Daniel Carpenter, the Allie S. Freed Professor of Government and chair of the Department of Government, has published a research article titled Lawyers as Lobbyists: Regulatory Advocacy in American Finance, which reveals the secret world of lobbying government regulators.
First published by Cambridge University Press and then the journal Perspectives on Politics, the study – co-authored with Brian Libgober Ph.D. ’18, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Law at Northwestern University – exposes how lawyers and banks are reaping big profits by lobbying government regulators under the radar.
In an interview with Christy DeSmith, Staff Writer at The Harvard Gazette, Carpenter explains how he and Libgober drew from a variety of empirical sources, including years of meeting logs kept by government administrators following the passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
By collecting data on 905 meetings scheduled between 2010 and 2018 with members of the Federal Reserve Board, Carpenter and Lobgober found a regulatory advocacy market so large, and so lucrative, it eclipses the formal lobbying sector. The researchers identified 6,155 individuals who specifically met with the board concerning Dodd-Frank, with just 953 registered as lobbyists. Compared with the 4,516 officially registered lobbyists who reported activity on Dodd-Frank or a related predecessor bill.
“Most people think of lobbying as something that happens in Congress, we’re pointing to lobbying that happens in administrative agencies,” Carpenter said in the article.
“It’s tough to get a precise estimate on the amount of money that moves around when these meetings happen, but even our most conservative estimates imply that it’s double or more of what’s spent in congressional lobbying.”
Read the full article in The Harvard Gazette here.