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| Marco Maria Sorge |
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| ''Lobbying-consistent Delegation and Sequential Policy Making'' |
| ( 2010, Vol. 30 No.4 ) |
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| This paper studies the relationship between interest group political influence and allocation of decisionmaking power in a potentially divided government. We consider a simple endogenous policy model in which a legislator is in charge of setting the levels of two different policy instruments - a tax rate and a revenue redistribution scheme - and may decide to delegate policy authority over the allocation task to a bureaucracy within a hierarchy. An organized group is able to influence the political process at both tiers through the provision of policy-contingent contributions. We find conditions under which legislative delegation and sequential decisionmaking are consistent in equilibrium with the presence of two-tier lobbying, as the effects of the former on the allocation of lobbying activities exactly counterbalance the loss from bureaucracy's capture. As a consequence, we find that the possibility of multi-tier lobbying within a divided government need not be harmful to the higher level policy maker in the political equilibrium. |
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| Keywords: Multi-tier lobbying; Multilevel governments; Delegation; Endogenous policy making |
JEL: D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making: General
H7 - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations: General |
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| Manuscript Received : Nov 08 2010 | | Manuscript Accepted : Nov 18 2010 |
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