Interest Group Tactics and Legislative Behaviour: How the Mode of Communication Matters

Interest groups often seek to influence legislators and legislative behaviour. We argue that the likelihood of legislators taking interest group requests and preferences into account is shaped by how – with what tactic – they are conveyed. We expect that more direct, real-time, contact increases legislators’ receptiveness to interest group demands. To test this argument, we introduce and take advantage of uniquely nuanced lobbying data that provide extensive disclosure on all 217,886 lobbying attempts targeting individual members of the Irish Parliament between 2015 and 2019, and link them to data we collected on 167,347 parliamentary questions tabled by Irish legislators. The evidence suggests that lobbying does impact legislative behaviour, particularly when communication involves higher levels of ‘social presence.’ Moreover, our results indicate that approximately 20% of all parliamentary questions can be attributed to lobbying.