POWER STRUCTURES, POLICY NETS

1
POWER STRUCTURES, POLICY NETS LOBBYING
Textbook images of U.S. government gloss over the
impact of political organizations interest
groups in shaping local, state, national public
policies through lobbying on policy issues of
great importance to their members and
constituents interests. Political sociologists
political scientists study the institutional
political structures and policy processes, which
may help to answer some questions about such
recent Congressional actions

• Why did the Republican Houses 2002 economic
  stimulus bill return 21 billion in corporate
  minimum taxes (paid since 1986!) to General
  Electric, IBM, General Motors others?
• Why did the Democratic Senates version of that
  bill propose personal tax rebates, extended
  unemployment benefits, health-care for
  out-of-work taxpayers?
• Why did the bill give 10 million for
  bison-ranchers like Ted Turner, but no subsidies
  for depleted food pantries?

2
POWER IS RELATIONAL
Power is inherently the property of a
relationship between two or more actors. Max
Webers two famous definitions explicitly
asserted that power (Macht) is not the resources
held by an actor, but occurs during situated
interactions involving actors with potentially
opposed interests and goals.
Power is the probability that one actor within
a social relationship will be in a position to
carry out his own will despite resistance,
regardless of the basis on which that probability
rests. (1947152) We understand by power the
chance of a man or a number of men to realize
their own will in a social action even against
the resistance of others who are participating in
the action. (1968962)
Some power is based on force (coercion). But, if
actors willingly assent or consent to obey
anothers commands, power becomes legitimate
authority (Herrschaft), which may be based on
actors traditional, charismatic, or
rational-legal beliefs in the rightness of their
relationship.
3
COLLECTIVE ACTION SYSTEMS
Collective action systems such as legislatures,
courts, regulatory agencies make public policy
decisions about numerous proposed laws and
regulations. Organized interest groups hold
varying pro/con preferences across multiple
policy decisions. Coalitions lobby public
officials to choose outcomes favorable to
coalitional interests. Decision makers may also
hold policy preferences, and may change their
votes on some events to gain support for
preferred decisions.
An actors structural interest is a revealed
preference, for a particular outcome, resulting
from identifiable social constraints or
influence, which may differ from an
unconstrained preference (Mizruchi Potts
2000231). Models of socially embedded
policymaking explore how network ties shape
collective decisions through information
exchanges, political resource, persuasion,
vote-trading (log-rolling), and other dynamic
processes.
4
POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS
Are organized interest groups substantially
different from SMOs?
Conventional view that social movements represent
outside challengers trying to get their views
heard inside the polity e.g., feminist,
anti-war, gay-lesbian, civil rights. SMOs may
resort to illegitimate tactics such as street
protests and violence. Interest groups are
legitimate insiders that pressure officials using
conventional political tactics, such as letters,
emails, and meetings.
Alternative views deny any meaningful
distinctions Both SMOs political orgs deploy
the full range of tactics in efforts to influence
outcomes of public policymaking

• Dual democratic functions of political orgs
• Aggregate and represent some citizens policy
  preferences to elected appointed public
  officials
• Provide channel for officials to communicate
  about benefits to their electoral constituencies

5
PROLIFERATING POLITICAL ORGS
Population ecology analysis of trade association
founding deaths rates reveals growth dynamics
during 20th century
Since 1960s, Washington and state capitals saw
rapidly rising numbers of business, professional,
labor, ethnic-racial, womens, environmental,
governmental, other political interest
orgs. Peak business assns NAM, BRT, Chamber of
Commerce reacted to increasing federal govt
intervention into the workplace economy.
6
LOBBYING TACTICS
Political orgs deploy a range of lobbying tactics
to influence elected appointed officials. In
descending frequency of use

• Testimony at legislative or agency hearings
• Direct contacts with legislators or other
  officials
• Informal contacts with legislators or other
  officials
• Presenting research results
• Coalitions with other groups planning strategy
  with government officials
• Mass media talking to journalists paid
  advertising
• Policy formation drafting legislation,
  regulations shaping policy implementation
  serving on advisory commissions agenda-setting
• Constituent influence letter-writing or
  telegram campaigns working with influential
  citizens alerting legislators to district
  effects
• Litigation filing lawsuits or amici curiae
  (friend of the court) briefs
• Elections campaign contributions campaign
  work candidate endorsements
• Protests or demonstrations
• Other monitoring influencing appointments
  doing personal favors for officials

7
LOBBYING STRATEGIES
Lobbying is NOT political bribery nor overt quid
pro quo dealing. Influence requires making the
most persuasive case Lobbyists give friendly
policy makers the information, substantive
analyses, politically accurate arguments about
why they should support the orgs preferred
solutions, instead of their opponents clearly
inferior indefensible proposals.

• Successful political orgs mobilize their
  resources to achieve three strategic goals
  (Browne 1998)
• Winning attention outside game keeping the
  publicity spotlight on the orgs issue agenda,
  through the mass media in legislative and
  regulatory arenas
• Making contact inside game of schmoozing
  building close network ties to officials,
  lobbyists, and other brokers
• Reinforcement lobbyists keep coming back,
  showing their issues are still alive, reinforcing
  both their access and previously discussed policy
  matters

8
POLICY DOMAINS
Policy network analysts seek to explain the
formation of state-interest organization
networks, their persistence change over time,
and the consequences of network structures for
public policy-making outcomes.
Developers include British (Rhodes, Marsh),
German (Pappi, Schneider, Mayntz), American
(Laumann, Knoke) political scientists
sociologists
POLICY DOMAIN a set of interest group
organizations, legislative institutions, and
governmental executive agencies that engage in
setting agendas, formulating policies, gaining
access, advocating positions, organizing
collective influence actions, and selecting among
proposals to solve delimited substantive policy
problems, such as national defense, education,
agriculture, or welfare. (Laumann and Knoke.
1987. The Organizational State)
A policy network is described by its actors,
their linkages and its boundary. It includes a
relatively stable set of mainly public and
private corporate actors. The linkages between
the actors serve as channels for communication
and for the exchange of information, expertise,
trust and other policy resources. The boundary
of a given policy network is not in the first
place determined by formal institutions but
results from a process of mutual recognition
dependent on functional relevance and structural
embeddedness. (Kenis and Schneider 1991)
9
The ORGANIZATIONAL STATE
The Organizational State (1987) conceptualized
national policy domains power structures as
multiplex networks among formal organizations,
not elite persons. These connections enable
opposing coalitions to mobilize political
resources in collective fights for influence over
specific public policy decisions.
Power structure is revealed in patterns of
multiplex networks of information, resource,
reputational, and political support among
organizations with partially overlapping and
opposing policy interests. (See blockmodel
figures of U.S., German, Japanese labor policy
domains in Chapter 8 of Knoke et al.
1996.) Action set is a subset of policy domain
orgs that share common policy preferences, pool
political resources, and pressure governmental
decisionmakers to choose a policy outcome
favorable to their interests. After a policy
decision, the opposing action sets typically
break apart as new events give rise to other
constellations of interest orgs.
10
POLICY DOMAIN COMMUNICATION NETS
National policy domains orgs and institutions
engaged in efforts to create/change specific
policy proposals to solve substantive
problems EX health, energy, labor, agriculture,
defense Individuals are agents acting on behalf
of orgs interests (Marsh Smith 2000),
encountering principal-agent problems
Orgs central in a policy domain maintain numerous
communication ties, facilitating collaboration
policy information exchanges with potential
partners and with their opponents (for political
intelligence gathering)
Fig 9.6 (next slide) is a MDS plot showing the
core of the U.S. labor policy domain in 1988.
These interest orgs lie at short direct or
indirect communication distances, even though
many took the opposing sides on recurrent labor
policy fights (e.g., AFL-CIO vs National Assn of
Manufacturers, Business Round Table, Chamber of
Commerce)
11
LABOR DOMAIN COMMUNICATION CORE
1.5                                 0.0          
                    -1.5
 
NLRB
HD
ACLU
NEA
SD
SR
UAW
ABC
AARP
CHAM
NAM
BRT
DOL
HR
AFL-CIO
TEAM
OSHA
ASCM
NGA
WHO
-1.5
0.0
1.5
SOURCE Knoke. 2001. Changing Organizations.
Westview.
12
LOBBYING TOGETHER or ALONE?
Interest org confronts transaction-cost and
free-riding questions in deciding when to join
others in an action set or to lobby alone?

• Its actions would have almost no impact on
  obtaining the collective good (public policy)
• It would maximize its gains by contributing
  nothing yet enjoying whatever policy benefits the
  other participants might succeed in producing

Mancur Olsons solution? Offer selective
incentives for orgs to join a coalition access
to contacts, insider information, enhanced orgl
reputation as a powerful policymaking player in
a policy domain

• Marie Hojnacki (1997) found that fewer than
  one-third of 172 orgs worked alone in lobbying on
  five policy proposals
• Org with very narrow issue interests was more
  likely to work by itself
• If opponents were strongly organized allies
  saw the interest org as crucial to their policy
  success, then it was more likely to join coalition

13
LOBBYING COALITIONS
When its interests are at stake in a
Congressional bill or regulatory ruling, a
political org can lobby alone or in coalition

• Most political orgs work in coalitions a
  division of labor
• Coalitions are short-lived affairs for specific
  narrow goals
• EX impose or lift restrictions on Persian rug
  imports
• Partners in next coalition change with the
  specific issues
• Politics makes strange bedfellows EX Civil
  liberties
• Orgs that lobby together succeed more often than
  soloists
• Broad cleavages emerge within some policy
  domains
• EX Business vs Unions in labor policy domain
  (next slide)

14
POLITICAL CLEAVAGES on EVENTS
Memberships in action sets for 3 U.S. labor
policy domain events revealed overlapping
patterns of organizational interests in
influencing these policy decisions. The labor
and business coalitions comprise a core set of
advocates (AFL vs. Chamber of Commerce) plus
event-specific interest organizations,
particularly nonlabor allies of unions.
SOURCE p. 354 in Knoke. 2001. Changing
Organizations.
15
WHO WINS POLICY FIGHTS?

• We know much less about the systematic influence
  of political action on the outcomes of public
  policy fights
• No single political organization or enduring
  coalition prevails on every issue event of
  importance to it incrementalism prevails
• What implications for Ruling Class, Elite,
  Pluralist models?
• Biggest PAC contributors campaign workers may
  enjoy greater access, easier victories on
  uncontested policy pork proposals
• But why Big Tobaccos setbacks? Union failure to
  block NAFTA?
• Roll-call analyses of Congressional votes find
  small lobbying effects relative to other factors
• Lobbying impacts greatest in particular policy
  events, depending on strength of oppositions
  resources political arguments
• Elected officials also pay attention to
  unorganized voter opinions
• Shockingly, some even hold ideological
  principles hobby-horses!

16
DIALECTICAL INFLUENCES
Marsh Smiths dialectical model depicts policy
outcomes as feeding back to change actors and
network structures
Policy outcomes may affect networks by 1.
Changing network membership or the balance of
resources within it 2. Altering social contexts
to weaken particular interests in relation to a
given network 3. Causing agents, who learn by
experience, to pursue alternative policy
influence strategies actions
17
References
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Organizing Business Interests Patterns of Trade
Association Foundings, Transformations, and
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1997. Interest Groups Decisions to Join
Alliances or Work Alone. American Journal of
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Volker Schneider. 1991. Policy Networks and
Policy Analysis Scrutinizing a New Analytical
Toolbox. Pp. 25-62 in Policy Networks Empirical
Evidence and Theoretical Considerations, edited
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David. 2001. Changing Organizations Business
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