, where
government spending is statistically significant, the effect is
less than that of government attention as measured by con-
gressional hearings. For each $10 billion the government
spends in an issue-area, we would expect to see about two
additional reports by contract lobbyists. The maximum
spending in any issue-area was nearly $500 billion, so
switching from the mean federal spending in an issue-area
($54 billion) to the maximum federal spending would result
in an increase of approximately 90 contract lobbyists.
There are several reasons why the relationship between
government spending and lobbying activity is more modest
than the relationship between the number of hearings and
lobbying. First, lobbying is not only about gaining govern-
ment procurement contracts or encouraging greater spend-
ing (though it often is, to be sure). Areas with extremely
high government spending include retirement issues (Social
Security); while there is certainly a lot of lobbying activity in
26 POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY

TABLE 3
THE EFFECT OF SHORT-TERM GOVERNMENT ATTENTION ON LOBBYING ACTIVITIES
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Part A: Lobbying by Organizations
Short-term Hearings 1.67** 1.65** 2.63* 0.25†
(0.43) (0.48) (1.07) (0.15)
Federal spending (billions of $) 0.004 -0.02 0.02**
(0.01) (0.02) (0.005)
Firms 3.32e
–04
** 3.33e
–05
(5.03e
–05
) (2.84e
–05
)
Organizations, t–1 0.98**
(0.05)
Intercept 83.41** 98.95** 49.19** –1.7
(5.1) (8.58) (14.57) (1.16)
R
2
= 0.07 R
2
= 0.07 R
2
= 0.42 R
2
= 0.98
N = 56, T = 4 N = 26, T = 4 N = 21, T = 2 N = 21, T = 2
Total obs:224 Total obs: 104 Total obs:42 Total obs: 42
Part B: Lobbying by Contract Lobbyists
Short-term Hearings 2.9** 3.25** 6.8** 1.96*
(0.59) (0.66) (2.07) (0.8)
Federal spending (billions of $) 0.21** 0.11* 0.03*
(0.02) (0.05) (0.01)
Firms 4.15e
–04
** –2.54e
–05
(8.66e
–05
) (2.4e
–05
)
Lobbyists, t–1 0.92**
(0.06)
Intercept 132.34** 147.67** 57.34* –15.15**
(6.38) (11.0) (25.55) (5.72)
R
2
= 0.07 R
2
= 0.10 R
2
= 0.43 R
2
= 0.98
N = 56, T = 4 N = 26, T = 4 N = 21, T = 2 N = 21, T = 2
Total obs: 224 Total obs:104 Total obs:42 Total obs: 42
Notes: Coefficients computed using OLS with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs). PCSEs appear in parentheses. ** p ≤ .01, *p ≤ .05 , †p ≤ .10, two-
tailed tests.

this area, it is not proportionate to the level of spending.
Similarly at the other end of the spectrum, trade issues can
generate considerable lobbying, but government spending
on trade is not an important factor. Certainly there are areas
such as medical research, defense, and agriculture, where
we see both a large number of lobbyists and considerable
federal spending. However, a complete model of what
brings groups to Washington would certainly have to con-
sider not only direct government spending but also and
probably especially government involvement in and regula-
tion of the private economy. This is why hearings, our meas-
ure of government attention, seem better suited to explain
this process.
In Model 3, the effect of additional short-term hearings is
again increased when our variable measuring the number of
firms active in that issue-area is added to the equation. The
coefficient for federal spending is not significant for either
organizational lobbying or contract lobbying, and the sign
changes in the case of organizational lobbying. The number
of firms present in that area of the national economy does,
however, have a statistically significant effect in this model.
For every additional 10,000 firms in the country, there are
three additional lobbying reports filed by organizations and
four additional reports by contract lobbyists. Going from
the mean number of firms, 103,960, to the maximum
number of firms, 553,915, would mean an increase of 135
lobbying reports by organizations and 180 by contract lob-
byists. At least in this model, the number of firms in exis-
tence in the economy has a substantial impact on the
amount of lobbying.
9
The complete government attention model in Tables 3a
and 3b is Model 4. Here we add a lagged dependent variable
to control for serial autocorrelation. In all of our data, the
number of lobbyists and organizations active at one point in
time is a strong predictor of the number of lobbyists and
organizations active in the next point in time. This has the
effect of diminishing the observed effect of the other inde-
pendent variables and of driving the R
2
statistics into the
.90+ range. After the lagged dependent variable is included,
there is relatively little variance left to explain. Since the
process we are explaining is highly inertial, however, it is
appropriate to control for past behavior (in this case, lobby-
ing reports); in effect, we then model the degree to which
change in each independent variable affects change in the
dependent variable. The results show that our measures of
government attention are consistently robust (though they
change substantially in magnitude), but the firms variable
does not remain statistically significant. Our final model,
controlling for previous levels of lobbying activity, shows
that short-term hearings have a significant effect as pre-
dicted, federal spending has small positive effect, and that
the number of firms has no significant effect and in fact
switches signs in the case of the contact lobbyists.
The next set of models, shown in Tables 4a and 4b, tests
the relationship between the long-term effects of government
attention—as measured by the number of congressional
hearings held in the previous ten-year-period—and the
number of lobbying reports filed by organizations and con-
tract lobbyists. Model 1 here shows a similar relationship to
what we saw in Table 3. For every 10 hearings (the equiva-
lent of one per year), we see 1.2 additional reports for organ-
izations and 2.2 additional reports for contract lobbyists.
10
Model 2 adds in the variables for the amount of federal
spending in an issue-area (in billions of dollars). When con-
sidering organizational lobbying, the coefficient for federal
spending is negative, contrary to expectations, although the
result is not significant. When we consider contract lobbying,
however, the impact of federal spending is positive and statis-
tically significant throughout, with every $10 billion in addi-
tional governmental spending expected to result in two addi-
tional reports filed by contract lobbyists. Model 3 adds the
variable measuring the number of firms in existence nationally
in that issue-area. The coefficient is positive, as expected.
When we add the lagged dependent variable (Model 4),
our results are much the same as in the contemporaneous
model from Table 3. Our measures of government attention
are consistently robust, but diminished in magnitude. Our
final model, controlling for previous levels of lobbying
activity, shows that long-term hearings have a significant
effect as predicted, federal spending has a positive effect for
both organizational and contract lobbyists, and the number
of firms has no significant effect.
The analyses presented in Tables 3 and 4 show that the
amount of government activity, as measured by hearings in
Congress and size of budget, has a significant impact on
interest-group mobilization, both in the short- and long-
term, with the impact of congressional attention as meas-
ured by hearings having the greater and more consistent
effect. The number of firms in an issue-area has less of an
impact and in our final model is statistically insignificant.
In sum, we find that areas of greatest growth have been
those where government has become most active, though
not necessarily those where government spends the most
money. Our pooled time-series analysis shows that govern-
ment activity affects the number of groups in an issue-area,
even controlling for the previously existing number of
groups and other factors. The effect of government activity
on group mobilization is more consistently important than
DRAWING LOBBYISTS TO WASHINGTON 27
10
We also tried models that called for 2-, 5-, and 20-year moving aver-
ages. All showed similar patterns, but the 10-year average provided the
best fit.
9
Grier, Munger, and Roberts (1994) lead us to expect that collective action
problems will cause declining increases in the amount of lobbying as the
number of firms increases. We therefore also have tested our model
using the log of the number of firms, as well as firms squared. Although
the coefficients for the firms variable of course differ, the coefficients for
the other variables remain much the same and our overall conclusions
hold—hearings matter in the final model, but the number of firms does
not. The number of firms is relatively stable over time, however, and it
may be that this brief period is not enough to assess what would happen
over the long term were the numbers of firms to shift substantially. This
may be a fruitful trajectory for future research.

two rival measures: direct government spending and the
number of firms in a given area of the economy. These two
indicators can also have an impact on the number of interest
groups, but their impact is lower and statistically inconsis-
tent whereas our broad measure of government activity has
a consistent, significant effect on the number of groups.
AGENDAS AND ADVOCACY
Government activity acts as a magnet, pulling groups of
all kinds to become active. More so than direct federal
spending or the number of business firms in various areas
of the economy, government attention, as measured by con-
gressional hearings, draws groups to Washington. The
growth of the group system has affected government, to be
sure. However, in this article we have shown statistically
that the growth and spread of areas of government activity
has had important effects on the nature of the group system,
even controlling for the size and structure of the group
system in the previous time period. As government has
grown, becoming more active in various areas of the econ-
omy and in social life, groups of all kinds have found that
they must be present in Washington.
Establishing a Washington presence is not an automatic
outgrowth of the development of a business, a trade group,
or a non-profit group. There is no reason to do it if govern-
ment activities are not an important concern for the organ-
ization. Many businesses, such as Microsoft, have eschewed
government relations for as long as possible, clearly not
wanting to be involved as long as they could avoid it. Over
the long-haul, and across the entire political system, we find
that this is not a viable strategy in general, however; nor was
28 POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY

TABLE 4
THE EFFECT OF LONG-TERM GOVERNMENT ATTENTION ON LOBBYING ACTIVITIES
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Part A: Lobbying by Organizations
Long-term Hearings 0.12** 0.17** 0.16** 0.009*
(0.004) (0.006) (0.007) (0.004)
Federal spending (billions of $) -0.02
+
–0.02
+
0.02**
(0.01) (0.01) (0.003)
Firms 2.11e
–04
** 1.85e
–05
(8.63e
–06
) (1.77e
–05
)
Organizations, t–1 0.98**
(0.03)
Intercept 63.08** 40.29** 21.5** –0.67
(2.76) (1.61) (1.23) (0.67)
R
2
= 0.21 R
2
= 0.38 R
2
= 0.63 R
2
= 0.93
N = 56, T = 7 N = 26, T = 7 N = 21, T = 4 N = 21, T = 4
Total obs:392 Total obs:182 Total obs: 84 Total obs: 84
Part B: Lobbying by Contract Lobbyists
Long-term Hearings 0.22** 0.34** 0.4** 0.025†
(0.02) (0.03) (0.02) (0.015)
Federal spending (billions of $) 0.19** 0.12** 0.03**
(0.03) (0.02) (0.01)
Firms 1.99
–04
** –7.52e
–06
(3.76e
–05
) (2.53e
–05
)
Lobbyists, t–1 0.99**
(0.06)
Intercept 105.86** 51.29** 5.48* –2.37*
(8.29) (7.17) (2.52) (1.13)
R
2
= 0.20 R
2
= 0.39 R
2
= 0.66 R
2
= 0.98
N = 56, T = 7 N = 26, T = 7 N = 21, T = 4 N = 21, T = 4
Total obs: 392 Total obs: 182 Total obs:84 Total obs: 84
Notes: Coefficients computed using OLS with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs). PCSEs appear in parentheses. *p ≤ .05, ** p ≤ .01, two-tailed test;
†p ≤ .05, one-tailed test.

it one for Microsoft in the end. As government has become
more active in a greater range of issue-areas in the last fifty
years, a greater range of groups have found it important to
be present, permanently represented, in Washington. While
our article has focused on a relatively short period of time,
our findings also suggest an explanation for some longer
term trends. There is no mere coincidence in the fact that
the “interest-group explosion” that many authors have
noted occurred after the 1960s. Not only were there impor-
tant social movements, entrepreneurs, and a growing econ-
omy; there were also important changes in the structure of
government. The federal budget grew larger, of course, over
the decades from World War II to the present. However, the
mere size of government is not the most important driving
force in fostering the growth of groups. Rather than spend-
ing, it is the dramatic increase in the range of government
activities that has been most important in causing the group
explosion. Where government is active, groups find that
they are drawn, like it or not, to monitor, influence, or
oppose these actions.
Baumgartner and Jones’ analysis of the federal agenda
shows not just a growth in government, as many have
shown, but a dramatic increase in the numbers of distinct
policy areas in which the federal government is involved
(see Baumgartner and Jones 2002; Baumgartner, Jones, and
MacLeod 2000). As the government becomes more involved
in new areas where it previously had not been an important
player, new interests are created. Recall Heinz and col-
leagues’ definition of an interest from the introduction to
this article: A concern or a desire only becomes an interest
when it intersects with the actions of government. As public
policies have become important in a greater range of areas,
interests have become more numerous. As interests have
grown, so too has the interest-group system.
To say that government activity affects the population of
organized interests is not to suggest that the internal char-
acteristics of interest groups are irrelevant - far from it.
Resources and selective incentives matter. Not all potential
groups are even close to equal in their capacity to mobilize.
Interest communities with money and other resources are
more likely to organize than those without. Businesses and
trade associations organize much more easily and in greater
numbers than non-occupational groups do. Selective incen-
tives tend to trump purposive goals as a mobilization tool.
These processes have long been understood and remain
important to any understanding of who mobilizes.
Alongside these tendencies that stem from internal char-
acteristics, however, other forces are at work. The political
environment in which organizations and potential organiza-
tions find themselves is a powerful determinant of who will
lobby and how much they will lobby. All things being equal,
an organization with many resources will mobilize and lobby
more easily and often than an organization with few
resources. Considering the important role of government,
however, it is clear that all things are not equal. Government
subsidizes, regulates, and differentially promotes and penal-
izes various types of interest groups. More broadly than that,
it affects the size and shape of the group system by its own
activities. Our analysis shows that increased government
activity in a given issue-area itself is a driving force in the
subsequent mobilization of interest groups. Groups do not
automatically form and come to Washington; there must be
a demand for them. Government creates that demand.
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Received: March 2, 2004
Accepted for Publication: April 20, 2004
leech@polisci.rutgers.edu
frankb@psu.edu
lapira@polisci.rutgers.edu
nsemanko@bu.edu
30 POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY