Lobbying and emergency management in the United States: Issues, priorities and implications

Recent scholarship has explored the impact of interest groups on policy in the United States. However, little remains known about lobbying efforts and their effects in emergency management. Through analysis of a large data set of declared political activities from 1999 to 2020, we describe lobbying efforts in disaster planning and emergencies. Our findings suggest that lobbying efforts and expenditure are positively associated with appropriations (but not disaster incidence or severity), that corporations and trade associations are the organizations most involved in lobbying and that many of these efforts appear to be aimed at impacting legislation and the procurement of public funds for recovery efforts. We also find that only a minuscule number of lobbying efforts are related to socially vulnerable populations or social equity concerns. Collectively, these insights raise important questions about this process, demonstrating the need for further research to better understand lobbying and emergency management in the United States across all phases of the disaster life cycle.