What motivates politicians?

The lobbyist-politician relationship isn't so contentious or master-slave as you might be imagining. I like Ezra's Klein account of lobbying as a legislative subsidy:

As Lessig writes, the typical lobbyist today plays an important, even crucial, part in the political system. In addition to providing campaign contributions and employment prospects to outgoing elected officials and their staffs, he or she provides legislative expertise. Political scientists call this “the legislative subsidy” model of lobbying, and it poses a serious challenge to the view that lobbyists are little more than parasites.

The theory was first proposed by Richard Hall and Alan Deardorff in a 2006 paper entitled “Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy.” The paper was an attempt to solve a problem that, at first glance, should not have needed to be solved, because it should not have existed in the first place: Why is the behavior of lobbyists so hard to predict?

For instance: you would think that lobbyists would concentrate their financial power and well-honed connections on the politicians they need to persuade. But they don’t. They concentrate it on the politicians who are already most convinced of their positions. Abramoff was an example of this: he spent most of his time among conservative legislators who were already committed to fighting tax increases and new regulations.

Another puzzle: lobbying, at least in its bluntest form, doesn’t seem to work. For many Americans, lobbying is a form of bribery. A rich lobbyist goes to a corrupt congressman, money changes hands, and the lobbyist gets his vote while the congressman gets money for his campaign. Many researchers have tried to find systematic evidence of vote buying. Very few have succeeded. Lessig quotes research by Dan Clawson, Mark Weller, and Alan Neustadtl, which concluded, “Many critics of big money campaign finance seem to assume that a corporate donor summons a senator and says, ‘Senator, I want you to vote against raising the minimum wage. Here’s $5,000 to do so.’ This view, in its crude form, is simply wrong.” Lessig concurs:

"If the only way that government power could be converted into campaign cash were by crossing the boundaries of criminal law, then there would be no book to write here. If the only possible “corruption” were the corruption regulated by bribery statutes, then I’d be the first to insist that ours is not a corrupt Congress."

Hall and Deardorf proposed an alternative: lobbying, they argue, is

"a matching grant of costly policy information, political intelligence, and labor to the enterprises of strategically selected legislators. The proximate objective of this strategy is not to change legislators’ minds but to assist natural allies in achieving their own, coincident objectives. Their budget constraint thus relaxed by lobbyists’ assistance, already likeminded legislators act as if they were working on behalf of the group when in fact they are working on behalf of themselves."

In other words, lobbyists act like a volunteer, and highly skilled, army for politicians who already agree with them.

I agree with much that has been said below. I'll add a few observations, all of which are from personal experience.

The first observation is trivial. Politicians are not in the job for a salary. The top politicians can sell anything to anyone. If they were in it for the money, they would sell something on commission and retire early. (Enterprise software or outsourcing come to mind.)

Second, before you lobby someone, you give enough campaign donations to be on the list of people who can get a meeting. Or you find someone who is, to broker a meeting. This is the only place where campaign contributions actually have any effect in my experience. And there are substitutes for this. If you can bring together a bunch of voters to listen to a talk, or deliver a couple dozen volunteers, you're just as in as Mr. Moneybags.

Third, before your meeting, you have to figure out whether the politician is going to lean for you or against you. They will always have some kind of lean. You adjust your pitch to match their kind of rhetoric. When going to meet the Republican, you wear the clothes of growth and freedom. When you go to meet the Democrat, you slip into jobs and fairness. There's almost no issue where a business is going to have nothing to say on one side of that divide. If you believe the politician will lean for you, you give them all the positive reasons that bolster a decision in your favor, to give them mental momentum to ignore contrary advice. (No, you don't try to logically defuse objections. Logic is for amateurs. Go with the herd by invoking the power of cliche.) If you believe the politician will lean against you, you go in with a list of disasters that will inevitably result from the politician going with that lean. All of these terrible things will mean that people will blame you, Senator! If politicians are good at anything, it is spotting incoming blame and avoiding it like the plague. (Again, logic is for punks. Use the herd instinct to start a stampede the other way.)

Fourth, politicians believe their own press. For the most part, they genuinely believe the things that come out their mouths. (That is probably less true in the executive positions than in the legislative ones, because executives have to make excuses for flunkies who went off the reservation. See below re: team sport.) So, they genuinely believe that they are motivated by compassion, freedom, or whatever. If you suggest to them that they are motivated by campaign contributions, they would be offended because they would think themselves wronged. The trick that most of them use on themselves is the intention heuristic: if I mean well, I must be doing the right thing. If it went wrong, someone else must be evil. This belief in their own goodness is intimately tied up with their status as a doing-better do-gooder, which is always partly a matter of self-perception. So, when you suggest to a politician that he's motivated by campaign contributions, don't be surprised when the reaction is literally, "Do you know who I am?!?!?!?"

Finally, politics is a team sport. Democrats call Republicans Nazis. Republicans call Democrats Commies. Each side has to embrace that adverse label a little. Being shunned on your own side means you don't get a heads-up when blame is incoming. That is why conformity is an instrumental value in politicians. For lobbyists, it is very profitable to have one politician broker a meeting with another politician. It's a signal that "the herd is over here. Why don't you join us?" In politics, you can be a Nazi; or you can be a Commie; or you can be dead. (And "dead" includes "moved to the private sector" and "spending time with family.")

All from personal experience.

Max L.

Why are congressmen so motivated to stay in office, make $175k a year, exert a minimal amount of real power, and spend their time catering to lobbyists and making socially suboptimal decisions? I'm sure they could make twice as much in the private sector. I feel like there's something obvious that I'm missing here, but I'm genuinely confused.

I think it's mostly about the social status that comes from membership in an elite. But just from the financial side, the big money for elected officials doesn't come during office, but after they retire and become a lobbyist or de facto lobbyist. Retired big name politicians usually wind up on multiple corporate boards, collecting lots of money for very little work. It's "pay for access." For example, Al Gore was put on Apple's board of directors in 2003, and reaped millions. Some ex-politicians do better on public speaking fees or books.

The pictures in this article showing two Presidents of France and a few women they have been involved with might help answer your question.

Others are probably right that politicians have plenty of genuine choices, where they don't have to use their decisions to cater to lobbyists (or even voters). It's a bit different in the UK, because legislators also form the executive: congressmen may have rather blunter tools to get their way, but Ministers in the UK definitely make LOADS of decisions and a large number aren't fixed by voter demand, lobby power or even party position: working in the civil service supporting Ministers I've seen fairly substantial changes to policy made simply because the individual Minister is replaced by one with a different outlook.

There's also the point that politicians 'cater to' THEIR voters/lobbyists, for the most part. They rely on the support of those that broadly agree with them.

I also think you're approaching this too much as if being a politician is something someone's worked out carefully as a strategy to do a specfic thing. People find politics exciting and engaging - a lot of this, though not all, is because of genuinely caring about the issues - and that's why they want to be involved with it. Once involved, they want to be succesful, that's human nature. I doubt many people go into politics purely because they've calculated it's the way they can get a list of policies delivered, although I think there are a few and they can add a lot to the political process.

Come to think of it, it's worth you looking at other countries if you're interested in this. Your theory of lobbying assumes that individual politicians can rack up $ms of advertising money, but various countries have spending caps (UK) or have systems of proportional representation that mean you can't really advertise as an individual. If you observe the same phenomena without the personal job-security element, then your model is probably flawed!

It seems that politicians make a lot of decisions that aren't socially optimal because they want money from lobbyists and other campaign contributors.

Or because they haven't a clue what "socially optimal" is. Or because they're just supporting their side. Or because the legislative process does not lead to socially optimal decisions. Or because they're personally indifferent to social optimality.

Why are congressmen so motivated to stay in office, make $175k a year, exert a minimal amount of real power, and spend their time catering to lobbyists and making socially suboptimal decisions?

Social status and fame. Hollywood for ugly people.

It seems that politicians make a lot of decisions that aren't socially optimal because they want money from lobbyists and other campaign contributors.

It's more complex than that. Few politicians are corrupt in the sense that they pass policy that they judge to be socially suboptimal because they receive money for doing so. Campaign contributions rather buy access. Politicians listen to the opinions of the lobbyists and the lobbyists are often some of the people who spent the most time thinking about an issue. That allows the lobbyists to influence what a politician judges to be socially beneficial.

As far as power goes, don't underrate the influence on politicians. They control a vast budget. Even redirecting smaller amounts of it can change a lot. Redirecting 100 million within the budget is only a slight change in the budget but it's a lot for the actions of a single person.

It doesn't make sense to you because you're not the A type personality that desires Visibility, access to power, temporal power, prestige, and a chance and becoming "a big thing" or having some kind of career. There is a certain mindset to this that many people just do not have. If you are interested in climbing the social ladder and gaining connections that will help you rise in this life then you might want to try out politics. If that doesn't interest you, then you won't spend time doing it and most people don't. I used to be into that I was a Legislative Aide and I ran campaigns. I sat with lobbyists, council people, passed around my card and I learned that its a dirty business and you have to be willing to get filthy in order to make it. So I decided to pack it in.

But power is the one I don't understand.

Do you understand how and why people want power in general -- not just politicians?

but it seems that politicians spend most of their time catering to lobbyists and voters

Maybe you should... broaden the range of your information sources.

I think that politicians tend to be very pro-social people who attempt to increase the welfare of the groups they belong to, usually quite rationally.

Their groups will be numerous, and of varying importance - including their nation, the voters in their district, the members of their class, race and religion, their colleagues, their own family... and then some.

Lobbyists attempt to be part of the politicians' groups, preferably as many of them as possible. They also bring in money, but they style themselves as brokers, or people who know people and carry favors, because they need to be liked and nobody likes a briber. Non-politicians mostly see the money, and think it is all about that, much like they mostly see what a politician is against, while most politicians chiefly see themselves as people who are for something.

Power is addictive. Why do you think people get addicted to cocaine? It's because the cocaine gives them the illusion of believing that they can do what ever they want. In the case of politicians, they have the power to control the lives of people and the path in which society chooses to follow. I don't expect you to understand it, since you haven't been in their position but you should ask your self, who do you feel if you were the only bread winner in the house and you wife/ husband switched positions with you? You would having fun staying home and doing nothing most of the time but you will lose the power of control.

Lobbyists lobby by catering to politicians.

First up, I'd say most of their behaviour can be explained by context more than enduring individual traits.

I call my local legislative assembly (upper house for the State) Senator all the time. It started out that I didn't know, now it's just a joke. He doesn't say anything and responds as if it is appropriate, even though he's technically only "the honourable'' since he's also a Minister. I have no idea whether he thinks I'm a village idiot or having a go at him because he has seen me in contexts that would suggest I'm more politically savvy than I actually am.

I'm pretty sure if I was in his shoes, I might not correct me. Unless I was with rationalists. But then, I'm not in his shoes because the path dependencies of my life haven't taken me there.

In answer to your query, without being verbose, this site might help you understand "what motivates politicians."

In case you didn't feel like clicking through (live), here's a longer answer to the same question: "Many of the same things that motivate you," ...except that you, if you are in the largest percentage of distributed brain-types, might have some (valid, evolutionarily-desirable) emotional reasons for not obtaining those things "as fast as possible, with fewest resources expended." Sociopaths lack any such internal crises, or impediments to action, because they lack the emotions that cause strain (and social harmony during market-based peacetime) for the rest of us.

Of course, the prior may be controversial, so for that reason, I'll provide the following non-mainstream piece of writing: "Why Does the World Feel Wrong?"

I think the prior sites are worth reading and thinking about. It seems to me we already have superhuman AGI, but not radically superintelligent synthetic superhuman AGI. Voluntary markets are superhuman, and optimal, given human intelligence, because they allow all modular parts of the social brain to communicate. The coercive sector doesn't facilitate this, and produces a stupider, less need-satisfying "Society of Mind": government.

In any case, I've already gone beyond answering the question. I hope there are at least a few people here who get some value out of this answer. I (and Stanley Milgram, and Lysander Spooner, and Henry David Thoreau) have found that, generally, either people conform to the incorrect idea that they are "represented" by politicians, or they generally conform to authority (or have other toxic, high-level biases), or they already believe that politicians lack any good intentions, but stop short of comprehending the true reality, because delusion is more pleasant, and makes them feel less of an onus to do anything realistic about such a large and dangerous problem.

The few that are left call themselves "libertarians" and also continue to do nothing, in the most shocking example of appeasement since the French (and German public) in WWII.

Which leaves people like me to weed peas amongst the loonies, until my impending lobotomy. -R.P. McMurphy