High Conflict and Low Salience as Issue Drivers of Corporate Lobbying: An Elite Survey Experiment

This paper argues that a high degree of conflict and a low degree of saliency on an issue drives corporations to lobby alone rather than via a business association. These arguments are important as when corporations lobby alone instead of through a business association, they enjoy both the advantaged position that business interests have compared to other organized interests and are able to mobilize quicker compared to when lobbying via a business association. This could lead to more fragmented pressure systems. What is more, when corporations go alone as a result of conflict with the business association, they tend to focus on issues that are more self-oriented and less moderate. When lobbying on low saliency issues, the scope of the issue tends to be smaller, meaning that corporations have more leeway in getting their way. Previous research has addressed drivers at organizational, sector and structural level. This paper adds an issue perspective to above explanations. The two arguments are as follows: corporations are more inclined to lobby alone on 1) low salience issues compared to high salience issues in order to decrease visibility so that the odds of facing public scrutiny are kept at a minimum, 2) when levels of conflict between the corporation and business association on an issue increase as the corporation is less content with the business association and therefore seeks other modes of interest representation such as going alone. The arguments are tested on a 2x2 survey experiment among corporate lobbyists in Germany and the Netherlands.