Legislative informational lobbying

Whom should an interest group lobby in a legislature? I develop a model of informational lobbying, in which a legislature must decide on the allocation of district-specific goods and projects. An interest group chooses to search and provide information on districts' valuations of the goods. The setting is one of dis-tributive politics, where the proposed allocation of goods and projects is endogenous to the information provided by the interest group. I characterize the information search strategy of the interest group. I further-more establish that the relationship between informational lobbying and legislative majority requirement is non-monotonic. I also determine who gains and who loses from lobbying, identifying circumstances in which legislators would unanimously prefer to ban informational lobbying. Finally, I provide an informa-tional rationale for why interest groups sometimes lobby legislative allies (friendly lobbying).(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.