A Pocket Guide to Lobbying in the United States

Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto AgencyChief executive officer of Wal-Mart, Michael Duke, after a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, in Washington on Nov. 14, 2012.

That Wal-Mart Stores spent $25 million on lobbying in the United States over the past four years on such issues as whether India would open its own retail markets to the global behemoth should surprise no one, much less shut down India's parliament, as it did Tuesday.

Wal-Mart is one of the largest companies in the world, and many major companies with operations in the United States spend millions on their W ashington D.C. lobbying operations.

A major part of the Washington power scene, lobbyists range from people hired to advocate for certain weapons systems to those who want the government to finance more cancer research. Thousands of people in Washington and in state capitols across the United States are employed as lobbyists, and they spend much of their time gently prodding congressional and administration officials to write legislation or administrative rules in ways that are favorable to their clients. (Read more of The New York Times's coverage of lobbyists here).

Companies and causes also gain influence in Washington by contributing to the election campaigns of politicians and political parties, in hopes of currying favor. These contributions, too, are mostly publicly disclosed and can be seen in aggregat e at such places as www.opensecrets.org.

There is little doubt that the millions companies spend on lobbying and campaign contributions provide the companies with benefits. If they didn't, the companies â€" tight stewards over their cash â€" would stop these operations.

But lobbying politicians and bribing them are two very different things. First of all, lobbying is legal and is generally done in the open. Second, the money does not go into a politician's pocket â€" it is generally spent to pay someone to talk to someone else.

A recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court does allow some contributions to politically-active groups to be made without disclosures. Those groups are estimated to have spent more than $500 million in the most recent presidential election. In particular, a collection of billionaires poured money into independent groups that ran television advertisements all over the co untry supporting various politicians and causes.

But despite all their spending, these groups met with limited success â€" proving that political contributions and lobbying are no guarantors of success. Because corporations and individuals cannot bribe politicians or give money directly to them, the money spent sometimes fails to achieve the funders' goals.

Boston Logan International Airport was clogged with the private jets of corporate chiefs and hedge fund managers on election night last month, many of whom confidently expected the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, to win the presidential race against Barack Obama. They were wrong.

Sheldon Adelson, a casino mogul, is reported to have spent more than $50 million over the past year on nine separate political races, including the presidential race. But in eight of those races, Mr. Adelson's preferred candidates lost. His biggest bet was on Mr. Romney.

Still, concerns over the potentially deleterious effects of donations and lobbying have increased in the United States in recent years, leading Congress to pass laws requiring increased disclosure and restrictions on this kind of spending.

For instance, companies once routinely hired close staffers of powerful politicians, who then began lobbying their bosses as soon as they left Congress. That has changed, and the law now requires senior aides in the United States Senate to wait a year before lobbying their former colleagues and bosses.

Companies once routinely lavished expensive food and trips on close aides to politicians, but Congress passed limits on those practices as well.

There are loopholes, of course. Politicians have recently seemed to duck some restrictions and disclosure requirements by encouraging corporations to contribute to favored charities that funnel money to causes within that politician's district. Sometimes, relatives and friends of those same politicians are paid staff for those ch arities.

Payoffs of politicians still happen, of course. In 2005, F.B.I. agents discovered $90,000 in cash in Representative William Jefferson's freezer â€" bribes from a company hoping to get orders from the Pentagon, investigators alleged. But when such cases are discovered, the politicians are routinely prosecuted.

Wal-Mart, meanwhile, is in the midst of an internal investigation into whether its employees routinely bribed officials in countries outside of the United States to further its interests, practices that are forbidden by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Whether such bribery took place in India is unknown.