Abstract
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 article, the author argues that the revolving door is a mechanism through which individuals cultivate political credibility over time. Through 52 semistructured interviews with policy professionals involved in U.S. federal policymaking, the author illustrates 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 an 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.
Keywords
In the United States, corporate political behavior has long been the subject of interest by social scientists, policymakers, and the public. Corporations are not the only organizations that lobby in Washington, but they conduct an overwhelming majority of lobbying activity in the United States (Drutman 2015). Although corporate engagement is important for informing policymakers about industry and market dynamics, undue corporate influence can also undermine effective regulation, economic stability, and democratic representation. Corporate influence can occur through many channels, including campaign finance (Burris 2001; Dawood 2015), astroturf movements (Walker 2009), philanthropic activities (Bertrand et al. 2020), and structural market power (Culpepper 2015), but corporations most directly shape federal laws and policies through direct lobbying of policymakers in Congress and federal agencies. Corporations are represented by a wide range of organizations, including business associations, nonprofits, think tanks, lobbying firms, and law firms, that interact with policymakers and other policy professionals to produce policy outcomes aligned with their political interests. These political organizations employ lobbyists who not only represent their interests in Washington, but, as Mills (1956) recognized in his study of the power elite, are also “captains of higher thought and decision” (p. 4), shaping how corporations and corporate elites define and pursue their political interests and objectives.
Lobbyists 1 therefore play a critical role in determining how corporations interact with the state. A recent wave of research has focused specifically on revolving-door lobbyists, whose careers circulate between federal government and corporate lobbying. Debates have persisted about the advantages revolving-door lobbyists might provide to corporations. To explain how corporations achieve favorable policy outcomes, some scholars emphasize quid-pro-quo mechanisms and conflicts of interest (Katic and Kim 2024; Tabakovic and Wollmann 2018), while others emphasize forms of social and cultural capital that revolving-door lobbyists provide for corporations in the lobbying process (McKay and Lazarus 2023). Revolving-door lobbyists earn more money than other lobbyists, and this financial premium presumably represents the value of government access and policy expertise (Ban, Palmer, and Schneer 2019; Bertrand, Bombardini, and Trebbi 2014; Blanes i Vidal, Draca, and Fons-Rosen 2012; Cain and Drutman 2014; McCrain 2018). These dynamics have also been observed at the state-level, with former legislators earning more money and obtaining favorable policy outcomes more often than other lobbyists, contingent on former colleagues remaining in office (Strickland 2020, 2023). However, most of these studies only indirectly measure connections and expertise using financial data as a proxy. If revolving-door lobbyists derive their advantages from their prior work experience, then further attention must be paid to how lobbyists cultivate, accumulate, and mobilize capital over the course of their careers, and how these processes vary across career trajectories.
In this article, I argue that the revolving door acts as a mechanism for the accumulation and cultivation of cultural capital in the form of political credibility. Drawing on 52 semistructured interviews with policy professionals, I identify three components of political credibility—credentials, bureaucratic competence, and claims to policy expertise—and illustrate how revolving-door career trajectories shape processes of credibility accumulation and depreciation. As individuals navigate various revolving-door careers, they cultivate forms of political credibility that distinguish themselves from other lobbyists and enhance the legitimacy of the corporations they represent.
This study makes several contributions to the literature on lobbying and political elites, clarifying how the revolving door provides advantages for both individuals and corporations in the form of political credibility. It provides a theoretical framework for understanding how policy professionals generate cultural capital over the course of their career trajectories, and how such capital benefits the organizations for which they work. By adopting a qualitative approach to understanding revolving door lobbying, this study uncovers the heterogeneity of revolving-door careers, and the processes through which policy professionals distinguish themselves, their careers, and the corporations and interest groups for which they work.
Prior Research on Revolving Door Lobbying
Revolving-door careers are widespread among policy professionals in the United States. In Congress, 25 percent of House members and 29 percent of senators later register as lobbyists (Lazarus, McKay, and Herbel 2016). Although federal agencies vary, studies have estimated that the rate of “covered” government employees 2 becoming lobbyists ranges from 23 percent in the U.S. Department of Transportation to 11 percent in the Securities and Exchange Commission and 5 percent in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Bolton and McCrain 2025). Among approximately 14,000 registered lobbyists, about half have worked in government (LaPira and Thomas 2014). However, revolving-door careers are not limited to those who exit government into private sector lobbying. Among individuals with revolving-door careers, many also enter government from the private sector. Approximately 25 percent of bureaucrats were lobbyists before entering government, and 14 percent of congressional staffers held positions as lobbyists before entering Congress (Egerod and McCrain 2023). Thus, individuals move across sectors in both directions.
Most scholars explain the prevalence of the revolving door as an economically rational move for lobbying firms and individuals. Lobbyist salaries are considerably higher than public sector salaries. 3 Studies find that revolving-door lobbyists generate profit and revenue for private sector firms. Connections to legislators and legislative staff are associated with higher lobbying revenues (McCrain 2018; Strickland 2020, 2023). Firms also benefit when their employees leave for government positions. When lobbyists move into government, their private sector employers report larger revenues (Egerod and McCrain 2023), see an increase in stock values (Luechinger and Moser 2014), and reduce lobbying spending (Lee and You 2023). These studies assume that revenues represent the economic value of social connections and policy expertise that revolving-door lobbyists can provide (Cain and Drutman 2014). Indeed, when members of Congress retire or lose elections, the lobbying revenues of their former staffers decrease (Blanes i Vidal et al. 2012). In state legislatures, turnover is negatively associated with revolving-door lobbyists’ revenues (Strickland 2020, 2023).
If connections, information, and expertise are so valuable, how are they used in the lobbying process? Lobbyists’ social capital provides interest groups with access to policymakers, as well as opportunities to gather information (Drutman 2015). In Congress, policymakers have limited resources with which to shape a large range of issues, so the information that lobbyists wield can act as a “subsidy” on legislative labor (Hall and Deardorff 2006). In agencies, bureaucrats rely on outside “epistemic communities” (Haas 1992) to provide scientific (Jasanoff 1990), legal (Shaffer 2003), and economic (Berman 2022) expertise in complex regulatory matters. Much of this expertise resides within corporations and business interest groups (Drutman 2015), who employ lobbyists to shape the facts and basic cultural frameworks through which bureaucrats interpret policy issues (Li 2023). Thus, revolving-door lobbyists possess the social capital to gather information from other policy professionals and communicate with policymakers, as well as mobilize their own policy expertise alongside technical expertise from industry actors.
However, scholars have debated the extent to which revolving-door lobbyists’ expertise, information, and social capital ultimately benefit firms. A growing body of literature shows that firms benefit from the revolving door before they hire policymakers. Policymakers approve patents (Tabakovic and Wollmann 2018) and genetically modified crops (Katic and Kim 2024), relax regulatory enforcement (deHaan et al. 2015), and inflate credit ratings (Cornaggia, Cornaggia, and Xia 2016) for their future employers. Thus, revolving doors create conflicts of interest for policymakers, and firms hire former policymakers as a reward for prior behavior. In their study of crop approvals in the Department of Agriculture, Katic and Kim (2024) found that firms do not experience additional benefits after a revolving-door lobbyist is hired, contrary to the expectation that lobbyists provide advantages in social capital and expertise. However, it is unclear whether their findings in this specific regulatory issue are generalizable to other types of policymaking processes. Baumgartner et al. (2009) found that revolving-door lobbyists are more likely than other lobbyists to achieve favorable policy outcomes. In their study of higher education funding, McKay and Lazarus (2023) found that revolving-door lobbyists are able to secure more funding for universities than other lobbyists, which they attribute to both connections and expertise.
These debates speak to larger issues around measuring policy influence and lobbying success. LaPira and Thomas (2017) argued that firms do not hire revolving-door lobbyists solely to secure policy outcomes, but to use their insider knowledge to resolve political uncertainty and ambiguity for firms. Similarly, Jia (2018) argued that in areas of uncertainty, firms look for lobbyists who can grant legitimacy to their interests. Thus, although revolving-door lobbyists could create opportunities to proactively influence policy outcomes, they may also seek to maintain the status quo or block policy decisions. Lobbyists operate in moments of explicit, observable decision making, as well as in quiet politics (Culpepper 2010; Hojnacki et al. 2015) and agenda setting (Bachrach and Baratz 1962; Kingdon 1984; Yackee 2012, 2020). The benefits that revolving-door lobbyists might provide may not manifest as quantifiable, discrete policy decisions.
Instead, revolving-door lobbyists may influence policy by socializing ideas and values across the public and private spheres (Tyllström 2021), facilitating cultural consensus and even capture between policymakers and corporate elites (Kwak 2014; Li 2023). A large body of research shows that career mobility and shared professional experiences facilitate political coordination and class cohesion among corporate elites (Burris 2005; Mills and Domhoff 2023; Mintz and Schwartz 1987; Mizruchi 1992; Murray 2017; Useem 1984). Similarly, revolving-door lobbyists could also facilitate cohesion and coordination among a class of policy professionals, creating interlocks and policy networks (Laumann and Knoke 1987) between government and private sector organizations. Thus, revolving-door lobbyists may not just be valuable for their individual attributes and skills, but for their ability to legitimize corporate interests throughout policy networks, generating cultural and even hegemonic power.
Although debates persist about the value of revolving-door lobbyists’ connections and expertise, extant literature suggests that business lobbying does affect the policymaking process, and that in areas of uncertainty, revolving-door lobbyists provide benefits for firms that other lobbyists may not. However, revolving-door lobbyists vary in the kinds of work they do, the resources with which they do it, and the audiences to which their work is targeted. To understand how individual lobbyists cultivate and mobilize their resources, and how they vary in doing so, I turn to sociological research on elites and capital conversion.
Capital Conversion and Accumulation
Revolving-door lobbyists, like other elites, accumulate social and cultural capital through their social backgrounds, education, and work experience. Sociologists have detailed how elites develop networks and modes of distinction through family origins and class backgrounds (Bourdieu 2000; Domhoff 1967; Mills 1956) and educational institutions (Binder and Abel 2019; Ho 2009; Khan 2012; Rivera 2015) before entering into elite careers. Revolving-door careers have also been discussed as mechanisms for the conversion and accumulation of social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986; de Saint Martin 2011). Bourdieu (1998:329–33) observed how French civil servants mobilized their cultural and social capital in the form of educational credentials, government titles, and personal connections to secure prominent industry roles. Vauchez and France (2021) also documented how social and cultural capital from elite schools and high-level government work facilitate lawyers “crossing over” from government into corporate law firms. Thus, revolving-door lobbyists possess social and cultural capital from prior government experience, as well as broader forms of capital cultivated over their lives, including ties forged through one’s family, social milieu, and education, as well as elite credentials, ways of speaking and presenting oneself, as well as general ease and confidence in social settings (Bourdieu 1986, 1998; Khan 2012).
These insights point to two gaps in quantitative studies of revolving doors. First, although scholars have documented how revolving-door lobbyists accrue and mobilize social capital, cultural capital has been relatively less defined. Although prior research has discussed expertise, the concept remains fairly undefined, with some scholars describing it as “what you know” at a subject matter level (Bertrand et al. 2014), and others focusing on legal and process knowledge (Ban et al. 2019; LaPira and Thomas 2017). Although scholars have used qualitative data to understand how lobbying activity, most of these studies have refrained from employing systematic qualitative analysis, instead presenting biographic profiles (Leech 2013) or selectively quoting interviews to illustrate the mechanisms of their quantitative findings (Drutman 2015; LaPira and Thomas 2017). Thus, applying a cultural capital approach can clarify the cultural and relational contexts in which expertise might vary across organizations and audiences, or how different forms of expertise may conflict with each other. In these settings, lobbyists might not just draw on “what they know” substantively or procedurally, but also deploy their credentials, experience and self-presentation to enhance their authority and legitimacy. Thus, expertise, whether technical or procedural, may be just one component of how lobbyists cultivate broader forms of cultural capital.
Second, we know little about how capital varies across different kinds of revolving-door career trajectories. Revolving-door lobbyists draw on capital generated not only from prior government employment, but also from their upbringing and longer career trajectory. This creates moments for revolving-door careers to vary and stratify in how they confer resources to individuals. Through career transitions, de Saint Martin (2011) theorized that individuals undergo an “incomplete reconversion” of capital. Although a complete reconversion would require individuals to relinquish all the capital they held prior to such a move (e.g., someone moving from government to industry and cutting off all ties with government officials), an incomplete reconversion allows one to hold onto prior resources, maintaining their old position to some extent while accumulating new forms of capital. Thus, moving once through the revolving door is substantively different than multiple moves, which further accrue capital. Furthermore, over time, capital from prior positions can fade. Social ties, unless actively maintained, decay over time (Burt 2002, 2005:197). Knowledge of bureaucratic procedures may become outdated with political transitions and turnovers (Strickland 2020), and industry dynamics can also shift rapidly. Together, these insights point toward a need to bring cultural context and temporality into our understandings of how capital is acquired, converted, and accumulated by revolving-door lobbyists over the course of their careers.
Data and Methods
To understand the accumulation of capital through revolving-door careers, I conducted interviews with a range of policy professionals engaged in federal policymaking. This study followed an abductive approach (Timmermans and Tavory 2012) for recruitment, interviewing, and analysis. As a former policy professional employed in a federal government agency, I was already embedded in professional networks around trade and economic regulation. Familiar with prior work on elites, interest groups, and revolving door lobbying, I sought to interview individuals who would be able to speak to how social capital and expertise shaped their careers and their work. Abductive analysis allowed me to revisit the field with a broad scope of interest, observing when phenomena diverged from or were unaccounted for by existing theories.
Seeking a broad range of respondents, I used several channels to recruit professionals employed by organizations seeking to “influence, support, or implement public policies.” I recruited individuals with and without revolving-door careers, to contrast the career trajectories of revolvers and nonrevolvers. I circulated an online call for participants on social media networks, through Washington-based university alumni groups, and on the listservs of professional associations and networking groups. Additional respondents were also identified through snowball sampling. I also recruited respondents from fieldwork for a prior study, attendance at networking events and policy conferences in Washington, and my own network from my prior professional experience in Washington. I also reached out to individuals through online platforms where professionals typically brandish their work credentials, such as LinkedIn and X. Interviews were initially conducted in person, on the phone, or through an online video meeting platform between fall 2021 and early 2023. A few follow-up interviews with individuals who had changed jobs were conducted in fall 2024.
This study draws on interviews with 52 policy professionals, 31 of whom are revolving-door lobbyists, having worked in both public office and in a private sector advocacy role over the course of their careers. Respondents represented a wide range of organizations. Respondent characteristics are described in Table 1. Among those who worked in government, most had experience in Congress or in a federal agency, and a small percentage of respondents had worked in the judiciary or in local or state government. Notably, most of the respondents in this study have worked in federal agencies, where revolving doors have been relatively less studied compared with Congress (Bolton and McCrain 2025; Egerod and McCrain 2023). The representation of federal agency officials may shape the study’s findings on cultural capital and expertise. Federal agency officials tend to be older, spend more time working in government, and specialize in policy issues more than Congressional staffers (Bolton and McCrain 2025). However, although the forms of political credibility identified in this study may be a feature of federal agency experience, nearly a quarter of all respondents (23 percent) have worked on Capitol Hill, suggesting that political credibility can be cultivated through a range of government credentials and experiences. Respondents represented a mix of private sector organizations, including in-house roles (e.g., within a company or industry association) or multiclient services (e.g., contract lobbying).
Respondent Characteristics.
Respondents also represented a wide range of issue areas and sectors, including environmental policy, trade policy, national security, education policy, and financial regulation. Organizations represented include agribusiness firms, energy companies, retailers, technology firms, banks, pharmaceuticals, and business-wide interest groups. Technology lobbyists are overrepresented in this study because of recruitment techniques. However, many lobbyists interviewed in this study, including tech lobbyists, have worked in different sectors and issue areas over the course of their careers. Most respondents are based in Washington, D.C., although a small number of respondents were located outside of D.C., working remotely or from their corporate headquarters elsewhere in the United States.
Interviews are uniquely suited for understanding the effects of the revolving door on individuals’ careers. Most studies of lobbying in the United States rely on data generated by the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA). Yet, up to half of all U.S. federal lobbying activity is unreported (Thomas and LaPira 2017), and approximately two-thirds of registered revolving-door lobbyists do not report their prior government employment (LaPira and Thomas 2014). Thus, although revolving-door lobbyists often move between sectors several times throughout their careers (Chalmers et al. 2022), existing data sources are limited in measuring a single revolving door transition, let alone the full span of a lobbyist’s career. Furthermore, most of the literature on revolving-door lobbyists’ connections and expertise are derived from the financial revenues reported by contract lobbying firms. Other organizations, including corporations, industry associations, and industry-funded nonprofits, do not report revenues, and their lobbyists are excluded from these studies. In this study, 21 of 31 respondents with revolving-door careers were unregistered lobbyists, and of the 10 who registered, many had held other unregistered lobbying positions during their career. Of 34 respondents who have worked in the private sector, 19 have worked in-house at corporations, 9 have worked in-house for industry associations, and 20 have worked at multiclient firms. Thus, interviews can cover a wider range of lobbying experiences and career trajectories not measured by financial analysis of LDA data.
Furthermore, through interviews, individuals can describe substantive nuances in the types of capital they accrue and mobilize in the course of their work, across different organizations and sectors. They can speak directly to how they draw on their social networks, policy knowledge, personal background, credentials, and other resources, not only in pursuit of career opportunities, but also in their efforts to influence the policymaking process. Interviews can also provide insight into a wide range of organizational practices, like agenda setting, lobbying strategy, and hiring practices, across sectors and types of organizations, that would not be practically observable through the LDA, or other qualitative methods such as fieldwork or analysis of publicly available documents.
Most interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes, although some continued past 2 hours. A few respondents sat for multiple interviews lasting at least an hour each. In-person interviews were typically conducted in a location of the respondent’s choosing, which ranged from their private offices and homes to coffee shops and public parks. Prior to these interviews, respondents completed a short questionnaire with demographic information and shared a resume or LinkedIn profile. During these interviews, I asked questions to construct the respondent’s narrative of their life course. I asked respondents about their upbringing, early professional ambitions, and educational experiences. We discussed their career trajectories, including descriptions of each job they held, how they found these jobs, how these jobs shaped their social networks, skills, expertise, and experience, their reasons for pursuing or leaving various positions, and their impressions of their own experience and status in relation to others.
I also asked probing questions about respondents’ experiences moving across sectors and organizations, including how they interact with their former colleagues, specific examples of lobbying activity, their impressions on ineffective and effective lobbyists, how their work experience affected subsequent career opportunities, and if applicable, how they approach hiring decisions. Here, my own professional history as a former government employee helped me frame and navigate these sensitive topics. Some respondents initially declined to discuss lobbying activity or provided short or euphemistic answers. When appropriate, I often returned to the subject of lobbying in relation to an experience that the respondent had brought up, or to my own experiences, which would typically elicit more detailed responses.
All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed for coding purposes. Research assistants aided in the transcription and basic coding of these interviews. Transcripts were coded in NVivo first through flexible coding methods (Deterding and Waters 2021); indexical codes captured basic descriptive labels, including various stages of one’s career (e.g., childhood, college, first job, retirement), employers (e.g., federal agencies, Congress, lobbying firms, law firms, companies), and relationships (e.g., mentors, colleagues, supervisors, classmates, parents). I then applied analytical codes under the categories of economic, social, and cultural capital. Although I expected to focus on policy expertise as cultural capital, I was puzzled by how little respondents referenced specific forms of technical expertise in their careers. Rather, they tended to emphasize broader forms of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986). Furthermore, cultural capital was not merely cumulative, but varied and diminished according to one’s career trajectory. Following the recursive analytical strategies of abductive analysis (Tavory and Timmermans 2014:65), subsequent coding focused on types of political credibility and ways of mobilizing such credibility. All respondents have been assigned pseudonyms, and organizations have been generalized to minimize identifiability.
Findings
Sociologists have detailed many mechanisms through which individuals enter and advance in elite professions, including socioeconomic advantages, social connections, and the cultivation of cultural capital. With respect to policy professionals, cultural capital operates primarily as political credibility. In this section, I first define and describe three components of political credibility—credentials, bureaucratic competence, and claims to policy expertise—before illustrating how they are cultivated and mobilized over the course of revolving-door careers. Because individuals can move through the revolving door in either direction, and at multiple times, I analyze how political credibility accumulates and depreciates as one begins their career (gets a “foot in the door”), makes a first transition between sectors (“turning the door”) and then moves through the revolving door multiple times (“spinning through the door”). Although turning and spinning through the door provide opportunities for professionals to accumulate political credibility, these processes are not purely cumulative. Credibility depreciation can occur over time and across different audiences. As a result, revolving-door careers stratify lobbyists in their abilities to provide access and legitimacy to the corporations and interest groups they represent.
Components of Political Credibility
Political credibility is a form of cultural capital that policy professionals cultivate to distinguish themselves in Washington. Credibility emerges from several sources, including one’s educational and professional credentials, the development of bureaucratic competence, and claims to policy expertise. Although some components of political credibility, like educational credentials and expertise claims, can develop from one’s upbringing and education, political credibility is primarily shaped by one’s specific professional experiences.
Credentials operate as what Bourdieu (1986) called the institutionalized form of cultural capital, bestowing recognition upon individuals. These take the form of degrees from elite universities, work experience in prestigious organizations, and job titles conferring rank and status. For example, as a junior lawyer new to Washington, Andrew credited his academic credentials for drawing attention to his resume, making up for a lack of social capital: “This is where coming from a working-class background has always been a handicap. The networking. Aggressive networking never came naturally. . . . But again, I had Brown and Stanford on my resume.”
Academic credentials confer “plausibility” to individuals, absent substantive experience. When Neil made a midcareer transition, he described how his Harvard and Yale degrees facilitated his first government position in a relatively senior, managerial role, working on a policy issue in which he did not have issue-area expertise.
I think that the high prestige schools buy you the first interview, and maybe it buys you plausibility in areas that you wouldn’t necessarily have plausibility in. When I came to [the agency], I had done zero [work in that policy area], I had no background whatsoever. But I was considered plausible. I think they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, you can learn this on the fly. It’s always been my assumption that they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt because of my degrees.
Professional credentials also confer prestige and trust. Rachel was hired from a law firm into a prestigious government office. She credited the reputation of her private sector employer for opening this door: “It wasn’t because of me, so much as my affiliation with [my firm]. At that time, it was the most prestigious place to [work on this policy issue].” Similarly, Todd, a tech lobbyist, often introduces himself in meetings by mentioning his prior government experience, as a “means of establishing trust,” because it “can engender a little more confidence, people just sort of know where you’re coming from. It’s a little bit more of a bona fide.” The credential alone, even without any demonstration of one’s abilities or knowledge, distinguishes policy professionals.
Political credibility also emerges from one’s bureaucratic competence, on the basis of knowledge of both formal procedures and informal norms. Janet, who spent 30 years in government, described this as
Just knowing how things really work. You can always tell when somebody was never in government, because what they say about how to approach the government, what they say about the people who work in government, and what they say about when to weigh in on something . . . they’re usually not right.
Janet gave examples of navigating rulemaking processes and other formal procedures within federal agencies, the various formal and informal channels through which someone should contact government employees, and knowing who the appropriate contact might be, all of which varies by issue area. Furthermore, “knowing how things really work” is not limited to knowledge of government processes, but also extends to the private sector. Lisa, who works on regulatory affairs for an investment bank, described how when hiring others, she looks for knowledge of government rulemaking processes as well as familiarity with how companies and industry groups approach policymaking processes. Although some might be experts in finance,
there’s a lot of things . . . you might not know to even ask about if you hadn’t been part of making the sausage. Is the person going to know that new rules are published in the Federal Register? . . . Do they know about the American Bankers Association, one of our primary lobbying groups? If [the American Bankers Association] is submitting a comment to the [Treasury Department], and they wanted to know if we wanted to sign on, is [the candidate] going to know what that’s about?
Lisa gave examples of when she represented her company within industry associations, which have different governance structures and norms for policy collaboration. Her ability to effectively represent her company relied on being sensitive to these different norms and structures.
Finally, political credibility also rests on one’s claims to policy expertise. Although prior literature has emphasized the importance of policy expertise among revolving-door lobbyists, respondents who had gone through the revolving door rarely referred to mastery of a particular technical or scientific body of knowledge. Rather, they often framed expertise as general political knowledge and the ability to learn quickly about new substantive areas and engage confidently with a wide range of issues. Tim, a lobbyist for a fintech startup, realized while working at a federal agency that he wasn’t a “policy wonk” like his colleagues. In his current role, he observed, “You need to be able to dive deep, but you also need to be able to talk to other human beings who aren’t policy nerds.” Isabelle, who works for a technology company with interests in patents and standards setting, had little substantive experience in this sector from her previous job at a federal agency. Instead, she described her “foundational skills” as
Learning new stuff all the time, as the technology is always changing. Trying to find common goals, what you’re trying to solve, and what your audience cares about. That’s a rubric you can apply if you’re talking about trade agreements, or domestic policy, or [a specific technological feature in our products].
As Isabelle emphasized, she found that being able to learn quickly and apply general political knowledge was more valuable than being a technical expert in her field. Sally, a lobbyist for a food and beverage company, spent most of her career in government working on agriculture policy. In her new role, she described having to be flexible and balance several parts of her company, including an environmental policy team, a risk analysis team, economists, and health and wellness experts. Her role was not necessarily to be a subject matter expert, but to “leverage insights from across the organization” and “help anticipate and influence what’s going into policy” across a range of agencies and policy fora.
As policy professionals revolve between private sector and government, they accrue various forms of credentials, bureaucratic competence, and claims to policy expertise that ultimately enhance their political credibility. In the following section, I detail how opportunities to cultivate credibility emerge as individuals convert economic, social, and cultural capital through job transitions, and how the timing and sequencing of revolving-door moves changes the processes through which political credibility accumulate and depreciate.
Accumulation and Depreciation Processes
Getting a Foot in the Door
Before a policy professional goes through a revolving door, they first need to get a job. These first work experiences shape the trajectories through which individuals build political credibility. However, consistent with sociological research on hiring and labor market entry in elite professions (Binder, Davis, and Bloom 2016; Bourdieu 1998; Granovetter 1995; Ho 2009; Rivera 2015), economic, social, and cultural capital shape whether and where individuals begin their policy careers. In general, respondents reported having more difficulty landing a job in government than in private sector lobbying. Positions in government, whether in Congress, federal agencies, or the judicial branch, tend to pay considerably less than the private sector, and are often characterized by exclusive, competitive, and slow hiring processes.
Factors such as family socioeconomic status, prestigious educational credentials, and relationships cultivated through school and family can eliminate or lessen roadblocks to government. Isabelle described a long process for getting hired in her first job in a federal agency, which started with an unpaid internship found through a family connection.
I was an intern for a year. So that was another benefit I was able to take advantage of, that my parents were in D.C., and I was living with them. But had I not had that luxury, I don’t think I would’ve been able to stay as long, to last to a point to eventually be hired.
Other respondents also described long timelines for starting in government, citing background checks, bureaucratic review and approval timelines, and uncertainty in agency funding as obstacles. For many young people with student loans, or with little to no savings, waiting through procedural delays was not an option.
However, individuals with social connections and knowledge of government hiring processes found ways to expedite or decrease uncertainty in the process. Todd and Joshua had both been finalists for a fellowship that placed young professionals in federal agencies. Both were initially unable to find positions that were relevant to their interests. However, Todd attended an elite graduate school in D.C., during which he worked in an unpaid internship in a federal agency. He was able to convince his supervisor to open a position for him through this fellowship, and after completing the fellowship, he was hired into a permanent position. Although Joshua also attended an elite graduate school, he described his family as financially struggling and relied on financial aid, part-time work, and student loans. When trying to find a placement, which required navigating a confusing job board, Joshua failed to “get any traction.” Joshua described how he gave up on his lifelong goal to become a public servant:
It was coming up on the six-month mark of when the loan grace period ends and interest starts incurring. I’ve been bartending, housesitting, and dog sitting. I’ve got a month to find a job before I start paying interest. . . . I reached out to my [grad school] network . . . within 10 minutes, a friend [at a consulting firm] said they were hiring . . . and two weeks later I had a job offer.
Todd and Joshua’s divergent experiences illustrate many of the barriers to government employment, as well as the advantages that economic support, social connections, and insider knowledge from internships can provide. However, Joshua’s social network, although less embedded in government than Todd’s or Isabelle’s, still made it possible for him to easily find a job as a consultant making six figures in D.C.
Most respondents described using connections and/or relying on family support in the context of finding their first job in Washington. Rarely did someone report that they had gotten a job solely on the basis of an application alone. Those who began in government typically credited a connection through school, family, or internships, and acknowledged their financial reliance on family, scholarships, and prior savings, not only to wait out long hiring processes, but also for sustained support while employed in government. Many others who had incurred student loans, had limited social networks, and limited internship opportunities, described wanting to work in government, but lacking the knowledge or connections to get a job. Instead, private sector jobs would provide financial support, as well as the chance to build networks and credibility in public policy, hopefully facilitating future career moves.
Turning the Door
Once individuals establish their careers in Washington, turning the revolving door is a process of mobilizing existing forms of political credibility for the opportunity to accrue new forms of credibility. Among respondents, those revolving out of government brandish their titles, knowledge of government processes, and proficiency navigating a range of policy issues, while lobbyists revolving into government emphasize their knowledge of industry or market dynamics.
Respondents explicitly attributed their successful career transitions to their credentials and past experiences. Robert, who started his own consulting firm after retiring as a senior-level policymaker, said what private sector clients wanted was “to be able to say that a former [senior official] was advising them.” Dan, who joined a multiclient firm after a senior-level appointment at a federal agency, was hired because they needed “somebody who understands domestic politics, understands China, and can fill in the things that [other partners who left] did while they were there.” Those revolving into government from the private sector also credited their past experiences. Andrew had worked for a firm with business overseas, before working in government on international economic policy:
I’d been in the international world, but I’ve never been through [my policy area] in like, a grad school context where you’re studying stuff in the abstract. And you can see the difference between somebody who sees it in the abstract and somebody who sees it concretely. When I saw it, I saw it in the professional world.
Social capital also facilitates moving through the revolving door, but connections alone are typically not sufficient for doing so. Respondents emphasized that while they used social connections to learn about different organizations and job opportunities, or introductions to new people, they also needed their political credibility to secure the job. Laura, a government attorney, found a new job as a policy adviser to a Fortune 50 company through a family connection. She was defensive about how she was hired. “I feel like the assumption there is, ‘Oh, you’re one of those people who’s rich and connected, and your dad got you a job.’ But I actually hustled my way to that introduction,” she explained. Her general political knowledge, backed up by her government credential, seemed to make the difference in her interview. “[My supervisor] started picking my brain about policy, politics, what’s going on in Asia, where we’re going to be heading with this administration. And I guess I said enough right things that they wanted to hire me.” Similarly, Mark, the head lobbyist for a large U.S. tech company, described his hiring criteria:
It’s a couple things. The biggest one is, I have a huge bias towards people who have government experience . . . having sat in these jobs and done them makes a huge difference. . . . Second is are they purely relational, or can they actually understand and think about the issues? There’s some people who are great on the relationships side but can’t explain [their policy argument].
Mark emphasized that in his experience, “relationships only get you so far in this town,” and needed to be backed up the bureaucratic competence and policy expertise that comes from prior work experiences.
Once individuals turn the revolving door, they begin accruing new forms of political credibility. Respondents described circulating between jobs as a strategy for adding credentials to their resumes. Andre, a lobbyist, hopped between organizations explicitly “as a way to get ‘Director’ on a resume and to jump into bigger and better things.” Revolving around also creates chances to widen the scope of issues one works on, and their claims to policy expertise. Gary joined a tech company as an in-house policy adviser after working as a government attorney. When I first interviewed him while in government, he described himself as an expert in his area of U.S. law. Three years later at the company, however, he said,
I’m learning a ton. I wanted to do more international work, and now I am our resident EU [European Union] expert, I have learned a lot about European law in six months. And the Australian government has this advisory group I just joined. So I’m getting a ton of growth experience.
Although individuals accumulate new forms of political credibility by turning the door, credibility can also devalue. Credentials which might enhance someone’s reputation can be stigmatized across different political contexts. Rick, a lobbyist for a large tech company, had difficulty finding a job with a Democratic politician because of his registered lobbying work.
I managed to make contact with one of their economic advisers and had a great conversation. At the end of it, it came out that I was registered. And he might as well have hung up midsentence. Because they didn’t want to work with people who were registered. But they were ready to work with the exact same people doing the exact same thing who are not registered.
Although Rick’s private sector credentials were valued by other policy professionals, and Rick later secured another job as an industry lobbyist, he felt that he had to move away from registered lobbying work to eventually go back into public service. Mark, who had also been a registered lobbyist, was less worried about the stigma of registration, but cautious about the specific interests he would represent.
You often can’t choose your clients [as a lobbyist]. But the more senior you get, the more ability you have to choose who you work for. I do think in a world where you’re judged by everything you do, you’re judged by the company you keep, you’re judged by the types of things you’re involved with. If someone worked for some member of Congress who I thought was extreme, I wouldn’t hire them.
Without regard for the actual tasks, skills, or expertise involved in any of these roles, both Rick and Mark recognized that certain roles or affiliations were stigmatized for certain audiences. Mark gave examples of people who took cases representing foreign governments and gun companies, who advanced in their firms but likely closed off other employment options. He also described his own reputational red lines for lobbying, which would prevent his ability to move back into government, especially as a Democratic appointee.
I would always like to preserve the ability to go back into government in some way. I think it’s almost a nonstarter to ever go back into government if you register under [the Foreign Agent Registration Act]. There’s others I would say no to just for reputational reasons. Tobacco companies. I wouldn’t work for one of those. I had one approach [me]. I said no. It’s more just a question of how it’s perceived.
Although some institutional labels, like prestigious schools and political institutions, are widely legible and valued, other affiliations with politicians, interest groups, or companies perceived as unethical can hinder one’s ability to move through the revolving door.
Bureaucratic competency and claims to policy expertise can also fade over time. Just eight months after leaving his government job to become a pharmaceutical lobbyist, Neil told me, “it’s hard to understand what’s going on anymore. You lose pretty quickly the feel of what the direction of different [issues] are. Or what people are really focused on. What are they spending their time doing?” Over time, as administrations and policy issues change, the depreciation of bureaucratic competency creates significant barriers and costs. Martha was a junior legislative staffer early in her career before revolving out into the private sector. After about 20 years of working for trade associations and companies, she acknowledged,
My knowledge on process is not as strong. . . . [Others] really understand the inner workings. . . . I understand all those mechanisms, but they understand it in a bit of a different and unique way. My way to offset [this] is by hiring outside consultants that [worked in government]. And they can advise me.
The political credibility that lobbyists bring to their work thus depends on the amount of time that has passed since they revolved.
Stan learned this the hard way, when he tried to leave his job at an oil company. He had been a Republican congressional staffer and a political appointee, but seven years had passed since he was in government, and his work had gone from lobbying to become more internally facing in his company. He had difficulty finding another corporate lobbying role.
The feedback I would get was, “we went with someone who was just off the Hill.” I heard that multiple times. And it was very disheartening. And so if I could get [another job], all of a sudden, my contacts aren’t stale, my knowledge of the Hill isn’t stale. I’ve been doing this, I understand what the landscape is.
Stan felt that to renew his political credibility, he would have to revolve back out of the private sector.
Spinning through the Door
With each turn through the revolving door, respondents reported their political credibility accumulating in their new positions, becoming more diverse and distinct. Spinning through the revolving door—moving between sectors multiple times—allows individuals to renew capital that might be fading by collecting new credentials, refreshing bureaucratic know-how, and developing broader claims to policy expertise.
As a midcareer Republican, Stan knew he would not be able to revolve back into government during the Obama administration. Instead, he found a job at a liberal environmental nonprofit, lobbying Republican lawmakers on their behalf. Stan recognized that he had taken an unusual path in his career but felt that his partisan credentials and oil industry experience were a benefit, and lent him credibility when representing the nonprofit before Republican lawmakers.
There are times when I feel like I’m a bit of a unicorn. And then, there are times when I’m just one of tens of thousands of hacks living and working in the orbit of government. . . . This uniqueness that I have, it’s something I try to market when I’m looking for jobs. These are the boxes I’ve checked. You’re not going to find too many people who have this set of perspectives, and experiences, and maybe that’s something that’s appealing to you as a company. I’m trying to sell that.
In calling himself both a hack and a unicorn, Stan highlights how revolving door lobbying is widespread, and often self-interested, shallow, and transactional. Yet revolving-door careers are also a way for individuals to distinguish themselves in their perspectives, experiences, and knowledge.
Through repeated moves between sectors, individuals cultivate distinct reputations and claims of expertise through the revolving door. Mark, who had revolved between industry and government several times, pursued roles that would distinguish his experience and policy expertise. “There were two points where I made very intentional decisions. One was . . . I needed to go and get management experience somewhere, so I can add that as a thing on my resume.” To fulfill that experience, Mark took a role as an in-house corporate lobbyist.
The second was, how do I get away from being somebody who’s like one of the hundreds of people who lobby on the Hill every day? . . . Up until then, the tech lobbyists thought I was a tech lobbyist, the banking lobbyists thought [I was a banking lobbyist]. I could fake being a bunch of things.
To distinguish himself, Mark then pursued a government position where he could “build the experience and credentials of having engaged” in specific areas of economic policy. Similarly, Alan, a lobbyist in his 40s, had gone through the revolving door five times, alternating between lobbying and government work every 2 to 5 years. He framed his broad expertise in ways that would maximize his occupational mobility.
Build up two pillars of your career; have a regional and a functional specialty. Say that you work on the Caucasus, Latin America, or whatever, but then also, you spent a lot of time in arms control, or conflict negotiation, or whatever it is, so that as your career moves, you can pitch yourself as one or the other. Otherwise, you get kind of pigeonholed. So I tried to balance two things, build up two areas of expertise to be able to bounce back and forth. Whichever made the most sense, sell it to that audience.
Again, expertise was rarely invoked by respondents to describe specific substantive knowledge or technical skill, but rather, familiarity and comfort with a broader umbrella of policy issues.
As revolving-door lobbyists distinguish themselves in their careers, their credibility serves the corporations and interest groups for which they work. Credibility allows lobbyists to maintain their organization’s access and legitimacy with policymakers. Interest group access does not emerge solely from being able to contact a policymaker, but from knowing when and how to do so. Tim, a lobbyist for a fintech startup, described how he made the case to his company to hire in-house lobbyists with government experience.
Many times [startups] don’t see the value [of government relations] until there’s a crisis on legislation and they hire a bunch of attorneys and lobbyists. That’s one of the things that we’ve been working on now, is building that capital and notability ahead of time. So when something goes down, we have the relationships—people know who we are.
Tim felt that although companies could hire lobbyists or lawyers on short term contracts, having revolving-door lobbyists on staff would generate a positive, “notable” reputation for the company, allowing sustained, proactive engagement rather than reactive damage control. Similarly, Janet felt her bureaucratic competence advantaged her company with respect to competitors.
We have a lot of calls with other companies that share our concerns about issues. By the time a Federal Register notice has come out, there’s already been a huge conversation. And if you weren’t part of that conversation, if you didn’t realize that conversation was happening, you couldn’t educate people and give them things to think about, as they were forming the questions and the notice. . . . You’re already on the back foot.
Janet used the rulemaking process as an example of how “outsiders” lack the bureaucratic competence to shape policy proactively, through informal channels. Those with government experience would both know that effective lobbying requires engaging regulators before formal processes begin, while they are shaping their understandings of a policy issue.
Interest groups and corporations are also seen as more legitimate stakeholders because of the credibility of their lobbyists. Lobbyists with prior government experience deploy their bureaucratic know-how and general policy expertise to make resonant, publicly minded appeals on behalf of their employers. To credibly represent her company’s interests, Janet described having to put herself in the policymaker’s shoes, navigating complex policy problems and competing interests. In this context, she could provide well-reasoned substantive justifications for her company’s position, which would be framed as the national interest.
A lot of people feel like when you go to the government, you have to convince them. They usually give a very one-sided story. I never found those people to be particularly effective. . . . So [my company] are the people who will come in and say, “Here’s the questions you should be asking. Here’s how we would answer the questions. Here’s how other people would answer the questions. You’re the impartial arbiter that’s supposed to do what’s best for the most people, for the United States, and for the economy. . . . We’re just really trying to get the U.S. to do the right thing. So I’m not selling a bag of crap.” It kind of sells itself.
Similarly, Mark echoed the importance of revolving-door lobbyists being able to make thoughtful, credible arguments that appealed to policymakers’ ideas of the public interest. He colorfully described how he felt when he was in senior positions on the Hill and later in a federal agency.
If you can align your interests and policymakers’ interests, that’s when you’re most likely to be successful. I can remember when I was [in government], people would come in and be like, “Oh, well, this means a lot of money to [the company].” But I don’t give a [$%#&] how much money it is! My job is not to make you money. You’ve got to tell me why you making money is good for the taxpayer. Why is it good for the U.S. government? How does it help advance a policy interest?
To Mark, those who were able to see policymakers’ perspective, speak their language, and align public interests with their corporate bottom line, were more effective. Janet and Mark both drew on their experiences getting lobbied by companies to shape their own approaches to lobbying. Their strategies relied on their broad claims to policy expertise, developed over the course of a career revolving between government and private sector interests. They recognized that policymakers weigh many different interests and perspectives, and that a lobbying strategy based on narrow self-interest would not resonate. Instead, they framed their company’s interests in relation to broader public interests.
By moving through the revolving door multiple times, or spinning through the door, revolving-door lobbyists are able to renew and accumulate distinct forms of political credibility, ultimately building access and legitimacy for corporations and interest groups.
Discussion and Conclusions
The revolving door is a common feature of policy professionals’ careers in Washington. As Stan, the Republican oil lobbyist turned environmental advocate, observed, one might cynically look at the career trajectories of individuals like him, who left public service to go into lobbying, and characterize them as hacks trading on their connections. But despite the ubiquity of these lobbyists, the heterogeneity of revolving-door career trajectories can also create “unicorns” with unique credentials, competencies, and claims to expertise, distinguishing individuals in their careers.
In this article, I propose that the revolving door is a mechanism through which individuals generate cultural capital in the form of political credibility. Although scholars have argued that revolving doors lobbyists advantage corporations by mobilizing connections (“who you know”) and expertise (“what you know”) (Bertrand et al. 2014), the processes through which expertise is developed and mobilized have been relatively underexamined. Through qualitative inquiry, this article details how “what you know” does not merely come down to expertise, but rather, to a concerted effort to cultivate distinct forms of political credibility. Revolving-door careers are heterogeneous in their timing and sequencing, and are thus opportunities for individuals to convert, accumulate, and ultimately distinguish their cultural capital.
This study contributes to a growing body of work that explores political elites as a workforce, and political organizations as employers (Hallett and Gougherty 2024; Jones 2024; Laurison 2022). With this occupational lens, we can thus understand the revolving door as a process of occupational mobility, and a mechanism that creates variation and stratification among policy professionals. Through the revolving door, political credibility accumulates as well as depreciates. Although some job transitions provide opportunities for capital accumulation, capital can also depreciate through stigma and stagnation over time.
This research has important implications for understanding the role of individuals in shaping corporate political influence and political inequality more broadly. Although a robust literature has explored how structural power (Culpepper 2015) and organizational resources (Laumann and Knoke 1987) shape lobbying and advocacy behavior, a company’s influence does not necessarily flow automatically from their financial resources or market power. Rather, the role of individual lobbyists is to convert that economic capital into organizational access and legitimacy with policymakers. Understanding these relational, cultural processes may help make sense of how political inequality operates at the organizational level, as well as cases when policy outcomes do not align with the interests of organizations with greater economic resources.
These findings may also shed light on the processes through which corporations coordinate and collectively mobilize political power. Scholars have debated whether corporate elites are unified or fractured in their political interests (Banerjee and Murray 2021; Chu and Davis 2016; Domhoff 2015; Mizruchi 2013). Although much of this literature focuses on shared membership on corporate boards and policy planning organizations, revolving-door lobbyists may also be an indication of cohesion or fracturing. The social and cultural capital that revolving-door lobbyists accumulate can create interlocks between state and nonstate organizations that facilitate coordination, shared interests, and cultural consensus. Depending on the extent to which policy professionals traverse sectors, industries, and organizations, revolving-door lobbyists could facilitate an inner circle of policymakers and lobbyists with a coherent class identity and shared ideas of credibility, or result in fractured, industry- or domain-specific networks with distinct definitions of political credibility and legitimacy. Variation and stratification in revolving-door careers may also shape the extent to which corporations are able to coordinate and act collectively.
The limitations of this study invite many avenues for future research. First, this study focuses on the effects of revolving-door careers, and not individuals’ motivations for pursuing them. The two may often be conflated (e.g., government officials may be motivated to pursue a lobbying position for the higher pay, and the move typically does result in a higher salary) but are distinct. Throughout this study, respondents reported various motivations and justifications for job transitions, from seeking higher compensation to leaving hostile working conditions, layoffs, political transitions, health issues, ideological commitments, and family demands. These accounts reveal the broader cultural contexts and life course dynamics in which policy professionals live and work, and should be further studied to understand psychological, cultural, institutional, and structural explanations for the rise of revolving door lobbying.
Second, this study’s findings on political credibility are limited to revolving doors between government and corporate lobbying. Although lobbyists can represent nonprofits, labor unions, and other noncorporate entities, the interviews conducted in this study are limited in describing how cultural capital may operate differently in these domains. Policy professionals’ careers can span organizations such as think tanks (Medvetz 2012), campaigns (Laurison 2022), issue-based interest groups (Clemens 1997), nongovernmental organizations (Eagleton-Pierce 2017), and universities (Cook 1998). In broader debates about the nature of democratic power in the United States, the success of these groups often underscores arguments that the United States remains pluralistic (Baumgartner et al. 2009). Studying how a wider range of political organizations generate social and cultural capital will advance our understanding of power and democracy in the United States.
Finally, this study is limited in its ability to generalize how government organizations might benefit from the credibility produced by the revolving door. Although some respondents suggested they were hired into government from the private sector for their industry credibility, moves from lobbying into government were both less common and discussed in relatively less detail in my interviews. This may be because entries have been relatively more regulated and stigmatized, as administrations have adopted limitations on hiring individuals who were registered lobbyists within two years. To understand revolving door benefits for government organizations, future research could examine federal hiring practices and their impacts on bureaucratic activity, public engagement, and policy outcomes.
This study can also inform efforts to improve democratic representation. The revolving door strengthens and legitimizes interest group access to government. These interest groups tend to be more proactive, engaging formally and informally throughout the policymaking process. By contrast, groups without revolving-door lobbyists may fail to recognize these opportunities for engagement, sacrificing their ability to shape policymakers’ perspectives and interests. Although hiring and employment constraints are blunt tools to slow the revolving door, policymakers could design transparency policies, advisory committees, and public engagement procedures to mitigate the access and legitimacy that policymakers afford revolving-door lobbyists, thus reducing the advantages that revolving-door lobbyists provide.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Joseph Conti, Chaeyoon Lim, Fabien Accominotti, Susan Yackee, Elizabeth Popp Berman, Amy Binder, Andy Perrin, Daniel Laurison, Mustafa Yavas, and anonymous peer reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of this article. Thank you to Courtney Schumacher, Travis Miller, Sarah Gesner, and Raphael Jacobson for their research assistance. Earlier versions of this article were presented to the SNF Agora Institute, the Qualitative Methods Workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the 2023 meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-economics and American Sociological Association.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Fieldwork for this project was supported in part by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Graduate School Fellowship.
1
By lobbyists, I refer to individuals who are paid to represent and advocate for an organization’s political interests before government entities. Although this definition is more expansive than the legal definition of lobbyist under U.S. law (see 
), it encompasses individuals who are engaged in lobbying activities but are not registered, as they may fall under time use thresholds or do not interact with public officials covered by reporting requirements.
2
Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, covered officials are defined as employees of Congress (staff members and elected officials), senior executives of federal agencies (e.g., cabinet officials, deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, general counsels, chiefs), Schedule C political appointees, employees of the executive office of the President, and high-level uniformed officers. Most “bureaucrats” classified as civil servants are not covered officials.
3
For example, White House financial disclosures have illustrated the pay cuts that lobbyists take when they move to government. In 2017, a special assistant to the president made $115,000, compared with the $1.1 million he earned as a partner in a law and lobbying firm. Another White House staffer took home a salary of $140,000, compared with the nearly $1 million she earned in salary and stock benefits as an in-house corporate lobbyist (). Although these salaries may not be representative of revolving-door lobbyists’ moving into or out of other agencies, respondents in this study also reported earning in the private sector 2 to 5 times more than what they made in government.