On Legislative Lobbying under Political Uncertainty

Résumé

We study a simple influence game, in which a lobby tries to manipulate the decision of a legislature via monetary offers to one or more members. The type of a legislator is the relative weight he/she places on social welfare as compared to money. We study the equilibria of this lobbying game under political certainty and uncertainty, and examine the circumstances under which the lobby is successful, and the amount of money invested in the political process. Special attention is paid to three primitives of the environment: the budget available for lobbying, the internal organization of the legislature and the proportion of "bad" and "good" legislators in the political arena.