The lobbying disclosure act at 25: Challenges and opportunities for analysis
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The lobbying disclosure act at 25: Challenges and opportunities for analysis Timothy M. LaPira1 · Herschel F. Thomas2 Published online: 28 August 2020 © Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) will turn 25 years old on December 19, 2020. Between 1998 and 2018, organizations and lobbying firms filed more than one million reports. These reports provide information on the activity of 47,555 organizations, 6834 lobbying firms, and 47,479 individual lobbyists. The interest group scholarly community has put the LDA data to good use over the course of a quarter century of observation. Yet, lobbying disclosures have not been fully leveraged to generate new discoveries about the politics of interest groups, advocacy, legislative studies, and public policy. In this article, we provide an overview of the lobbying disclosure process by describing the idiosyncrasies of the data’s nested and complex structure and the limitations of what information is actually reported. We then assess recent research using LDA data, provide advice on completing research at different levels of analysis, document important changes in data reliability and structure over time, and introduce replication tools to support further research. As the time horizon of lobbying disclosure panel data continues to grow, the LDA—especially when combined with other sources—is an increasingly fruitful way to observe money in politics, legislative behavior, corporate political activity, political consulting, and individual lobbyists engaged in policy advocacy. Keywords Lobbying · Interest groups · Lobbying Disclosure Act · Honest Leadership and Open Government Act · Policy Agendas Project · Compustat Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1057/s4130 9-020-00101-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Timothy M. LaPira [email protected] Herschel F. Thomas [email protected] 1
Department of Political Science, James Madison University, 91 E Grace St., MSC 7705, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA
2
Department of Political Science, West Virginia University, 316 Woodburn Hall, PO Box 6317, Morgantown, WV 26506‑6317, USA
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T. M. LaPira, H. F. Thomas
The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) of 19951 represents a watershed moment for the study of interest group politics in the United States. For the first time, the law effectively compelled organized interests to disclose how much they spend on lobbying activities, who their lobbyists are, what government institutions they contact, what general policy areas they advocate, and what specific issues on which they lobby government at the US national level. Additionally, the law requires lobbyists who previously worked in government to publicly disclose their previous federal employment, thus codifying transparency about the revolving door between the government and the private sector into law. Prior to the LDA, the system was a shambles. For all practical purposes, the disclosur
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