"Environmental
Protection:
A
Theory of Direct and Indirect Competition for Political Influence",
Review
of Economic Studies, v72(1), January
2005, 269-286.
How
is it that environmental groups
can have a strong impact on environmental policy but without much
lobbying?
This paper develops a model of `direct' (lobbying the government) and
`indirect' (persuading the public) competition for political influence
and finds
that they are complementary. However, an increase in the effectiveness
of public persuasion, or a rise of public environmental awareness,
induces
substitution between the two. The findings establish that the empirical
phenomenon of lack of political contribution from environmental groups
may not be related to financial constraints, but to their greater
effectiveness
in public persuasion and the growing public environmental awareness.