Who Speaks for the Poor

National Interest Groups and Social Policy

Richard A. Jr Hays

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135580100
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book addresses the central question of how the interests of the poor gain representation in the political process by examining the interest group system.

Chapter One

Introduction

The central question that this book addresses is, “How do the interests of the poor gain representation in the political process?” The poor are widely perceived as uninvolved and virtually powerless, and there is plenty of empirical evidence that most measures of political participation and influence decrease as socio-economic status decreases. (Scholzman and Tierney 1986; Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980; Scholzman, Verba and Brady 1995). However, the needs of the poor do get attention from policy-makers. The federal government currently spends a substantial, albeit declining, amount on programs directed at their needs. Do the poor speak for themselves in demanding this attention, or do others speak for them? Does government action aimed at the poor flow directly from concern for their needs, or do their needs get met as a byproduct of other concerns?

These issues are addressed by examining what might seem to be the most improbable mechanism for the expression of the needs of the poor—the interest group system. Most of the evidence suggests that mobilizing any collection of citizens in an organized group that can exercise sustained pressure on the national government is a formidable task, requiring organizers to amass substantial financial resources and to overcome the potent psychological barriers to participation implicit in what Mancur Olson identified as the “free rider” problem (Olson 1965). Since the poor are, by definition, a group possessing few of the resources necessary for group formation, their lack of representation in the interest group system would seem to be so “over-determined” as to require little investigation. One could safely assume that they have little or no representation and move on to another question.

However, even a casual perusal of the abstracts of congressional hearings published by the Congressional Information Service (CIS Index and Abstracts 1970–99) shows that the drafting of major legislation affecting the poor is accompanied by a chorus of voices. Dozens of interest groups testify, and a closer examination shows that most of them are speaking on behalf of programs benefitting the poor. As shall be shown in detail in subsequent chapters, most of these voices are not those of the poor themselves, but there are clearly numerous organizations and coalitions who find it in their interests to advocate for these programs. Many organized voices are raised on behalf of the poor.

Even if one acknowledges that numerous groups are expressing the needs of the poor for government action, the question remains whether or not these group activities have any impact on the making of social policy. The term “social policy” commonly refers to programs that have as their principal purpose the amelioration of the problems of those citizens on the lower end of the economic ladder. The formation of such policies is a complex and contentious process, upon which a variety of forces can be observed to act. Therefore, as one observes the activities of these groups one must also address the question of how the demands of organized groups speaking on behalf of the poor fit into the total process by which social policy is formed.

A key dimension of the influence of such groups is whether or not their demands are seen as legitimate by other actors in the policy process. It is fundamental to the notion of representative government that groups of citizens can bring their problems to the attention of those with the authority to make decisions, and that they can compel the government to act on those problems if they can convince a majority of the representative body that their request is justified. Citizens back up their requests with the universally shared right to vote, which can potentially be used to remove decision-makers from office. Modern representative governments are constantly bombarded with citizen requests for action on any number of questions, from saving the “unborn” to saving the spotted owl. In an important sense, the requests of the poor for attention to their problems would seem to be a natural and legitimate part of this process.

However, requests for action on behalf of the poor encounter serious problems with legitimacy because of another element in American political culture and ideology, the notion that even a government representing the majority of the people should have limited powers to intervene in the society that it governs. The English philosopher John Locke argued that the purpose of government was to secure the natural right of individuals to the enjoyment of their private property, a right which existed in the “state of nature” before government was formed. (Ebenstein 1964; Wolin 1960; Locke 1952). As the capitalist economic system grew alongside representative governmental institutions, and as economists like Adam Smith began to argue for the virtues of a free market operating in the absence of governmental controls, the Lockean paradigm of limited government was interpreted to mean that government should not interfere with the market’s allocation of goods and services and should not attempt to ameliorate the substantial inequalities of wealth generated by the market.

Followers of Karl Marx argued that the inequality and oppressive control flowing out of the ownership of private property by a few in the economic realm was so great as to render representative democracy a sham, and they saw no relief for the poverty of the workers but total overthrow of the capitalist system (Feuer 1957). However, the actual history of developed capitalist systems has witnessed a series of struggles by those less advantaged by the outcomes of the market system to make claims for amelioration of their condition through the democratic political process. The more privileged members of society have resisted these demands, using the philosophical justification of Lockean limits on the power of government over private property, even though they, too, have sought government interventions in the economy (such as public subsidies for economic development) when it served their interests. In sum, the demands of the poor for the improvement of their condition have been the special objects of controversy because they challenge both the material inequality thought by many to be necessary for the operation of capitalism and because they challenge the limits of government power under the “social contract.”

In spite of the resistance of many powerful elements in society to the expansion of government efforts to ameliorate inequality, every advanced capitalist country has developed a collection of social programs designed to do just that, generally referred to by the term “welfare state,” which was coined in Great Britain after World War II. An extensive body of scholarship has established that the emergence of social policy has many similarities across countries, but that the process in each country has its own unique pattern and timing (Wilensky 1975; Skocpol 1995). Therefore, one must view the current activities of interest groups on behalf of the poor in the context of the overall process of the development of social policy, including all of the many forces that have contributed to it.

In the United States, social policies emerged later at the national level and currently remain less extensive than in many other countries. In part, this was because there was no strong, unified working class party that could push for these changes. However, in no country has the pressure for social policy development come entirely from working class parties. There have always been more privileged members of society who believed that such programs were necessary for the stability of the whole system. Therefore, in the United States, as elsewhere, one needs to understand the whole collection of social, economic, and institutional factors that have contributed to the current state of such policies. The activities of interest groups flow out of this total context.

DO INTEREST GROUPS MATTER?

Much of the literature on social policy has focused on the broad macro-level changes in politics and economics that spawned major governmental commitments in this area, rather than on the details of the struggle over particular pieces of legislation (Skocpol [1995] provides a comprehensive review). One might draw the conclusion from this literature that careful analysis of the activity of a particular collection of interest groups on a particular measure before Congress is not that important in understanding how social policy emerges. Perhaps these activities only relate to micro-level adjustments in policies that are driven by other forces. However, there is danger in drawing such a conclusion prematurely if one does not actually look at what groups are active and what these groups do. This book aims to fill a gap in the social policy literature by providing a systematic analysis of interest group activity over an extended period of time (28 years) during which several major pieces of social legislation were enacted and some others failed to be enacted, despite great expectations of change.

However, before one can draw any conclusions about whether interest groups matter in social policy, one must consider how much interest groups matter in any area of American public policy. Given the beehive of interest group activity that swarms between the K Street Corridor, Capitol Hill, and the various Executive Branch agencies in Washington, D.C., it would seem an obvious conclusion that all this activity must have some impact. Yet the extent of the impact of interest groups has been a matter of extensive debate within the political science literature. Arthur Bentley (1908) helped launch the empirical study of political science in the early decades of the twentieth century with the assertion that by understanding the interaction of groups one could understand the entire political process. Subsequent scholars have reacted by either modifying or rejecting his total reliance on interest groups as the driving force of politics, but a generally agreed-upon paradigm for the overall role of such groups has yet to emerge (Baumgartner and Leech 1998). Although no paradigm has been accepted, this book will attempt to glean from the literature some consistent generalizations about the overall role of interest groups before examining how they might function in the social policy arena.

Perhaps a better way to frame the question is not whether interest groups matter but how they fit into the total policy-making process. There are obviously many forces that shape the direction of public policy. New policy demands usually flow out of social and economic changes that put stress on individuals or on whole social strata. Interest groups are spawned by these changes, and the configuration of groups says much about the problems that various elements of society are experiencing. However, organized interest groups are not the only result of such pressures. Political parties can be transformed by these same processes, and how they respond determines their relative strength or weakness among the electorate. The specific actions and proposals of organized interest groups emerge within this broader context of electoral coalitions.

In addition, governmental actors are not merely passive recipients of interest group pressure, as some earlier models suggested. They take positions that they believe will maximize their influence, and they try to bend and mold both public opinion and interest group pressures to gain support for their strategies and proposals. Historical examples abound in which public officials have, in effect, created the interest groups that then became supporters of their programs (McConnell 1966; Wilson 1982). Decision-makers are also influenced by the shape of the policy apparatus that has emerged from prior decisions. How the federal government responds is often shaped by the responses previously generated by state and local governments or how existing national programs have allocated resources and power among various institutions. Interest groups often find themselves manipulated by public officials or overburdened by the weight of past history.

However, none of this means that interest groups lack an important role to play in the policy-making process. They represent the focused energies of various collections of citizens directed at issues of special concern to them. In the rather fragmented decision-making system that exists at the federal level, there are many points at which effective pressure can be exerted. And, as political parties have weakened over the last thirty years, both as organizational engines of electoral success and as objects of loyalty among voters, interest groups have been presented with better opportunities to influence the electoral process directly (Wattenberg 1986). Interest groups rarely get everything they want, but where they are active it is unlikely that their influence is negligible.

Closely related to the role of interest groups in shaping the overall political process is the question of how interest groups create a connection between the individual citizen and the polity. In the last fifteen years, there has been increasing concern among scholars and other social commentators about the alienation of the individual from politics and from civic life in general. As voting turnout has declined, and as citizens have expressed higher levels of distrust and cynicism about government and the political process, a variety of voices have spoken out about the need to re-establish a vital connection between citizens and government. (Benjamin Barber [1998] has been among the most eloquent of these voices.) This problem of political connectedness is often viewed in the context of a larger problem of the engagement of the citizen in the community, or civic life, as a whole. Communitarians decry what they see as the “hyper-individualism” of the current age, which places all human development in the strictly private, personal realm and which ignores the vital role of mutual support, shared obligations, and community involvement in the full realization of human potential. (Bellah et al. 1985; Elshtain 1995; Etzioni 1983) Other scholars, such as Robert Putnam (1995, 1998) and James Coleman (1988), stress the vital role of “social capital,” i.e., the informal network of social relationships of mutuality and trust, in enabling formal institutions to function properly.

In the United States, both scholars and the general public have often been sharply divided in their views of the role of interest groups in connecting citizens to government. On the one hand, the pluralist tradition has argued that interest groups are the key to the functioning of democracy in a complex society and to the responsiveness of government to its citizens (Dahl 1971). According to some writers in this tradition, the ability of citizens to create organized groups that represent their interests allows them to make their views heard, while it avoids the dangers of mass participation led by demagogues (Kornhauser 1959). On the other hand, it is a staple of American political rhetoric to denounce interest groups as narrow “special interests” that corrupt the political process by crowding out the views of ordinary citizens and by preventing the development of policies in the more general “public interest.” Many scholars have reached similar conclusions, either by examining the strong class bias in the interest group system (Schattschneider 1960; Scholzman and Tierney 1986) or by looking at the domination of policy areas by narrow, specialized interests (McConnell 1966; Lowi 1979).

Most of the historical concerns with interest groups focus on whether or not each individual citizen has a reasonable chance of finding and joining one or more interest groups to formally represent his or her most vital concerns before the relevant decision-makers in an effective manner, especially at the national level. To the extent that this access is unequal, then the outcomes of the policy process will be biased against those left out. However, scholars concerned with community or social capital raise the additional question of whether this mode of representation is capable of creating a vital connection between the citizen, the community, and the polity. Pluralist scholars assumed that citizens wanted to spend most of their time on private matters, and were perfectly content to leave the public representation of their concerns to the activist elites that inevitably form within the groups they belonged to. Scholars concerned with civic engagement offer an alternative model of meaningful citizen engagement in which: (1) the local arena is the most meaningful point of contact between the citizen and the polity because it allows for direct, face to face engagement; (2) the concerns of the citizen are expressed in a holistic context of the betterment of the community, not as narrow individualistic concerns about getting a bigger share of the pie; and (3) the citizen develops more fully as a human being through active involvement rather than simply by providing votes and/or financial support to others who make the decisions. From this point of view, the interest group system is pathological not just because it fails to provide a balanced representation of interests but because it stresses narrow, single issue concerns over broader community interests and because it encourages passivity among the vast majority of those citizens that it purports to represent.

Whether or not one totally accepts the communitarian/social capital arguments, they do raise important concerns about the role of interest groups. Some contemporary interest groups have active, grass roots components, but in most, the individual member is basically a check writer, who is stirred into parting with $25–$100 by mass mailings citing dramatic statistics on abortions, telling poignant stories of deaths from hand guns, or showing bloody pictures of bludgeoned baby seals. This individual is typically middle to upper middle class, with sufficient education to tune into abstract national issues and sufficient financial surplus to make such contributions possible. In addition, many interest groups do not represent individuals at all, but rather institutions, such as corporations or government agencies, that can utilize their organizational resources or compel contributions from individual employees to support their collective goals.

These facts provide a sound empirical basis for serious concerns about the level of representation and engagement for all citizens that national interest groups offer. Nevertheless, policy-making at the national level vitally affects the interests of all citizens, and balanced interest group representation at that level is essential if the needs of all citizens are to be reflected in policy outcomes. If individuals find it more meaningful to participate at the local level, then the issue becomes how those local activities are to be linked to representation at the national level.

This is a question of special importance to the poor, who because of their limited resources are even more dependent on local modes of organization than are more affluent, educated citizens. If they are to be mobilized to the maximum effect, it must begin at the local level of politics, because this is the only way that their alienation from politics can be overcome and their limited resources effectively pooled. The data presented in this work do not enable a complete treatment of this issue, but it will be raised in connection with the indirect nature of the national representation that the poor receive.

INTEREST GROUPS IN SOCIAL POLICY

In assessing the role of organized interest groups in social policy, the most fundamental questions are “Who?” “What?” and “Why?” First, who is active? What gro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Interest Groups in American Politics
• Chapter 3: Poverty and Political Action
• Chapter 4: Interest Groups in Social Policy
• Chapter 5: Interest Groups and the Policy Process
• Chapter 6: Mobilizing the Poor
• Appendix
• References
• Index