The Politics Of Interests

Interest Groups Transformed

Mark P Petracca

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429975615
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This is a thematically unified survey of current and significant issues affecting interest group politics and scholarship in the USA. Petracca has drawn together interest group scholars and practitioners to write 16 original essays dedicated to making the best and newest research accessable to students at all levels. The mix of perspectives and approaches aims to offer a stimulating analysis of contemporary American interest group activity.

PART I
Approaches to Interest Groups

1
The Rediscovery of Interest Group Politics

MARK P. PETRACCA

American politics is the politics of interests. Throughout American history, a seamless web of commentary variously accepts, elevates, or bemoans the centrality of interests in political life. Thomas Paine, the first international revolutionary, denounced factions and parties for their tendency to subvert government by using it to further their own particular interests at the expense of the public good.¹ In the Federalist 10, James Madison acknowledged the inevitability of the faction, warned of its potential for majority tyranny, and defended the capacity of a representative republic to check and balance its mischief. Alexis de Tocqueville praised the propensity of Americans to join associations as an essential ingredient of democracy. The radical Democrat William Leggett (1836) recommended the "principle of combination" as the "only effectual mode" of opposing "a common enemy."² The protection of interests was central to John C. Calhoun's (1853) theory of the "concurrent majority" that "tends to unite the most opposite and conflicting interests and to blend the whole in one common attachment to the country."³ Just past midcentury, the eminent political scientist Francis Lieber (1859) argued that "the American spirit of self-government" was dependent upon the nation's "all-pervading associative spirit." During the latter half of the century, attention turned to the rise of the lobby—"an institution peculiar to America," in the words of Arthur G. Sedgwick (1878). That peculiar institution figured prominently in the young Woodrow Wilson's (1885) critique of congressional government.

The politics of interests has shaped American politics, how we view ourselves as a nation, and how others view us as well. It also shapes the way we study political life and therefore what we can confidently know about American politics. As the first in a volume of original articles about the politics of interests, this chapter sets the stage for subsequent analysis and prediction. I begin by revisiting the group approach to political inquiry and consider the continuity of American attitudes toward interest groups in American democracy. The bulk of this opening chapter is dedicated to the identification and analysis of changes that have taken place in the American group system during the past two decades.⁴

Groups and Politics

In the postwar era, American political science has been dominated, indeed defined, by the study of groups.⁵ Conventional wisdom credits David B. Truman (1951) with bringing Arthur Bentley's 1908 work on groups into the mainstream of behavioral political science. Among Bentley's influential phrases is one on the explanatory power of group analysis: "When the groups are adequately stated, everything is stated. When I say everything I mean everything" (1967:208).⁶ The group basis or theory of politics "transformed, if it did not wholly replace, traditional modes of political analysis and became the basis for a modernized theory of political pluralism" (Odegard 1967:xxvi). Once the undisputed sine qua non of American democracy, pluralism continues to serve as a model of American politics and as a foil for contemporary political analysis.

Truman alerted a new generation of scholars to the empirical and normative importance of groups in American politics. However, both the use of groups as a unit of political analysis and studies of interest groups preceded the impact of The Governmental Process. By the mid-1930s, the dean of modern political science, Charles E. Merriam (1964:31-39), had already recognized the role of groups in the birth of power and the process of governance. The prewar pluralists, led by British political scientists, reconceptualized the state as nothing more than a federation of groups and in so doing made groups an essential component of political analysis.⁷

Indeed, prewar studies of interest or pressure groups (as they were often called) represent some of the analytical gems of prebehavioral political science. Studies of the economic basis of politics, the Anti-Saloon League, group representation before Congress, and "new" lobbying were in the first wave of post-Bentley interest group research.⁸ During the following decade, distinguished studies on tariff policy, public administration, pressure groups in New York, and "the pressure boys" in the nation's capital were capped by V. O. Key, Jr.'s, classic text of 1942, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, which remained in publication for more than two decades.⁹

As statements about interest group politics and examples of political science methodology, these works remain a useful baseline against which to assess contemporary changes and continuities in the interest group system and the scholarly analysis of interest groups. For that purpose, and to enrich our understanding of contemporary interest groups with relevant historical insight, references to these and other prewar studies of interest groups are made throughout this volume.

The pluralist tradition that emerged from the writings of Truman (1951), Latham (1952a), Lindblom (1963), and Dahl (1961) became both the empirical account and normative vision of American politics.¹⁰ Politics, for the pluralists, was defined as the resolution of group conflict. Citizens ought not to participate directly in the processes of agenda-building, policy formulation, or policy resolution, except insofar as they voted in competitive elections. Instead, citizens were to participate indirectly through membership in interest groups or by identifying with groups supporting their goals.

Political power for the pluralists was dispersed among political institutions and interest groups. The essence of the pluralist finding regarding the distribution of political power within a community was that different people have different kinds of power in different issue arenas. Political resources were distributed unequally in the polity to be sure, but those inequalities were dispersed and noncumulative. Given the fragmented and decentralized nature of the American political system, there were numerous multiple access points for group influence and representation in government. Taking as his point of departure a particular reading of Madison's Federalist 10, Robert Dahl (1956, 1961) argued that a balance among groups, actual and latent, would both assure political stability and achieve the public good.¹¹ Pluralism has been criticized as an apology for the pursuit of private interests by public means (see Kesselman 1982) and, as Andrew McFarland suggests in Chapter 3, for its tendency to produce political stasis. Yet despite extensive criticism, pluralism remains the standard by which most accounts of American politics are compared and evaluated.

What is an interest group? Interest groups go by many names—special interests, vested interests, pressure groups, organized interests, political groups, the lobby, and public interest groups. This varied terminology yields a diverse collection of operational definitions.

Definitions have varied over time: Some offer a normative appraisal; others reflect the analytical goals of the scholar using the terminology. Where it was once standard practice to use the term pressure group, this phrase has given way to the apparently more neutral interest group and organized interest in contemporary scholarship.¹² Pressure group was widely used because it clarified that the activities of organized groups were designed to influence governmental policy. The term does, however, have a normative ring to it, implying lurid images of what might be used to impose or induce pressure (see Salisbury 1975:176-177). Of course the images conjured up by pressure group are nowhere near as vivid as those invoked by references to interest groups as 'the snake doctors of politics" or the "despair of patriots."¹³

Contemporary scholars are more likely to use terms that have meanings specific to their research. In order to include "hidden lobbies" in their analysis (lobbying entities not required to register under the laws of various states), Clive Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar (Chapter 7) adopt a rather broad definition of an interest group: "any association of individuals, whether formally organized or not, that attempts to influence public policy." Paul E. Peterson (Chapter 15) develops a very specific definition of special interests in order to identify expenditures in the federal budget as potential targets of their influence: "An interest is special if it consists of or is represented by a fairly small number of intense supporters who cannot expect that their cause will receive strong support from the general public except under unusual circumstances."

As the chapters in this volume illustrate, there are different terms and even different meanings for the same term currently in common use by scholars. Functional definitions try to distinguish interest groups from other associations of politically interested persons, such as political parties. For example, V. O. Key, Jr., (1958:23) distinguished between the two by arguing that pressure groups "promote their interests by attempting to influence government rather than by nominating candidates and seeking responsibility for the management of government." There are also definitions that emphasize the representational aspects of the interest group, such as Graham Wilson's (1981:4): "It is an organization which seeks or claims to represent people or organizations which share one or more common interests or ideals."

Some definitions stress what an interest group does, such as the widely used standard of Robert H. Salisbury (1975:175): "An interest group is an organized association which engages in activity relative to governmental decisions."¹⁴ Other definitions simply suggest why the group formed in the first place, R. M. Maclver (1937:144) defined interests and the groups united to pursue them as "a number of men" united "for the defense, maintenance or enhancement of any more or less enduring position or advantage which they possess alike or in common." And there are definitions that recognize that not all groups trying to influence government policy have members. Kay Lehman Schlozman and John T. Tierney (1986:10) reserve the terms interest groups and pressure groups for membership associations and employ the term organized interests to include associations with individuals or organizations as members along with politically active organizations that do not have members in the ordinary sense.

In this chapter I use the term interest group in the same way that Schlozman and Tierney generally use the term organized interest—with apologies to their reasons for differentiating between them. Interest group is the most frequently employed term in this volume and throughout much of the contemporary literature. Indeed, it has become a generic term used to refer to membership- or nonmembership-based organizations or institutions that engage in activities to seek specific policy or political goals from the state.¹⁵ This is the general meaning of the term as used throughout the volume unless given a more precise or differentiated meaning by the author or authors of a particular chapter.

American Attitudes toward Interest Groups

The study of groups is central to an understanding of American politics, not only for the influence of Madison and Tocqueville or Bentley and Truman but because Americans have a constitutional right to form associations and petition the government for redress of grievances, a propensity to form and join associations, and an abiding awareness of how the politics of interests complicates representation and governance in a democratic republic.

How do Americans feel about interest groups and the politics of interests? This is a very difficult question to answer in a systematic, empirical fashion. Absent reliable public opinion data on this topic, we are left to speculate about American attitudes from the behavior of ordinary citizens and from the commentary of various opinion leaders and scholars.

We know that Americans increasingly identify with various social groups as opposed to political parties. National Election Survey data from 1972 to 1984, for instance, show "a rise in identification with social groups is a major trend in American public opinion, encompassing greater psychological ties to religious, class, occupational, racial, gender, and age groups" (Wattenberg 1990:157-158). We also know that many Americans are members of, active in, and contribute to many different associations and organized groups.¹⁶ The terms special interest or vested interest typically imply that only a very small number of Americans are members of such organizations. However, a Gallup Poll (1981:45-55) conducted in 1981 showed that as many as 20 million Americans are members of special interest associations and another 20 million gave money to such groups in 1980. Indeed, roughly 26 percent of Americans either joined or contributed to special interest groups in 1980.

Widespread identification with various groups and even membership in special interest groups does not necessarily mean that Americans support the role that interest groups play in politics. Beginning with Madison, Americans have recognized that interest groups are inevitable in a free society. They are produced by the "diversity in the faculties" of human beings and "the instinct of self-preservation" (Hamilton et al. 1961:78; Root 1907:11). Interest groups are neither anomalous nor pathological. "Lobbying is as ancient as governing ... it is also as legitimate and necessary" (Parton 1869:361). In fact, "all politiking [sic] is done by 'interested' persons and the term 'interest group' involves a truism, not a pathological condition" (DeGrazia 1958:113). The causes of faction cannot be cured without a tremendous loss of liberty—a "remedy worse than the disease," as Madison wisely put it. As a consequence, the United States has largely surrendered to the existence of interest groups, but not without considerable consternation and anxiety.

Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, the distinguished historian Daniel T. Rodgers (1987:182) observes, "the Interests, were by definition, alien and predatory: sores on the body politic," That's a scholarly account of how Progressive reformers felt about interest groups. Yet writing during that time period, political scientist E. Pendleton Herring (1929b:492) noticed "popular support [for the lobby] ... a wide spread faith in its efficacy . . . [and] belief in its indispensableness." "Good or bad, honest or corrupt," Herring noted, the lobbies "are in the capital because thousands of citizens want them there."

How might these two conflicting observations be reconciled? It's possible that public attitudes shifted dramatically between the Progressive era and the late 1920s when Herring made his observation. An attitudinal shift did occur, but, according to Rodgers, not until the late 1930s. By then, at least in the political science community, laments about interest groups had given way to the hope that they could somehow be resisted and controlled. Rodgers (1987:211) concludes: "The Interests were no longer alien to the body politic. The roiling, inconclusive contest of interested groups was politics." A decade later the pluralism of contemporary political science had started to blossom.

A second possibility is that Rodgers and Herring have observed two different strains or currents running through American attitudes about interest groups.¹⁷ One current is wary and fearful of the influence that interest groups wield in the political system; the other current values the role that interest groups play in the process of political representation. The first current is concerned with the mischiefs of faction whereas the second views interest groups as indispensable to democratic government. These currents may exist simultaneously with one or the other occasionally dominating public discourse in response to changes in the interest group system.

Andrew S. McFarland's (1991) theory of "interest groups and political time" offers a useful way to think about the systematic relationship that may exist between these two currents and changes in the interest group system. Changes in the interest group system occur in a cycle alternating between periods of public and private action (not necessarily of equal duration). During periods of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART ONE APPROACHES TO INTEREST GROUPS
• PART TWO THE ORGANIZATION OF INTERESTS
• PART THREE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND INTEREST GROUPS
• PART FOUR INTEREST GROUP ACTIVITY AND INFLUENCE
• PART FIVE LOOKING AHEAD
• Appendix: The Changing State of Interest Group Research
• References
• About the Book and Editor
• About the Contributors
• Index