Professor Hall has written extensively on the politics of Congress, interest groups, campaign finance, political advertising and health policy, is the author of an award-winning book on participation and representation in Congress and is currently writing a book about lobbying.

The money that interest groups spend on advocacy in national politics has increased dramatically over the last three decades. Most critics of the system allege that special interests use campaign contributions to buy legislators’ votes in variety of ways. Professor Hall will discuss the extent to which these allegations are true, and argue that interest groups and their lobbyists do not need to corrupt legislators to influence them. For the most part, lobbyists help legislators do their jobs, but they help them selectively in ways that distort the representative process and influence legislators insidiously.

Please check the OLLI web site for additional lectures in the next Thursday Lecture Series, “American Music: How Did We Get Here?” October 30-December 11.
http://www.olli-umich.org/lectures.html