Ex-parte lobbying in regulatory policy-making: Assessing access and advocacy success

This article uses a policy-contextualized approach to examine lobbying strategies during the administrative implementation of California’s Renewables Portfolio Standards (RPS), a program that requires retail energy sellers to include a certain amount of renewable energy sources in their portfolio. It uses twelve years of data on reported ex-parte lobbying, a process by which interest groups lobbying in rulemaking proceedings must file notices summarizing the subject and circumstances of one-on-one meetings with decision-makers. Reported ex-parte communications during the RPS implementation amounts to more than 20% of all communication between interest groups and the agency that constructs, adopts and enforces the rules of the program. Since groups self-select into requesting an ex-parte meeting, and decision-makers must decide whether or not to grant the request, reported exparte notices present new observable behavioral data on interest groups ‘ access in a regulatory setting. The study unpacks the lobbying strategies of business, regulated entities, public interest and institutional groups at the California Public Utilities Commission. It finds that while business appears to have privileged access through ex-parte, with the largest share of all filings reporting meetings between business and decisionmakers, its voice is fragmented and only 10% of all business interests appear amongst the top 12 ex-parte users, compared to 22% for public interest and 26% for regulated entities. All public interest and regulated entities heavily use this mode of communication, and interviews reveal that public interest organizations consider reported ex-parte as an important lobbying strategy to highlight key aspects of their position in voluminous and very technical rule-making proceedings. In contrast to the number of unique groups, regulated entities, public interest and institutional groups enjoy seemingly better access than business organizations. The study then relates data on access with interest groups’ advocacy success on the 80 policy decisions implementing the RPS program. Specifically, it tests whether the use of ex-parte lobbying, in addition to on-the-record comments, leads to increased preference attainment (findings in progress), and how this might change depending on group type and other factors.