5 Lessons From The SOPA/PIPA Fight

By Matthew Yglesias  |  Posted Friday, Jan. 20, 2012, at 11:12 AM ET

This looks like the end of the beginning for PIPA/SOPA, as Harry Reid tweets: "In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the PROTECT IP Act." I think we can learn a few lessons here, many of which illustrate the main conclusions of Baumgartner et. al.'s excellent book Lobbying and Policy Change: Why Wins, Who Loses, and Why.

1) Lobbying isn't all about money: Hollywood badly outspent Silicon Valley on this issue and still lost. This is completely typical. There's no evidence that better-funded groups systematically win policy fights.

2) But money matters a lot: That said, it's extraordinarily difficult to get on the agenda if you don't have some money to spend. The fact that Silicon Valley firms like Google now have Washington offices and are clearly capable of offering both campaign contributions and the "legislative subsidy" of policy analysis to people who champion their causes was critical to getting opposition off the ground.