Friendly Lobbying under Time Pressure

Abstract

Lobbyists often target legislators who are aligned with them rather than opponents. The choice of whom to lobby affects both what information becomes available to legislators and how much influence special interest groups exert on policies. However, the conditions under which aligned legislators are targeted are not well understood. We investigate how the pressure to conclude policies quickly affects the strategic decision of whom to lobby. We derive conditions on the cost of delaying policies and on the distribution of legislators' preferences for lobbyists to prefer targeting allies. We show that the use of allied intermediaries has important implications for the duration of policymaking and the quality of policies. Counterintuitively, an increase in time pressure can increase the duration of policymaking and a longer duration does not always lead to better informed policies.