Interest Groups Introduction

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Interest Groups - Introduction

• Session 7

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The Alleged Mischiefs of Faction The Corrupting
Influence of Interest Groups

• Case in Point The Economic Stimulus Package
• As the Washington Post noted, the major impact
  of the Republican economic stimulus bill so far
  has been to stimulate lobbyists to scurry around
  the halls of Congress like Energizer bunnies, hat
  in one hand, begging tax breaks for their
  industries, and campaign contributions in the
  other.1 The bill proposed would repeal the
  corporate alternative minimum tax, which would
  provide tax refunds of 1.4 billion for IBM, 833
  million for General Motors, and 671 for General
  Electric. Another proposal would defer taxes on
  overseas corporate profits until they were
  repatriated, costing the U.S. treasury 21.3
  billion over the next decade. The Post concluded
  that, We see, once again, why lobbyists are so
  munificently paid. Critics in and out of Congress
  are making the point that the Republican economic
  stimulus is mutating into a general tax bill -- a
  Christmas tree full of goodies hung there by and
  for special interests.

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The Alleged Mischiefs of Faction The Corrupting
Influence of Interest Groups

• Back to the Federalist
• A Nation of Joiners
• One of Alexis de Tocquevilles most famous
  observations from his travels in the United
  States in 1831-32, as reported in Democracy in
  America, was that it was a nation of joiners.
  In no other country in the world, he concluded,
  has the principle of association been more
  successfully used, or applied in a greater
  multitude of objects, than in America.
• The Negative Public Perception Theodore
  Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Eisenhower

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A Bifurcated Argument

• The Dominant Madisonian Perspective

• Bentley and the Pluralists competition among
  organized interests are the primary instrument
  through which competing interests in society are
  discovered and expressed

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What We Argue About

• Voluntary Organizations
• Associations
• Social Movements
• Pressure Groups and Special Interests
• Lobbyists
• PACs
• Interest Organizations

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What, then, are interest organizations?

• First, interest organizations must be organized
• Second, interest requires an active
  intersection of an organizations preferences
  with public policy
• The final condition of the definition serves to
  distinguish interest organizations from the other
  major institution of democratic politics
  mediating the preferences of citizens and the
  actions of governments political parties they
  do not seek elective office

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What We Include

• Sample of Most and Least Active Interest
  Organizations at Federal and State Levels
• __________________________________________________
  ________________________
• Federal Interest Organizations, 1996
• Most Active Organizations Least Active
  Organizations
• Lobbied on at Least 12 Issues Lobbied on Only
  a Single Issue
• __________________________________________________
  ________________________
• Sierra Club American Association of Nurserymen
• IBM Corporation Association of Community
  College Trustees
• American Farm Bureau Federation Government of
  India
• General Motors Corporation City of San Antonio
• National Association of Broadcasters Americans
  for Tax Reform
• National Taxpayer Union Airline Pilots
  Association
• American Petroleum Institute Long Island
  Savings Bank
• American Civil Liberties Union Coalition to Stop
  Gun Violence
• National Manufacturing Association Northwestern
  Memorial Hospital
• AFL-CIO Rocky Mountain HMO
• American Cancer Society West Publishing Company
• Associated General Contractors of
  America Business Executives for National Security
• __________________________________________________
  ________________________

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The Players and their Evidence

• Politicians
• McConnell labeled The New York Times and The
  Washington Post as the biggest special interests
  in America for editorializing for the passage of
  the bill.
• Journalists
• Washington on 10 Million a Day How Lobbyists
  Plunder a Nation, The Corruption of American
  Politics What Went Wrong and Why, Democracy
  Derailed Initiative Campaigns and the Power of
  Money, Showdown at Gucci Gulch

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The Players and their Evidence

• Social Scientists
• Political scientists and economists, like
  politicians and journalists, sometimes examine
  specific cases. But the subjects of academic
  case studies are selected not because they
  illustrate a proposition, but because their
  outcome is uncertain in advance and can,
  therefore, provide a test of it. More often,
  however, social scientists rely on systematic
  samples of the behaviors of politicians and
  organized interests. These samples allow us to
  determine whether a particular behavior is common
  or exceptional. Further, they allow us to assess
  the conditions that give rise to one type of
  behavior rather than another. This means that
  social scientists, rather than merely describing
  the behavior of organized interests, try to
  explain it.

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The Argument in Perspective Three Perspectives
on the Influence Production Process