Clément Minaudier

Lobbyists often target legislators who are aligned with them rather than opponents. However, the conditions under which interest groups prefer to target allies or enemies are not well understood. We investigate how time pressure affects which legislators are targeted by lobbyists. We derive conditions on the cost of delaying policies and on the distribution of legislators' preferences for lobbyists to prefer targeting allies. We also show that the use of allies as intermediaries has important implications for the duration of policy making and the quality of policies. Counter-intuitively, an increase in the cost of delaying can increase the duration of policy making and a longer duration does not always lead to better-informed policies.