Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union

Conclusion

It seems that the financial power of wealthy U.S. interests cannot be captured in the strength of their government affairs offices alone. It is not only the resources they put into lobbying that help wealthy interests win; these same groups and firms achieve influence through PACs and campaign financing. While this study does not have data on PAC contributions or soft money donations , analyzing the differential lobbying success of business and citizen interests in the United States provides additional support for the scholarly studies and common perception that money talks in Washington. This is in addition to the power wealthy business interests enjoy through their control of the means of production in society (Lindblom 1982). Thus we see support for the fourth hypothesis relating democratic institutional design to lobbying success: the U.S. system, with direct elections that are privately funded, biases responsiveness in favor of wealthier advocates. Policymakers in the European Union who do not face elections and who do not need to do fund-raising for elections do not have the same incentives to favor wealthy advocates. As a result, their responsiveness is more balanced, with a wider range of advocate types attaining some level of lobbying success. The other interest group characteristic that shows a strong relationship to lobbying success is whether the advocate was for or against the status quo. In the United States the Pearson chi-squared value is significant at the .01 level and in the European Union significant at the .1 level. Lobbyists fighting for the status quo are more likely to succeed in both polities. In the United States, 81 percent of advocates for the status quo succeeded in some of their goals and in the European Union 69 percent achieved some level of success. This is in line with theories of institutional stickiness (Jones and Baumgartner 2005); governments are often more likely to remain stationary rather than muster the resources and political will required to make a policy change. It is important to note that some actors are more likely to support the status quo and some are more likely to support change from the status quo. Specifically , business interests are more likely to support the status quo, as citizen groups are often pushing for policy change such as new environmental regulations , new rules to protect consumers, or policies that prevent outsourcing jobs, to cite a few examples. Table 10.4 shows the relationship between actor type and support or opposition of the status quo. In both the United States and the European Union citizen groups, foundations, and government advocates are significantly more likely to be pushing to change the status quo, while corporations, for-hire lobbying firms, and trade associations are much more likely to be fighting to maintain the status quo. And as the previous analysis demonstrated, they will have a much easier time achieving their goals if they are fighting to maintain the status quo than the citizen groups fighting for change. 200 Chapter 10 Table 10.4 Position on the Status Quo by Actor Type in the United States and the European Union (percent) United States European Union Change Status quo N Change Status quo N Citizen 90 10 10 Citizen 94 6 16 Foundation 88 13 8 Foundation 100 0 3 Trade 53 47 19 Trade 57 44 46 Corporation 33 67 9 Hired 57 43 7 Government 79 21 19 Government 80 20 10 Total percent 68 32 65 Total percent 68 32 82 Turning to the multivariate ordinal logit analysis we see that both issuelevel and interest group–level independent variables are significant determinants of the level of lobbying success. Table 10.5 reports the findings for the ordinal logits in both systems. As suggested by the bivariate analysis, advocates fighting for the status quo are more likely to achieve their goals and advocates engaged in outside lobbying are less likely to achieve their lobbying aims. These patterns hold in both systems. This second relationship is counterintuitive and contrary to the hypothesis that more sophisticated lobbying techniques should aid advocates in their fight. It is especially surprising considering the significant finding on the issuelevel variable of salience in the U.S. case: As the salience of the issue increases in the United States the likelihood of lobbying success also increases. However this does not hold for the EU case. Moreover, as noted during the bivariate analysis discussion, the relationship between salience...