Power to the People? Lobbying for Labor Rights in Brazil's National Constituent Assembly.

• Author: Benzecry, Gabriel F.

Do interest groups lobby their political friends or their foes? This paper applies Richard Hall and Alan DeardorfFs (2006) theory of lobbying as a legislative subsidy to the case of labor rights lobbying in Brazil's 1988 Assembltia National Constituinte (ANC), providing a unique case study for examining not only the targets of interest groups but also the ability of lobbying models to explain the interest groups' strategic behavior. This article aims to expand Hall and Deardorff's theoretical model and apply it to the real-world context of Brazil's 1988 National Constituent Assembly. The paper concludes that in the ANC, the pro-labor-rights lobbying efforts targeted both friends and uncommitted foes.

There is a robust literature addressing the targets of interest groups' lobbying tactics. Some studies find that lobbying groups seek to influence opposition legislators (Austen-Smith and Wright 1994). Other studies find that lobbyists target likeminded policymakers (Potters and van Winden 1992; Beyers and Hanegraaff 2017). Because of the conflicting findings on the targets of interest groups, it is difficult to model lobbying. For instance, exchange models approach lobbying as a form of trade, concluding that interest groups are agents of exchange who engage in implicit trade with legislators (Austen-Smith 1996). However, in persuasion models, lobbyists employ different tactics to change the legislators' political preferences through information transmission. John Mark Hansen (1991) finds that when politicians are reelection-minded, they often struggle to adopt a position regarding a policy due to the difficulty in identifying the preferences of their electoral base. Interest groups often possess this information, and they can use it to persuade politicians to support their cause.

Hall and Deardorff raise important concerns regarding the ability of either of these models to explain all lobbying instances. Persuasion models often fail to account for differing information from sources other than the lobbyists (Hall and Deardorff 2006). Politicians can acquire information via other means. Many independent institutions, or even the politician's political party, may have valuable information on their electoral base.

Lobbying-as-exchange models fail to explain why lobbyists trade with their friends who agree with their political position. Hall and DeardorfF state that "PAC managers give most to legislators who already agree with their group" (2006, 70). In other words, they trade with individuals who need it the least rather than focusing on key indecisive politicians. Such behavior is incompatible with trade, because the interest group trades its financial support for nothing.

Hall and DeardorfF provide an alternative theory to address these shortcomings. They approach lobbying as neither exchange nor persuasion but as a legislative subsidy. Their theory of lobbying as a legislative subsidy employs a microeconomic framework in which politicians must allocate their scarce political resources between working on the interest group's proposed policy or on other policies. In summary, they theorize that the lobbyist subsidizes a politician's work by offering different services and labor to the legislator. The subsidy shifts the legislator's budget line to the right, enabling the politician to allocate more time and effort to complete the desired project. One implication of their theory is that lobbyists attempt to subsidize only like-minded politicians.

Given the context of the ANC, Hall and Deardorff's theory explains only part of the pro-labor-rights lobbying activities. A lobbying group known as the Departamento Intersindical de Assessoria Parlamentar (DIAP) organized and represented working-class interests. By coordinating lobbying techniques with different groups, the DIAP substantially influenced the Assembly. In Brazil's constitutional moment, as Hall and DeardorfF's theory suggests, like-minded politicians benefited considerably from the subsidies provided by the DIAP. These subsidies increased their devotion and dedication to approving pro-labor-rights measures. However, this paper finds that the DIAP also focused its lobbying efforts on its uncommitted opposition. David Austen-Smith and John Wright (1994) suggest that interest groups often lobby uncommitted politicians. During the ANC, the DIAP targeted uncommitted legislators who were members of a centrist coalition known as the Centrao. Because uncommitted legislators had a majority in the Assembly, the DIAP needed to pressure these legislators to approve labor rights. The DIAP's strategies aimed to reduce a politician's willingness to oppose labor rights. This was accomplished by signaling a lack of public support for the anti-labor-rights position and discrediting anti-labor-rights legislators. I term this behavior lobbying as a legislative disincentive.

This paper, then, constructs an ideological performance scale to demonstrate how the political parties behaved when voting on labor rights, highlighting some interesting voting patterns that might be linked to the DIAP's lobbying efforts. I find that pro-labor lobbying efforts in the ANC targeted both friends and uncommitted foes. Given that the DIAP lobbied uncommitted politicians in the ANC, Hall and Deardorff's theory of lobbying as a legislative subsidy explains some of the lobbying activities. Thus, I supplement Hall and Deardorff's framework with the concept of legislative disincentives.

The following section explains the theoretical framework used in this case study. I then provide a brief historical background, identify the DIAP's targets, consider its strategies, and highlight the ideological inconsistency of some political parties before drawing conclusions in the paper's final section.

Subsidies and Disincentives

An interest group's purpose is to advance its agenda. Therefore, whether it lobbies its allies or adversaries is contingent on the legislature's composition. If lobbying solely allies is insufficient to enact desired policies, the interest group is compelled to also influence its adversaries. Nevertheless, Hall and Deardorff point out that "direct lobbying, typically is not a strategy for changing legislators' preferences over policies. Nor is it about keeping them from being changed. Rather, it is an attempt to subsidize the legislative resources of members who already support the cause of the group" (2006, 72). They theorize that lobbying predominantly targets not the opposition legislators' utility function but their allies' budget constraints.

Hall and Deardorff's theory of lobbying as a legislative subsidy follows an intuitive microeconomic framework, relying on five basic assumptions: (1) To influence a policy, a legislator must participate and place effort in the legislative process; (2) legislators have scarce resources; (3) legislators are interested in more than one policy; (4) legislators have preferences concerning different issues; (5) lobbyists specialize in different policies (Hall and Deardorff 2006, 72-73). Hall and Deardorff theorize that a lobbyist subsidizes a politician's job by giving the lawmaker various services and labor. In a microeconomic framework, they argue that politicians want to maximize their legislative progress regarding the lobbyist's target issue or other issues. The subsidy causes the legislator's budget line to rotate to the right, enabling the politician to devote additional time and effort to the target issue, as shown in figure 1.

They conclude that lobbyists avoid lobbying uncommitted legislators and focus their lobbying tactics on legislators committed to their cause (Potters and van Winden 1992; Hall and Deardorff 2006; Beyers and Hanegraaff 2017). However, this implication is inconsistent with studies that find interest groups lobbying uncommitted and opposition politicians (Austen-Smith and Wright 1994). Depending on an assembly's composition, if political allies do not hold a majority, lobbyists might be forced to lobby uncommitted or opposition legislators to advance their agenda. To explain this lobbying behavior, this paper shows that it is also possible to lobby uncommitted legislators by shifting their budget line to the left rather than the right. This leftward shift results from a legislative disincentive.

A legislative disincentive is anything that can decrease the resources available to a legislator to progress a policy the legislator favors. This paper argues that political capital is a legislative resource. Following Richard French's (2011) derivation, political capital directly relates to opinion and policy. Therefore, a disincentive is associated with a decrease in the popularity of a specific policy. If the lobbyist signals to a politician that a policy is unpopular, the politician will have less political capital available to work toward that policy. In this case, figure 2 shows the legislator's budget line rotating to the left. Hence, the legislator has fewer resources to progress the target policy. The concept of a legislative disincentive implies that it is possible to influence uncommitted opposition legislators (Austen-Smith and Wright 1994).

A legislative subsidy is any resource provided by an interest group to lawmakers to help them work on a policy. Legislative subsidies include, for example, policy information, meeting planning, supplying larger physical locations to hold larger meetings, political intelligence, staging popular events with the voting base, and providing more personnel. In this approach, an interest group may assist lawmakers in their work, increasing the legislators' productivity. A legislative disincentive does the opposite. In a democracy, interest groups do not demolish a legislator's office or harm the legislator's staff; however, they might generate public pressure that makes the legislator's job less appealing. Legislative disincentives include campaigning against a politician's...