I research the role of parties and interest group lobbyists in Congress and the American state legislatures.
I have written about how lobbying from the American health care industry makes health care more expensive. I have also written first-person accounts of the Congressional effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
3. "The legacy of lobbying on the Affordable Care Act"
Garlick, Alex (2023)Interest Groups & Advocacy [html | ungated]Books reviewed: Stealth Lobbying by Amy McKay, Ten Year War by Jonathan Cohn, The Committee by Bryan Marshall and Bruce WolpeBuilt on top of the legacy OpenStates data for all 50 states from ~2009-2018, this contains over one million observations of state legislation to measure how far it progressed in the bicameral legislative process. It includes an original coding scheme.
This uses a dictionary method (keyword searches of LexisNexis State Capital Universe) to identify state legislation by 22 policy areas dating back to 1991. It demonstrates high precision (placing bills into the correct category), and consistent recall over time.
This uses an automated method to estimate the policy sector of the interest groups in the National Institute for Money in State Politics database of groups registered to lobby in the 50 states from 2006-2018.