Book Review: Lee Drutman, The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate

Lee Drutman’s book provides a multifaceted account of business lobbying in American national politics. His central thesis is that lobbying is ‘sticky’. In other words, lobbying is a self-reinforcing activity because once companies start lobbying, there is a push to do more lobbying over time. This push comes from the lobbyists themselves who utilise certain tactics to encourage companies to continue and increase their lobbying efforts. Underlying Drutman’s analysis is a multi-method approach utilising qualitative data in the form of 60 original lobbyist interviews and the use of collective data from 24 years of Washington Representatives directories.

For the first half of the book, Drutman develops a detailed picture of corporate lobbying activities. He details a myriad of reasons why the growth of corporate lobbying matters, how corporate lobbying grew, how and why corporations lobby and how corporations cooperate and compete. In the second half of the book, Drutman argues why corporate lobbying has increased through his theory that lobbying is ‘sticky’. To prove this argument, he analyses how corporations undertake a cost–benefit analysis of becoming politically active and how lobbyists themselves perpetuate lobbying. He draws the various strands together by considering the wider problems with lobbying.