10.48349/ASU/YU8JW5 Strickland, James James Strickland https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2650-5077 Arizona State University ASU Library Research Data Repository 2020 Law Social Sciences Lobbyists; ethics; transparency Strickland, James James Strickland Arizona State University 2020-11-13 2020-11-23 2020-11-23 doi:10.7910/DVN/M7J7DA 10.48349/ASU/YU8JW5/YPCNC7 10.48349/ASU/YU8JW5/SQ9YXO 10.48349/ASU/YU8JW5/X8IHP1 10.48349/ASU/YU8JW5/ARVPU2 10.48349/ASU/YU8JW5/V6EHGZ 74939 137055 144636 1877 121013 text/tab-separated-values application/pdf text/tab-separated-values application/x-stata-syntax text/tab-separated-values 1.0 CC0 1.0 Laws that restrict and disclose the actions of lobbyists are attempts to protect elected officials from undue influence and preserve public trust in lawmaking processes. Imposing too many campaign finance restrictions and reporting requirements on registered interest groups, however, might discourage them from registering. I use an original data set compiled from several decades of lobbyist lists to determine whether these laws suppress registration rates among interest groups. More limits on campaign finance activities, but not heavier reporting burdens, are shown to be associated with depressed registration of interest groups. As unregistered interests are not subject to these regulations, this presents a paradox of political reform. Reformers can either restrict the campaign finance activities of organized interests or disclose their lobbying activities more fully, but not both. I provide estimated totals of registered interest groups given a set of laws that maximizes compliance.