Curt Yeske pointed me to this. Wow–these graphs are really hard to read!
The old me would’ve said that each of these graphs would be better replaced by a dotplot (or, better still, a series of lineplots showing time trends).
The new me would still like the dotplots and lineplots, but I’d say it’s fine to have the eye-grabbing but hard-to-read graphs as is, and then to have the more informative statistical graphics underneath, as it were. The idea is, you’d click on the pretty but hard-to-read “infovis” graphs, and this would then reveal informative “full Cleveland” graphs. And then if you click again you’d get a spreadsheet with the raw numbers.
That I’d like to see, as a new model for graphical presentation.
One of the questions I wish political scientists and statisticians would devote more time to is the question of who actually owns who in this relationship. Are all legislators actually corrupt nepotists who sell their beliefs out to the highest bidder… or are lobbyists desperate dupes who see the dangled carrot of legislative progress on their preferred pet issues, and rush to fill campaign coffers for a chance of getting the food in the door? The argument is so lopsidedly discussed under the assumption of legislative nitwittery that it is a breathless utterance to accuse every lawmaker of "being in the pocket" of one particular interest or the other – as if there wouldn't be more to be gained by breaking the monopsony finance and energy seem to "hold," if we assume the relationship works that way…
Scratch that – I hope you guys don't pay it too much attention because it's what I intend to study in grad school. But I do hope you find it interesting enough to buy my book in seven years.
John:
Yes, this has definitely been studied. For example, there are many well-known cases of legislators that have become lobbyists. But I'm sure there's room for more research in this area.