Sitting in or speaking out? The effect of policy complexity and group resources on lobbying strategies

Understanding interest groups’ participation in political processes is critical for assessing the quality of democratic representation. This paper seeks to contribute to the existing literature by proposing a novel argument linking the degree of policy complexity and the amount of groups’ resources to lobbying strategies. Specifically, it argues that interest groups invest in both inside (‘sitting in’) and outside (‘speaking up’) lobbying strategies when the policy at stake is complex and they have more resources. This theory is tested in the context of global internet privacy regulations, using an extensive and novel data set of lobbying efforts. The empirical results demonstrate that the degree of policy complexity significantly moderates the linkage between inside and outside lobbying strategies, particularly for well-resourced groups.