Revolving Door

The ‘revolving door’ is a metaphor for the circulation of personnel between government office and private sector lobbying. In both popular discourse and social science research, the phenomenon has been identified as a source of corporate capture, influence, and even corruption. In this line of research, I explore several questions:

  • How common is the revolving door, and how can we measure it?

  • Why do individuals pursue revolving door careers?

  • What impacts do revolving doors have on the policymaking process?

Publications

Article: “‘Unicorns and Hacks’: Revolving Door Lobbyists and the Cultivation of Political Credibility” (forthcoming in Socius)
How do revolving door lobbyists produce corporate political influence? The revolving door, or the circulation of personnel between government and lobbying, has garnered significant attention as an avenue for undue private influence over policymaking. In this paper, I argue that the revolving door is a mechanism through which individuals cultivate political credibility over time. Through 52 semi-structured interviews with policy professionals involved in United States federal policymaking, I illustrate three components of political credibility - credentials, bureaucratic competence, and claims to policy expertise – and how they are mobilized and constructed through career moves. Although revolving door moves typically result in accumulation of political credibility, career transitions also introduce opportunities for credibility depreciation. The findings highlight sources of inequality and heterogeneity among policy professionals and clarify the relational and cultural mechanisms through which corporations and interest groups exercise influence in U.S. politics.  

IN PROGRESS

Book Manuscript: The Shadow Branch: Revolving Door Lobbyists and the Transformation of American Policymaking
In preparation - Proposal available by request
In Washington, D.C., a multi-billion dollar industry thrives, comprised of lobbyists, attorneys, consultants, and policy experts, all with the goal of influencing the policymaking process in favor of their corporate clients. In The Shadow Branch, I explore how these policy professionals navigate their careers and move through the revolving door between government and lobbying, as well as the consequences of these personal decisions for our government, our laws, and our democracy. I argue that revolving door lobbyists are not merely driven by money or power, but are also morally driven, public service-motivated professionals who make career decisions to balance their personal lives, financial concerns, cultural expectations, political beliefs, and professional ambitions. Yet, these decisions are not merely personal – they also imbue corporate interests into policymakers’ relationships, priorities, and core beliefs. Combining ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with eighty policy professionals, analysis of government documents, and original datasets of revolving door careers, The Shadow Branch shows how the revolving door has transformed U.S. politics and the structure of government, such that many of the core tasks of governing are now being done by lobbyists outside the state.

Working Paper: “Trading Places? A Sequence Analysis of the Revolving Door in U.S. Trade Policy”
Under review
The revolving door, or the movement of personnel between public office and private sector lobbying, has been identified by commentators and scholars as a potential source of corporate influence in politics. Yet, methods for the measurement of this phenomenon in the U.S. have to date relied on anecdotal or incomplete data. In this paper, I employ sequence analysis methods to systematically measure the patterns and prevalence of the revolving door. Through descriptive analysis of the complete career trajectories of the population of employees at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2001-2020 (n=658), I show that the revolving door is widespread and heterogeneous in its timing and sequences. Over half of all employees (51.5%) have worked in both lobbying and public office. Five distinct types of career paths illustrate the heterogeneity of revolving door careers, as well as different mechanisms of capital reconversion and accumulation. These findings suggest that prior studies of the revolving door have undermeasured and under-conceptualized the heterogeneity of these careers.

Working Paper: “The Latent Core: Business Power and Revolving Door Networks”
Available by request
Do business interests dominate U.S. policymaking? While some argue that business interests are becoming more fractured and ineffectual (Chu and Davis 2016; Mizruchi 2013; Waterhouse 2013), others have observed that coordinated business interests still dominate policymaking through central policy planning organizations (Banerjee and Murray 2021; Dreiling and Darves 2016; Mills and Domhoff 2023; Murray 2017). However, these studies typically focus on relations among business organizations to understand political power, rather than relations between a wide range of state and non-state policy organizations. To provide another viewpoint on this debate, I propose the analysis of revolving door (RD) networks, which represent organizational relations generated through the circulation of policy personnel between jobs. Such an approach recognizes that individuals build social and cultural capital over their careers that enhance an organization’s capacity to communicate, coordinate with, and influence other organizations. Based on an analysis of the revolving door network of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2001-2020, I argue that business power is both latent and modular in U.S. trade policy. Revolving doors allow businesses to develop resources that enable them to act unilaterally as well as through industry coalitions and class-wide associations. However, businesses are only dominant in the network if they can unite through collective action.

In Progress: “The Moral Career of a Revolving Door Lobbyist”
Popular accounts of Washington, D.C. cast the city as a swamp full of self-interested, well-connected elites who spin through the revolving door, from public service into corporate lobbying and vice versa. The revolving door, or the movement of political elites between the public and private sectors, has long been recognized as a source of corruption, corporate influence, and political inequality in the United States. Yet the Washington area is home to hundreds of thousands of policy professionals who arrive in the city, often ideologically motivated, to pursue careers in public policy and public service. How do individuals' sense of self, and ideas of impact, change over time? What factors guide career decisionmaking, and how do individuals frame and justify the career choices that they make? In this ongoing interview study, I examine patterns in the career trajectories of 50+ individuals who have worked in government, non-profits, law, consulting, lobbying, and policy research. I explore how personal relationships, perceived financial constraints, and conceptions of ambition and impact shape individuals’ decisions to become revolving door lobbyists. I conclude that any effort at government reform which aims to crack down on the revolving door must pay attention to the cultural and social contexts in which policy professionals work.

In Progress: “Becoming a Lobbyist”
What factors drive policymakers to leave government and become lobbyists? Drawing on a dataset of career trajectories of U.S. trade negotiators, I examine the timing and contexts in which bureaucrats become lobbyists.