ABSTRACT
As the official representatives of interest group organizations, lobbyists communicate information and opinions to government officials in order to influence specific decisions. Rather than acting on their own, citizens who belong to these interest groups rely upon lobbyists to convey their interests to policymakers. The term "lobbyist" is traced to Britain, where it referred to journalists who stood in the lobby of the House of Commons waiting to talk to members of Parliament. In the United States, it was first used in the early nineteenth century to refer disdainfully to privilege seekers in the Capitol lobby in Albany, New York. Lobbyists’ negative image in the political culture stems from Americans’ suspicion of the motives and influence of "special interests" that began with James Madison’s warning about the "mischiefs of faction" in 1787. This suspicion was fueled by muckraking journalists who exposed the role lobbyists played in bribery and other forms of corruption in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American politics. Although bribery and other illegal practices occur much less frequently than in the past, suspicions about lobbyists still linger.
