logrolling

noun

1. (US, countable)The rolling of logs from one place to another; an occasion when people meet to help each other roll logs.

   “Logrollings, for example, which occurred during the winter and early spring, took place in a series until the logs on every neighbor's farm were piled. So with many other chores, for cooperative patterns of work form an integral part of productive organization.”

2. (US, uncountable)The rolling of logs from one place to another; an occasion when people meet to help each other roll logs.
3. (US, uncountable)The rolling of logs from one place to another; an occasion when people meet to help each other roll logs.

   “Harkening back to the days when loggers had to break river jams free by carefully stepping out on floating logs, logrolling is all about maintaining balance. Also called birling, logrolling requires competitors to go head-to-head on a single log, trying to toss the other guy into the water by forcing him to lose his balance.”

4. (US, figuratively, uncountable)A concerted effort to push forward mutually advantageous legislative agendas by combining two items, either or both of which might fail on its own, into a single bill that is more likely to pass.

   “Thus far, by a resort to the familiar method of "log-rolling," all attempts to put an end to the Northern and Southern divisions have failed, because of the union of the opposing interests with those that want large appropriations in different parts of the State; and it is quite probable that the same tactics will be successful in the future at all general sessions.”

   “By its nature logrolling pays off concentrated group interests and ignores diffuse interests, like taxpayers, who are hard to organize. Since interests in expansion and militarism are typically more concentrated than the interests opposed to them, logrolling is inherently more apt to produce overexpansion than underexpansion.”

   “Incentives to engage in the exchange of votes in legislatures, or logrolling, have existed since the inception of legislatures. Most prominently, logrolling is alleged in the United States, where a plurality rule is employed to elect representatives from single-member districts.”

   “Logrolling is making mutually beneficial tradeoffs between the issues on the table. […] If a negotiator is positional or demanding, logrolling will be much more difficult. Logrolling is the art and science of being firm but flexible.”

5. (US, figuratively, uncountable)Mutual recommendation of friends' or colleagues' services or products, such as book recommendations in literary reviews.

   “Near-synonym: backscratching”

   “The show around him [The Celebrity Apprentice], with its cast of backbiting reality retreads and its blatant logrolling – the first challenge involved a beauty line put out by Tyra Banks, one of Mr. [Arnold] Schwarzenegger's "advisers" – was pretty much the same as always.”

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of logroll.