Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The idea that corporations are able to exert influence over the political process has been highly contentious, having been billed as an impediment to democracy. There was a strong resurgence in the backlash to corporate political involvement in 2010, after the Supreme Court issued a ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (henceforth, Citizens United), which significantly altered campaign finance laws in favor of corporate interests. Research in economics and political science has shown that since then, a large influx of corporate money, facilitated by Citizens United, led to a significant change in the parties' probabilities of winning state and national elections and, consequently, in the composition of the U.S. legislature (Klumpp, Mialon, and Williams, 2016).

Citizens United undoubtedly changed campaign finance. However, it could have also affected other avenues of political influence—namely, lobbying—through its effect on legislative membership. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many lobbyists have developed close affiliations with PACs, and become instrumental in organizing and operating dark money groups—trade associations, unions, and social welfare groups, organized as 501(c) non-profits, that are not required to disclose the identity of their donors. Since a company's lobbying success depends largely on its relationship with its lobbyists, firms may now face pressure from lobbyists to donate to these dark money groups as a sign of good faith. Lobbying dollars post-Citizens United may be being rerouted toward dark money organizations. Anecdotal evidence aside, there is no systematic empirical evidence on whether Citizens United had a broader impact on political influence beyond campaign finance. In this paper, I examine federal lobbying data between 1999 and 2017 to evaluate whether Citizens United contributed to significant changes in firms' federal lobbying patterns.

I base my empirical analysis on strategic lobbying activities of resource-constrained firms, targeted toward distinct federal legislative outcomes (specifically, renewable energy firms and federal production and investment tax credits for solar and wind generation). Because these firms cannot afford to lobby continuously, a change in incentives to lobby will directly affect their lobbying strategies. I examine the timing and volume of lobbying activity in relation to the legislative progress of renewable tax credit legislation before and after Citizens United. I expect lobbying activity to be more influential during three key time periods: (1) immediately before the expiration of a current tax credit bill, when companies should begin lobbying for new legislation; (2) during a lapse in federal renewable tax credit funding, when lobbying for new legislation should intensify; and (3) during the period of congressional debates about newly introduced bills, when companies have the ability to influence the language of the legislation.

Results show that before Citizens United, renewable energy companies filed significantly more reports and spent significantly more lobbying dollars on renewable tax credit legislation during the key influence periods than outside of these key periods. This relationship does not hold after Citizens United. What led to this change is not yet clear and I am presently investigating several potential mechanisms.