Person:

Schneer, Benjamin

Lobbying presents an attractive post-congressional career, with some former congressional members and staffers transitioning to lucrative lobbying careers. Precisely why congressional experience is valued is a matter of ongoing debate. Building on research positing a relationship between political uncertainty and demand for lobbyists, we examine conditions under which lobbyists with past congressional experience prove most valuable. To assess lobbyist earnings, we develop a new measure, Lobbyist Value Added, that reflects the marginal contribution of each lobbyist on a contract, and show that previous measures understate the value of high-performing lobbyists. We find that former staffers earn revenues above their peers during times of uncertainty and former members of Congress generate higher revenue overall, which we identify by comparing revenues generated by individuals who narrowly won election to those who narrowly lost. These findings help characterize when lobbyists with different skillsets prove most valuable and the value added by government experience.

Petition canvassers are political recruiters. Building upon the rational prospector model, we theorize that rational recruiting strategies are dynamic (Bayesian and time-conscious), spatial (constrained by geography) and social (conditioned on relations between canvasser and prospect). Our theory predicts that canvassers will exhibit homophily in their canvassing preferences and will alternate between “door-to-door” and “attractor” (working in a central location) strategies based upon systematic geographical variation. They will adjust their strategies midstream (mid-petition) based upon experience. Introducing methods to analyze canvassing data, we test these hypotheses on geocoded signatory lists from two petition drives—a 2005-2006 anti-Iraq War initiative in Wisconsin and an 1839 antislavery campaign in New York City. Canvassers in these campaigns exhibited homophily to the point of following geographically and politically “inefficient” paths. In the aggregate, these patterns may exacerbate political inequality, limiting political involvement of the poorer and less educated.

We frequently observe that politicians accept lucrative private sector employment after leaving office, but we have little systematic evidence that politicians are able to profit from their government service. In this paper we examine the returns to office that many former senators and governors receive from serving on the boards of directors of publicly traded corporations, part-time positions where the average compensation exceeds $250,000 per year. We find that almost half of all former senators and governors serve on at least one board after leaving office. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we estimate that winning a Senate or gubernatorial election increases the probability of later serving on a corporate board by roughly 30%. For senators, we find that developing skills and connections through committee service, particularly in areas such as finance or military, is associated with increased board service after leaving office.