This book analyses interest group communication strategies in parliamentary political systems, and considers how political uncertainty, which emerges from the political process, shapes interest group communication strategies. It develops a formal model of lobbying in a bicameral legislature with strong party discipline, and discusses why interest groups choose public or private communication channels to influence political bargaining. The book tests its hypothesis in different policy contexts, including lobbying on major legislation in the field of labour and social policy.

I develop a three-period asset pricing model with heterogeneity in firms size and a government that introduces a policy distortion. I find that large firms can better hedge the political uncertainty associated with this policy change through lobbying, which leads them to earn lower expected returns. I provide two strands of empirical evidence consistent with the model predictions. The first one looks at the behavior of a blue versus red industries around the unexpected results of the 2016 US Presidential election. The second one uses portfolio sorting and double-sorting to reach consistent conclusions.

An increasing portion of lobbyists in American politics have a history of employment in government, a major facet of the wider "revolving door" phenomenon that connects government office and non-governmental sectors. An elite slice of these lobbyists held public office as elected or appointed officials, while former government staff make up the far more numerous category. How may revolving-door lobbyists help organized interests, which already enjoy important advantages over the disorganized, influence government decisions? Existing research argues that government experience gives revolvers advantages in political connections and knowledge about policy and processes. I advance a distinct theory: What distinguishes revolving-door lobbyists from conventional lobbyists without government experience is the ability to think like politicians, for which working in government provides the best training. In particular, government experience teaches one to claim credit effectively for policy outcomes--demonstrating that one's actions and efforts are responsible for good results--in order to survive the election cycle. When former government officials and staffers become lobbyists, they do not leave this intangible skill set behind. If effective credit claiming helps politicians win elections whereby they are evaluated by voters, it helps lobbyists survive their own hiring and firing cycles whereby they are evaluated by clients. In Chapter 2, I demonstrate that corporations prefer revolvers to conventional lobbyists in the face of policy uncertainty. Interest groups' need for revolvers to help manage uncertainty provides an ideal environment for their credit-claiming behavior. Revolvers claim credit by expending resources efficiently to achieve lobbying goals. I examine two concrete manifestations of this behavior in the following chapters. In Chapter 3, I show that revolvers make campaign contributions to political candidates more efficiently and succeed more in purchasing access to legislators. In Chapter 4, I show that revolvers exercise more restraint when lobbying on congressional appropriations and consequently hit their announced targets more often. These advantages help revolvers secure lobbying clients' satisfaction and make them loyal customers. To show this, in Chapter 5 I liken lobbying transactions to election results and demonstrate that revolvers are more likely to be "reelected" by clients than conventional lobbyists.

This book develops a new theory of collaborative lobbying and influence to explain how antipoverty advocates gain influence in American social policymaking.

This book offers a scholarly yet accessible overview of the role of lobbying in American politics. It draws upon extant research as well as original data gathered from interviews with numerous lobbyists across the United States. It describes how lobbyists do their work within all branches of government, at the national, state, and local levels. It thus offers a substantially broader view of lobbying than is available in much of the research literature. Although tailored for students taking courses on interest group politics, Total Lobbying offers an indispensable survey of the field for scholars and others concerned with this important facet of American politics.

Politics at Work documents how and why U.S. employers are increasingly recruiting their own workers into politics-and what such recruitment means for American democracy and public policy.