Working Papers,
Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics

Abstract: We analyze informational lobbying in the context of multi-member legislatures.

We show that a single decision maker and a decentralized majoritarian legis-

lature provide widely di .erent incentives for interest groups to acquire and

transmit policy relevant information.

The paper also shows a di .erence in the opportunity to a .ect policy through

lobbying between a parliamentary legislature and a legislature with low voting

cohesion,such as the U.S.Congress.We show that the incentives to lobby a

parliamentary legislature are much lower than to lobby Congress.The results

provide a rationale for why lobby groups are more active n the U.S.Congress.

The key institutional feature to explain the di .erent behavior of lobby groups

is the vote of con .dence procedure,which creates voting cohesion in a parlia-

mentary system across policy issues.We show that the .exibility of creating

majorities in the Congress creates an incentive for interest groups to play an

active role in the design of policy in the congressional system,while the voting

cohesion in the parliamentary system dissuades interest group ’s incentive to

engage in information provision.

Keywords: Informational lobbying; legislatures; U.S. Congress

JEL-codes: H89

36 pages, June 1, 2000

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