Chapter 24 Exercises

These exercises ask you to apply the chapter's frameworks to current data, to analyze concrete cases, to steel-man arguments on both sides, and to map the interest-group ecosystem in your own congressional district.

Several exercises require live data lookup. The recommended primary sources are:

  • OpenSecrets.org — federal lobbying disclosure data, PAC and super PAC data, top spenders, industry breakdowns. Use the most recent quarterly filings.
  • LobbyingDisclosure.house.gov and lda.senate.gov — primary LD-2 filings (raw form).
  • DOJ FARA registration site — for foreign-agent registrations.
  • Office of Government Ethics (oge.gov) — for executive-branch financial disclosures and ethics reports.
  • Congress.gov — for the legislative status and lobbying activity record around specific bills.

Always note the date you accessed any data, since the figures change quarterly.

Exercise 1: Top five federal lobbying spenders, this quarter

Go to OpenSecrets.org and find the "Top Spenders" page for the most recent completed quarter. Identify the top five lobbying-spender organizations.

For each of the five:

  1. List the organization, its industry category, and its lobbying spending for the quarter.
  2. Identify the principal issues lobbied (these appear on the LD-2 filings as a list of "general" and "specific" issue areas).
  3. Look up the names of three of the registered lobbyists working on this client. For each lobbyist, note whether they have a "former covered position" — i.e., they previously worked for the federal government. (This is on the LD-2 filing.)
  4. Write one paragraph synthesizing what you found. Are these the spenders you expected? Are the issues they're lobbying on what you would have predicted? What surprises you?

Reflection: What does the top-five list tell you about which interests are most active in federal policy at this moment? How does it compare to the historical pattern (pharmaceutical and tech consistently in the top, defense lower than popularly imagined)?

Exercise 2: Trace a specific bill's lobbying activity

Pick one of the following bills (or, with your instructor's approval, another major bill from the past two Congresses):

  • The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-169)
  • The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 (P.L. 117-58)
  • The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-167)
  • The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-159)
  • A bill currently active in the 119th Congress that you select with your instructor

Use OpenSecrets and the LD-2 search functions to identify:

  1. The top 10 organizations that listed this bill in their quarterly lobbying reports during its consideration.
  2. For each, the position they took (supporting, opposing, or seeking modification), where you can determine it from public statements.
  3. Three identifiable revolving-door connections — registered lobbyists with prior federal-government experience working on this bill.
  4. The total reported lobbying expenditures across all organizations that listed this bill, for the period of its active consideration.

Write a 600-800 word memo summarizing the lobbying landscape on this bill. Specifically address: was the lobbying balanced (multiple sides represented)? Was there a clear "industry" position vs. a "public-interest" position? Did the lobbying align with party lines, or did it cut across them?

Exercise 3: Revolving-door career analysis

Pick a senior official who has left federal service in the past three years. Suggested categories (your instructor may specify):

  • A former cabinet secretary
  • A former senator or representative
  • A former senior committee staff director
  • A former agency head (FCC, EPA, FDA, FERC, etc.)
  • A former White House senior official

Research the official's post-government career path. Use LinkedIn, news reporting, lobbying disclosures, and the agency's ethics-and-disclosure reports.

For your subject, identify and document:

  1. Their most recent senior government position and primary policy responsibilities.
  2. Their first post-government position(s), and the date they took each one.
  3. Whether their post-government employer registered them under the LDA, registered the firm but not them as an individual lobbyist, or neither.
  4. Whether their post-government work has, on the public record, addressed any of the same policy areas they oversaw in government.
  5. The cooling-off period applicable to them and whether it has expired.

Write a 500-700 word analysis. Specifically: do you see any reason to be concerned about structural conflicts of interest? Do you see any reason to think the post-government work is appropriate use of legitimately developed expertise? What is your honest assessment, holding both the corruption critique and the expertise defense in mind?

Exercise 4: Steel-man stronger lobbying restrictions

Without consulting any sources except the chapter and your own analytical work, write a 400-600 word essay making the strongest possible case for substantially stronger federal lobbying restrictions. Specifically argue for some combination of:

  • Lower disclosure thresholds (10% or zero, replacing the current 20%)
  • Longer cooling-off periods (5+ years, possibly lifetime for some categories)
  • A meaningful lobbying tax (10%+)
  • Expanded disclosure of lobbying contacts and substance
  • Restrictions on the post-government employment of senior officials

Your essay should be the strongest version of the reform case, not a strawman. Cite specific evidence from the chapter (Kalla and Broockman, Schlozman/Verba/Brady, the shadow-lobbying workforce, the revolving-door pattern). Address the constitutional concerns directly — explain why the reforms you propose can survive First Amendment scrutiny.

You do not need to personally agree with the position you are arguing. Steel-manning is a discipline.

Exercise 5: Steel-man First Amendment protection of lobbying

Now write a 400-600 word essay making the strongest possible case for the First Amendment right to lobby and against the kinds of reforms you argued for in Exercise 4. Specifically argue:

  • Lobbying is constitutionally protected speech and petition activity.
  • Restrictions on who can lobby (corporations, foreign-affiliated entities, etc.) are content/identity-based and constitutionally suspect.
  • The information-provision and expertise functions of lobbying improve, rather than degrade, the quality of policy.
  • Reform proposals tend to disadvantage less-organized public-interest groups more than well-funded business interests, because the latter can afford the higher compliance costs.

Cite the relevant cases (NAACP v. Button, NAACP v. Alabama, Citizens United, Murdock v. Pennsylvania) and address the empirical concerns directly. Acknowledge the asymmetry that reformers point to and explain why it does not justify the proposed reforms.

Again, you do not need to agree. Steel-manning is the work.

Exercise 6: The Olson framework applied

Identify three policy areas — one where collective-action incentives strongly favor a small concentrated interest, one where they favor a large diffuse interest, and one where the situation is genuinely unclear or contested.

For each, briefly explain (250-400 words per area):

  1. Who has a high per-capita stake in the policy?
  2. Who has a low per-capita stake but a large aggregate stake?
  3. What organized interest groups (if any) are active on each side?
  4. Does the empirical organizing pattern match what Olson would predict?
  5. How are the unorganized or under-organized interests represented in the policy process, if at all?

Suggested policy areas: agricultural commodity programs, occupational licensing for a specific profession, broadcast licensing, tariff policy on a specific industry, infrastructure spending priorities, public-land management, financial regulation. You may pick others.

Exercise 7: Iron triangle vs. policy network classification

For each of the following five policy areas, classify the dominant pattern as iron triangle, policy network, or mixed, and justify the classification with specific evidence.

  1. Federal sugar-import quota policy.
  2. Federal climate and clean-energy policy.
  3. Federal abortion policy (post-Dobbs).
  4. Department of Defense aircraft-procurement policy for a specific platform (e.g., F-35).
  5. FDA approval policy for new prescription drugs.

For each, identify (where applicable): - The principal congressional committee(s). - The principal executive-branch agency or agencies. - The principal organized interest groups on each side. - The salience of the issue to the broader public. - Whether partisan conflict structures the issue.

Write 200-300 words per area justifying your classification.

Exercise 8: Democracy Audit — interest groups in your district

This exercise extends your ongoing Democracy Audit project on your own congressional district.

For your district's representative, identify:

  1. The top 10 PAC donors to the representative's campaign committee in the most recent reporting cycle (FEC.gov; OpenSecrets.org for synthesis).
  2. The industries those PACs represent.
  3. Any registered lobbyists who have donated to the representative's campaign committee personally (this is on the FEC filings).
  4. Any organizations from which the representative has received substantial speaking, travel, or other in-kind support (House Office of Public Records, Office of Government Ethics).
  5. The committees on which the representative serves and the policy jurisdictions they cover.

Cross-reference (4) and (5) with (1) and (2). Are the top PAC donors and the policy jurisdictions of the representative's committees aligned? If yes, what does that suggest? If no, what alternative explanations might apply?

Write a 700-900 word memo synthesizing what you found. Specifically address:

  • Does the funding pattern raise concerns that the representative's policy work is biased toward donor interests?
  • Are there counter-explanations consistent with the data (the representative was on the committees first and naturally attracts donors interested in those committees' jurisdictions; the representative represents a district whose economic base aligns with the donor industries; etc.)?
  • What additional data, if you could gather it, would help you distinguish between the concerning interpretation and the benign one?

This exercise is descriptive, not accusatory. The goal is to develop your ability to read the public-disclosure data carefully and to hold multiple interpretations of the same data simultaneously — which is the core analytical skill of this chapter.

Exercise 9: Compare two interest groups across the spectrum

Pick two interest groups that operate in the same broad policy area but advocate substantially different policy positions. Suggested pairs (your instructor may approve others):

  • The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO
  • The Sierra Club and the American Energy Alliance
  • Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund
  • The NRA and Everytown for Gun Safety
  • The Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society
  • The Center for Immigration Studies and the National Immigration Law Center

For your two organizations, document and compare:

  1. Founding date, founders, and stated mission.
  2. Annual budget (most recent year available; for 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s, this is on the IRS Form 990, available through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer or directly from the organization's filings).
  3. Lobbying expenditures in the most recent reporting year (LD-2 filings, where applicable; for organizations whose lobbying is formally separate from the parent charity, look at the affiliated entity).
  4. Major policy victories and defeats in the past 10 years.
  5. Membership structure (mass-membership organization, board-governed advocacy organization, fee-for-service trade association, or other).
  6. Funding sources (where disclosure permits — note that 501(c)(4) "social welfare" organizations are not required to disclose donors, which is the source of much of the "dark money" concern).

Write a 700-900 word comparative analysis. Specifically: in what ways do the two organizations operate similarly (lobbying tactics, coalition-building, electoral activity, litigation)? In what ways do they differ? Are the asymmetries between them larger on the input side (resources) or the output side (policy victories)?

The point of this exercise is to see organizations across the political spectrum doing the same kinds of work, defended by the same constitutional framework, with their relative effectiveness varying for reasons that have to do with constituency, resources, strategy, and the broader political environment — not with one side or the other operating in some fundamentally illegitimate way.

Reflection prompts for class discussion

If your instructor uses these exercises in discussion, the following prompts often surface the most useful disagreement:

  1. After completing Exercises 4 and 5, which steel-manned position do you find more persuasive on the merits — and why? What specific evidence or argument moves you?

  2. Compare the two case studies (pharmaceutical industry, NRA). What features of each interest group account for the different trajectories? Could you have predicted the trajectories from the chapter's frameworks?

  3. The Kalla and Broockman field experiment found access asymmetry between donors and non-donor constituents. Is this corruption, inevitable consequence of any participatory democracy, both, or neither?

  4. The First Amendment protects the petition-and-speech activity of organizations as well as individuals. Does the protection extend with equal force to corporations, unions, foreign-affiliated entities, and individual citizens? Why or why not?

  5. If you were designing a federal lobbying-and-campaign-finance system from scratch, what would it look like? How does it differ from what we have, and what would you accept as costs of the different design?