Campaign Contributions and Access to Congressional Offices: Patterns in Foreign Lobbying Data

• Author: Huchen Liu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211029711
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211029711

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211029711

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Although access to government officials alone has little

intrinsic value to interest groups, it opens the door to

influencing officials’ much more consequential actions,

starting with the drafting and committee markup of legis-

lative bills (Hall and Wayman 1990). Access is a scarce

resource; groups looking for access to Congress encoun-

ter members who give it rarely and selectively (Hall

1998; Kalla and Broockman 2016; Langbein 1986).

Legislators’ limited time and staff favor access seekers

who have something to give in return. To succeed in their

job, legislators need two assets: electoral support (includ-

ing campaign contributions) and policy-relevant informa-

tion. They give access disproportionately to those who

can supply these assets by relying on a useful heuristic:

give access to those who have given campaign contribu-

tions before. An obvious reason for such a rule of thumb

is that legislators need campaign funds to get reelected

(Box-Steffensmeier 1996; Gerber 2004; Jacobson and

Carson 2019), and the reward of access helps keep the

money flowing. Another reason, however, is that contri-

butions can signal donors’ possession of electorally ben-

eficial information (Austen-Smith 1995).

It follows that lobbyists should contribute to legisla-

tors whom they wish to contact in the future, a simple

strategic prescription that mirrors legislators’ rule of giv-

ing access to donors. Unfortunately, attempts to get

access to legislators are rarely observed. Consequently,

existing research on the relationship between campaign

contributions and access-seeking tends to either assume

that lobbyists or interest groups want access or, in some

way, infer whether they want access based on their innate

types and missions (Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Tripathi

2002; Fouirnaies and Hall 2014, 2015, 2018; McKay

2018; Powell and Grimmer 2016).1

In this study, I use novel data on foreign entities’ lob-

bying activity in the United States to examine the link

between contributions and access. The Foreign Agent

Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) provides a legal chan-

nel for foreign governmental and non-governmental enti-

ties to lobby the U.S. government through U.S.-based

lobbyists. FARA requires lobbyists to disclose to the

Department of Justice their contact with U.S. government

officials and campaign contributions they make, as well

as the officials these activities involve. This requirement,

in turn, allows me to collect data to analyze how contri-

butions relate to contact with officials.

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29711PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211029711Political Research QuarterlyLiu

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1Princeton University, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Huchen Liu, Department of Politics, Princeton University, 001 Fisher

Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.

Email: huchenl@princeton.edu

Campaign Contributions and

Access to Congressional Offices:

Patterns in Foreign Lobbying Data

Huchen Liu1

Abstract

Do lobbyists contribute money to legislators to build relationships in government? I show that lobbyists deploy

resources strategically to get access to officials by analyzing newly available data on foreign lobbying in the U.S.

government from 1998 to 2019, which contain information on lobbyists’ campaign contributions and contact with

officials. Using supervised machine learning models, I identify lobbyist requests for access to members of Congress and

classify them as either successful or unsuccessful. The data show that lobbyists request access almost exclusively to

legislators to whom they made campaign contributions. Furthermore, lobbyists who contributed money to legislators

are more likely to gain access to them than lobbyists who did not, but only if the legislators are ideologically similar

and in the same party. While the data and research design I employ do not allow me to infer causal influence of

contributions on access, these results suggest that lobbyists make contributions to foster an environment conducive

to contact with like-minded officials.

Keywords

campaign contributions, access, foreign lobbying

2022, Vol. 75(3) 812–828

Article

Liu 813

The data contain previously untapped information on

both lobbyists’ requests for access and the outcomes of

these requests. Using supervised machine learning mod-

els, I classify foreign agents’ requests for access to legis-

lators as successful or unsuccessful based on key words

in thousands of foreign lobbying reports from 1998 to

2019. I first show that campaign contributions are very

strongly and positively related to requests for access.

Conditional on requesting access, I then show that con-

tributions are strongly and positively related to success

in getting access to a congressional office. Adding to

these main findings, I show that donors have an easier

time getting access to legislators themselves rather than

their staff, which constitutes a greater commitment of

time and attention by legislators. Last, ideology mediates

the relationship between contributions and access: The

link between the two behaviors is limited to ideological

allies. Important to note, the nature of the data and

research design I employ does not allow me to infer any

causal influence of contributions on lobbyists’ ability to

get access. The patterns of money and contact that I

uncover, however, suggest that lobbyists use campaign

contributions to maintain relationships with like-minded

legislators.

Campaign Contributions and Access

to Legislators

Lobbying is widely construed to as the transfer of infor-

mation from organized interests to government officials

(Austen-Smith 1995; de Figueiredo and Richter 2014;

Lohmann 1995). The transfer of information requires lob-

byists to contact and get access to officials. But all those

who want access to officials do not receive it; the demand

for access simply exceeds the supply. Members of

Congress regularly decide how much to participate in

various activities that demand their attention, including

direct communication with the public, and often the deci-

sion is to not participate at all (Hall 1998). In the late

1970s, the institution’s own Obey Commission found that

the average Representative spent just 1.1 percent of his or

her workweek meeting with interest group representa-

tives (Langbein 1986). In a recent experiment, congres-

sional staffers gave access to letter writers who requested

it less than 30 percent of the time (Kalla and Broockman

2016).

For organized interests, legislators do not give them

access randomly or on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Instead, who is asking matters greatly; legislators allocate

access based on their expectations about the benefits they

stand to gain from contact, measured in the two things

that the groups can offer—electoral support and policy-

making information. Electoral support, in turn, primarily

consists of campaign contributions,2 as money is critical

for reelection. For vulnerable incumbents, campaign

spending can be decisive in securing reelection (Caughey

and Sekhon 2011). For secure incumbents, a plentiful

“war chest” helps deter high-quality challengers (Box-

Steffensmeier 1996). Knowing the importance of money,

incumbents naturally hope that some people they meet

with will return the favor financially.

Legislators have long needed policymaking informa-

tion from organized interests such as draft legislation,

research support, and strategic planning (Ainsworth 1997;

Bauer, Pool, and Dexter 1963). Due to declining legisla-

tive capacity in Congress, reliance on outside expertise

has increased (LaPira and Thomas 2017). Direct contact

with interest groups gives legislators increasingly neces-

sary policy input. As discussed below, campaign contribu-

tions can help legislators distinguish helpful input from

harmful input.

Legislators’ essential calculation for determining

whether to give access to an interest group is whether the

expected gain in campaign contributions and policy input

exceeds the associated cost of legislative resources—

including time—and the opportunity cost of not spending

those resources doing other work or meeting with others

instead. Because the decision to give access involves an

educated guess, legislators’ perceptions of access seekers

are key, and only people who gain mental access to cog-

nitively constrained legislators can receive substantive

representation (Miler 2010). One shortcut can substan-

tially streamline legislators’ guesswork regarding access

seekers’ potential offerings: favor those who have con-

tributed before.

Access can serve as a “positive reinforcement” of

sorts for contributing; by rewarding past donors with

access, legislators can encourage continued giving. Of

course, legislators should not abuse this kind of reward,

giving donors token access purely to lure continued con-

tributions while having no inclination to truly value their

input or comply with their wishes. The vigilant donor

can hold the deceitful legislator accountable by halting

the flow of money. Skeptical that interest groups and leg-

islators can reliably forge long-lasting bonds, McCarty

and Rothenberg (1996) suggest that organized interests

in fact have the upper hand in dealing with legislators

amid commitment problems.

The relationship between organized interests and leg-

islators, however, appears largely congenial: Exchanges

of interest groups’ resources (campaign funds and policy-

making information) and legislators’ resources (access

and votes) occur much more between allies than between

adversaries (Hall and Deardorff 2006; Kollman 1997).

The hypothetical above of a legislator stringing a donor

along to extract contributions is implausible not only