LOBBYING REFORM NOT TAKEN SERIOUSLY

“There are no takers for [Lee] Drutman’s reforms. It seems that the reform of lobbying, for all the rhetoric, is not taken very seriously in America, and certainly not in the presidential campaigns so far. Campaign finance reform gets all the headlines while basic and immensely influential corporate lobbying is hardly noticed. Drutman presents one of the more thoughtful analyses of lobbying in America that has been made so far. But it may not inspire the anger and frustration that a campaign to reform lobbying will probably need.”

Jeff Madrick, “How the Lobbyists Win in Washington,” a review of Lee Drutman’s The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, April 7, 2016, in The New York Review, April 7, 2016, pp: 50-52.