Author:

Gabriel F. Benzecry

Abstract:

Do interest groups lobby their political friends or their foes? This paper applies Richard Hall and Alan Deardorff’s (2006) theory of lobbying as a legislative subsidy to the case of labor rights lobbying in Brazil’s 1988 Assembleia Nacional Constituinte (ANC), providing a unique case study for examining not only the targets of interest groups but also the ability of lobbying models to explain the interest groups’ strategic behavior. This article aims to expand Hall and Deardorff’s theoretical model and apply it to the real-world context of Brazil’s 1988 National Constituent Assembly. The paper concludes that in the ANC, the pro-labor-rights lobbying efforts targeted both friends and uncommitted foes.