Legislative Informational Lobbying

Abstract

Whom should an interest group lobby in a legislature? I develop a model of informational lobbying in which a legislature must decide on the allocation of district-specific goods and projects. An interest group chooses to search and provide information on districts' valuations of the goods. The setting is one of distributive politics with an allocation of goods and projects that is endogeneous to the information provided by the interest group. I characterize the information search strategy of the interest group. I determine who gains and who loses from lobbying, identifying circumstances in which legislators would unanimously prefer to ban informational lobbying. I also identify two empirical and institutional implications. First, I establish a relationship between informational lobbying and legislative majority requirement. Second, I provide an informational rationale for friendly lobbying (that is, the interest group lobbying legislative allies).