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We model which special interest groups (SIGs) lobby which policymakers (PMs) directly, and which employ professional intermediaries (CLs). We show that SIGs affected by policy issues that frequently receive high political salience lobby PMs directly, while those that rarely receive high political salience must employ CLs. This follows from the availability of repeated agency contracts between PMs and SIGs. SIGs that lobby on issues that frequently experience high political salience may be incentivized to truthfully reveal private policy relevant information to policymakers via the promise of a high probability of future political access. Those that lobby on issues less frequently of high salience must employ professional intermediaries to lobby on their behalf. These intermediaries are always in the ``informational lobbying market'' and can be easily incentivized by PMs to truthfully reveal private information. We also show that ``insecure'' PMs, those in vulnerable seats, tend to be lobbied by professional intermediaries. Also, PMs that are more time constrained tend to rely more on professional intermediaries for policy relevant information. We also consider SIGs and PMs with similar or opposite policy biases, the implications of lobbying success fees offered by SIGs to CLs for achieving policy outcomes, the generalization of payoffs with respect to gains and losses from enacted policies, as well as costly information acquisition by CLs.
We will test these predictions using a comprehensive data set of U.S. federal lobbying activity reports filed by professional lobbyists. First empirical results illustrate the predicted pattern of in-house lobbyists for SIGs' high-frequency lobbying activities and professional intermediaries for SIGs' low-frequency lobbying activities.
