Affective Lobbying: Emotional Appeals and Interest Group Influence

Research on emotions in political science is booming, yet we know remarkably little about their role in helping interest groups secure lobbying influence. Lobbying scholarship has predominantly understood influence as the result of a quid-pro-quo in which lobbyists exchange informational resources for access and policy concessions. This approach overlooks that emotions lie at the heart of politics and persuasion. Drawing on political psychology, we conceptualise affective lobbying, in which lobbyists’ emotional appeals to policymakers take centre stage. We distinguish between negative emotional appeals—including fear and anger—which heighten vigilance, and operate through a logic of blame avoidance, and positive emotional appeals—encompassing empathy and hope—which reinforce political commitments and operate through a logic of credit claiming. We test these arguments using two waves of original survey data from 294 EU-level interest groups, combined with a systematic content analysis of 44 European Commission policy agenda documents. Our findings show that affective appeals matter for lobbying influence, but that their effects are driven primarily by positive rather than negative emotions. More broadly, our findings qualify lobbying’s democratic credentials by showing that, alongside its long-recognised role in providing evidence and expertise, lobbying also operates through positive emotional persuasion.