IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buspol/v16y2014i02p267-289_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

All politics is local, but lobbying is federal and local: the validity of LDA data

Author

Listed:
  • Clemens, Austin C.

Abstract

The Lobbying and Disclosure Act of 1995 requires lobbyists to disclose information about their lobbying activities. The resulting data is used by the website OpenSecrets.org (run by the Center for Responsive Politics) to give snapshot pictures of the amount of lobbying groups do. The same data has also been used by scholars to measure the impact of lobbying and to evaluate rent-seeking expenditures by firms. Unfortunately, users of the data are unaware of a reporting option for organizations under the LDA that has consequences for the validity of the data. LDA data does not accurately reflect the amount of money that an organization has spent trying to influence federal law because organizations may choose a reporting requirement under which they must also disclose the amount of money they spent to influence state laws. In this article I analyze the implications of this fact. I begin with a discussion of the problem's scope and then show how it misleads scholars.

Suggested Citation

  • Clemens, Austin C., 2014. "All politics is local, but lobbying is federal and local: the validity of LDA data," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 267-289, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buspol:v:16:y:2014:i:02:p:267-289_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1369525800001388/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buspol:v:16:y:2014:i:02:p:267-289_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bap .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.