Data and methods for analyzing special interest influence in rulemaking (original) (raw)

Abstract

The US government creates astonishingly complete records of policy creation in executive agencies. In this article, we describe the major kinds of data that have proven useful to scholars studying interest group behavior and influence in bureaucratic politics, how to obtain them, and challenges that we as users have encountered in working with these data. We discuss established databases such as regulations.gov, which contains comments on draft agency rules, and newer sources of data, such as ex-parte meeting logs, which describe the interest groups and individual lobbyists that bureaucrats are meeting face-to-face about proposed policies. One challenge is that much of these data are not machine-readable. We argue that scholars should invest in several projects to make these datasets machine-readable and to link them to each other as well as to other databases.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

• Starting from 10 chapters or articles per month
• Access and download chapters and articles from more than 300k books and 2,500 journals
• Cancel anytime View plans

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

1. An API is a set of procedures that allow a user to access data from a website in a structured way. Some websites, like regulations.gov, limit API usage by requiring users to get an API key, see https://regulationsgov.github.io/developers/.
2. The difference between the number of reported comments and the number of comments on regulations.gov is often because some agencies group mass-comment campaigns into a single document. A small number of comments on regulations.gov are duplicates posted in error. To resolve a discrepancy, we recommend searching the agency’s website or contacting the agency directly.
3. For example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has posted all comments they receive on their eLibrary website, but not all of these appear on regulations.gov. Unlike regulations.gov, most agency sites do not have an API and thus require bespoke web scrapers. We offer examples of scrapers for regulations.gov and several of these agencies on https://github.com/libgober/regdata.
4. Note that the dataset (Bolton et al. 2019) used is not public.
5. These data exclude at least 16 agencies and, within the covered agencies, law enforcement officers, nuclear engineers, and certain investigators (Singer-Vine 2017).
6. Only the metadata (e.g., names) are machine-readable.
7. However, because rules are usually published as PDFs, converting them to raw text for analysis introduces errors.
8. The Unified Agenda from 1983 through 1994 is available in the Federal Register.

References

• Acs, A., and C. Cameron. 2013. Does White House Regulatory Review Produce a Chilling Effect and “OIRA Avoidance” in the Agencies? Presidential Studies Quarterly 43(3): 443–467.
  Google Scholar
• Balla, S. 1998. Administrative Procedures and Political Control of the Bureaucracy. American Political Science Review 92(3): 663–673.
  Google Scholar
• Balla, S., A. Beck, W. Cubbison, and A. Prasad. 2019. Where’s the Spam? Interest Groups and Mass Comment Campaigns in Agency Rulemaking. Policy & Internet 11(4): 460–479.
  Google Scholar
• Ban, P., and H.Y. You. 2019. Presence and Influence in Lobbying: Evidence from Dodd–Frank. Business and Politics 21(2): 267–295.
  Google Scholar
• Baumgartner, F., J. Berry, M. Hojnacki, D. Kimball, and B. Leech. 2009. Lobbying and Policy Changes: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  Google Scholar
• Bertrand, M., M. Bombardini, and F. Trebbi. 2014. Is It Whom You Know or What You Know? An Empirical Assessment of the Lobbying Process. American Economic Review 104(12): 3885–3920.
  Google Scholar
• Boehmke, F., S. Gailmard, and J. Patty. 2013. Business as Usual: Interest Group Access and Representation Across Policy-Making Venues. Journal of Public Policy 33(1): 3–33.
  Google Scholar
• Bolton, A., J. D. Figueiredo, and D. Lewis. 2019. Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government, Working Paper, National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Carpenter, D., J. Chattopadhyay, S. Moffitt, and C. Nall. 2011. The Complications of Controlling Agency Time Discretion: FDA Review Deadlines and Postmarket Drug Safety. American Journal of Political Science 56(1): 98–114.
  Google Scholar
• Carpenter, D., and D. Moss. 2013. Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit it. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  Google Scholar
• Carrigan, C., and R. Mills. 2019. Organizational Process, Rulemaking Pace, and the Shadow of Judicial Review. Public Administration Review 79(5): 721–736.
  Google Scholar
• Chen, J., and T. Johnson. 2015. Federal Employee Unionization and Presidential Control of the Bureaucracy. Journal of Theoretical Politics 27(1): 151–174.
  Google Scholar
• Coglianese, C., and D. Walters. 2016. Agenda-Setting in the Regulatory State: Theory and Evidence. Administrative Law Review 68(1): 865–890.
  Google Scholar
• Cuéllar, M.-F. 2005. Rethinking Regulatory Democracy. Administrative Law Review 57(2): 411–499.
  Google Scholar
• de Figureido, J., and J. Kim. 2004. When do Firms Hire Lobbyists? The Organization of Lobbying at the Federal Communications Commission. Industrial and Corporate Change 13(6): 883–900.
  Google Scholar
• Dwidar, M. 2019. (Not So) Strange Bedfellows? Lobbying Success and Diversity in Interest Group Coalitions. In Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference.
• Furlong, S. 2004. Interest Group Participation in Rule Making: A Decade of Change. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 15(3): 353–370.
  Google Scholar
• Golden, M. 1998. Interest Groups in the Rule-Making process: Who Participates? Whose Voices Get Heard? Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 8(2): 245–270.
  Google Scholar
• Gordon, S., and S. Rashin. nd. Stakeholder Participation in Policymaking: Evidence from Medicare Fee Schedule Revisions. Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1086/709435.
• Haeder, S., and S.W. Yackee. 2015. Influence and the Administrative Process: Lobbying the U.S. President’s Office of Management and Budget. American Political Science Review 109(3): 507–522.
  Google Scholar
• Haeder, S., and S.W. Yackee. 2018. Presidentially Directed Policy Change: The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as Partisan or Moderator? Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 28(4): 475–488.
  Google Scholar
• i Vidal, J.B., M. Draca, and C. Fons-Rosen. 2012. Revolving Door Lobbyists. American Economic Review 102(7): 3731–3748.
  Google Scholar
• Judge-Lord, D. 2016. Why Courts Defer to Administrative Agency Judgement? In Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference.
• Judge-Lord, D. 2019. Why Do Agencies (Sometimes) Get So Much Mail? In Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference.
• Libgober, B. 2019. Meetings, Comments, and the Distributive Politics of Administrative Policymaking. In Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference.
• Libgober, B. 2020. Strategic Proposals, Endogenous Comments, and Bias in Rulemaking. Journal of Politics 82: 642–656.
  Google Scholar
• Libgober, B. and D. Carpenter. 2018. What’s at Stake in Rulemaking? Financial Market Evidence for Banks’ Influence on Administrative Agencies. https://libgober.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/libgober-and-carpenter-unblinded-what-at-stake-in-rulemaking.pdf.
• Libgober, B. and S. Rashin. 2018. What Public Comments During Rulemaking Do (and Why). In Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference.
• Lubbers, J.S. 2012. A Guide to Federal Agency Rulemaking. Chicago: American Bar Association.
  Google Scholar
• Naughton, K., C. Schmid, S.W. Yackee, and X. Zhan. 2009. Understanding Commenter Influence During Agency Rule Development. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 28(2): 258–277.
  Google Scholar
• Nou, J., and E. Stiglitz. 2016. Strategic Rulemaking Disclosure. Southern California Law Review 89: 733–786.
  Google Scholar
• Potter, R.A. 2017. Slow-Rolling, Fast-Tracking, and the Pace of Bureaucratic Decisions in Rulemaking. The Journal of Politics 79(3): 841–855.
  Google Scholar
• Potter, R.A. 2019. Bending the Rules. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  Google Scholar
• Rashin, S. 2018. Private Influence over the Policymaking Process. In Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference.
• Shepherd, M., and H.Y. You. 2019. Exit Strategy: Career Concerns and Revolving Doors in Congress. American Political Science Review 114(1): 270–284.
  Google Scholar
• Shive, S., and M. Forster. 2016. The Revolving Door for Financial Regulators. Review of Finance 21(4): 1445–1484.
  Google Scholar
• Singer-Vine, J. 2017. We’re Sharing a Vast Trove of Federal Payroll Records. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/sharing-hundreds-of-millions-of-federal-payroll-records.
• Thrower, S. 2018. Policy Disruption Through Regulatory Delay in the Trump Administration. Presidential Studies Quarterly 48(3): 517–536.
  Google Scholar
• Wagner, W., K. Barnes, and L. Peters. 2011. Rulemaking in the Shade: An Empirical Study of EPA’s Air Toxic Emissions Standards. Adminstrative Law Review 63(1): 99–158.
  Google Scholar
• West, W. 2004. Formal Procedures, Informal Processes, Accountability, and Responsiveness in Bureaucratic Policy Making: An Institutional Policy Analysis. Public Administration Review 64(1): 66–80.
  Google Scholar
• Yackee, J.W., and S.W. Yackee. 2006. A Bias Towards Business? Assessing Interest Group Influence on the U.S. Bureaucracy. The Journal of Politics 68(1): 128–139.
  Google Scholar
• Yackee, J.W., and S.W. Yackee. 2012. An Empirical Examination of Federal Regulatory Volume and Speed, 1950–1990. George Washington Law Review 80: 1414–92.
  Google Scholar
• Yackee, S.W. 2006. Sweet-Talking the Fourth Branch: The Influence of Interest Group Comments on Federal Agency Rulemaking. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 16(1): 103–124.
  Google Scholar
• Yackee, S.W. 2019. The Politics of Rulemaking in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science 22(1): 37–55.
  Google Scholar
• You, H.Y. 2017. Ex Post Lobbying. The Journal of Politics 79(4): 1162–1176.
  Google Scholar
• You, H. Y. 2019. Dynamic Lobbying: Evidence from Foreign Lobbying in the US Congress. Working Paper.
• Young, K., T. Marple, and J. Heilman. 2017. Beyond the Revolving Door: Advocacy Behavior and Social Distance to Financial Regulators. Business and Politics 19(2): 327–364.
  Google Scholar

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Room 423, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA
   Daniel Carpenter & Steven Rashin
2. University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
   Devin Judge-Lord
3. Yale University, New Haven, USA
   Brian Libgober

Authors

1. Daniel Carpenter
2. Devin Judge-Lord
3. Brian Libgober
4. Steven Rashin

Corresponding author

Correspondence toSteven Rashin.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Carpenter, D., Judge-Lord, D., Libgober, B. et al. Data and methods for analyzing special interest influence in rulemaking.Int Groups Adv 9, 425–435 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-020-00094-w

Download citation

• Published: 23 July 2020
• Version of record: 23 July 2020
• Issue date: September 2020
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-020-00094-w

Keywords