Test 3 Ch. 13
Outsider/indirect tactics
Interest group activities designed to influence elected officials by threatening to impose political costs on them if they do not respond. Tactics include marches, demonstrations, campaign contributions to opponents, and electoral mobilization.
What is public interest lobbying?
Tactic of appealing to the general public for support of an outsider's group goals, developed in the 18th century.
Why should groups lobby?
Because it helps estimate the costs and benefits of alternative actions, gives an idea of how people will react to government initiatives, to inform people of their interest group.
Interest groups
Organized groups of people seeking to influence public policy.
What is a Political Action Committee? (PAC)
>A creation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971. FECA encouraged groups to form PACs by clarifying their legal status and specifying rules under which they could legitimately participate in financing campaigns; it also put the financial activities of PACs on the public record. >To qualify as a multicandidate committee (legal term for a political action committee), a PAC must raise money from at least 50 people and contribute to at least 5 candidates. The maximum contribution is $5,000 per candidate per campaign, which means $10,000-$5,000 each for the primary and general election campaigns, plus an extra $5,000 if there is a primary runoff in states where one is required when no candidate wins more than half the votes cast. By contrast, individuals may contribute only $2,400 per candidate per campaign.
What is insider/direct lobbying?
>American and their British allies would bombard members of the Parliament with information and arranged for expert testimony, this is a practice of insider lobbying. >Definition: Direct appeals to lawmakers for policy support by narrowly focused interests.
What is a selective incentive?
>Benefits that can be denied to individuals who do not join and contribute. >Many of the most successful organizations circumvent the collective action problem by offering selective incentives.
How do interest groups get involved in election campaigns?
>Both outsiders and insiders use electoral politics to influence elected officials- insiders offer electoral help, and outsiders commonly threaten electoral harm >Certain types of groups unhappy with current policy always can try to replace the current decision makers with friendlier one by recruiting and financing challengers- usually partisan or ideological organizations >More commonly, groups monitor and publicize the voting records of elected officials on their key issues. This idea is to identify friends and enemies so that campaign contributors and voters sympathetic to the group know which politicians to reward and which to punish. >Interest groups act most conspicuously in electoral politics through PACs
What is lobbying? What do lobbyists do?
>Defined as appeals from citizens and groups for favorable policies and decisions. >Lobbyists try to influence government decisions that affect their lives and welfare. Lobbyists are professionals who work to influence public policy in favor of their clients' interests. Often hired by government officials to get information, political as well as technical, that people and organizations outside the government are in the best position to provide.
What is an interest group?
>Group of citizens who share a common interest-political opinion, religious opinion, ideological belief, social goal, or economic characteristic and try to influence public policy to benefit themselves. >Interest groups work hard for the opportunity to make their pitch to elected officials and to be heard over the cacophony of competing voices.
What are some of the things that interest groups do on a regular basis?
>Keep their organizations in business by cultivating and retaining patrons willing to pay the bills or supply the other essential resources- this not only takes a lot of time and energy, but also strongly shapes a group's political activity. >Organizations that thrive on small contributions from a mass membership, for example, have no choice but to continue to generate contributions. >Lobbying groups that represent corporations and trade associations may deal with executives or boards of directors who may have only a shaky understanding of political realities may spend much time explaining government to their patrons as they do explaining their patrons' interests to government officials >Group officials must manage their offices- hiring and firing, assigning work, keeping staff productive and content- all of these things add up; interest group officials spend a good deal of time just keeping the organization going.
Why do interest groups use litigation?
>Litigation is one tactic equally available to insider and outsiders. Interest groups snubbed by lawmakers or regulators may seek redress in court, challenging hostile laws or regulations. >This strategy is especially attractive to groups that can rest claims on constitutional rights and that do not have the political clout to influence elected officials.
What are different ways in which interest groups can support themselves?
>Many prominent public interest groups are financed mainly by membership dues and small contributions. >Memberships and budgets fluctuate with circumstances-Tend to grow when opponents run the government and shrink when sympathetic politicians are in power. >Some interest groups have patrons.
Public interest lobby
A group that promotes some conception of the public interest rather than the narrowly defined economic or other special interests of its members.
What were the origins of interest groups in America?
>Merchants, manufacturers, and ethnic and religious minorities during the colonial era actively sought favorable policies from the authorities in London, as well as, form colonial governors and assemblies, submitted petitions, and hired agents to "handle the delicate work involved in extracting concessions from minister and lesser bureaucrats". They also examined the voting records of legislators, organized letter-writing campaigns, and formed logrolling coalitions with other interests. >By the mid 18th century, such groups had developed most of the techniques of persuasion still used today.
How has the interest group system changed over the course of the last several decades? (Fragmentation/specialization, etc...)
>New organizations form when new issues pull old groups apart; increasingly complex issues and fragmented policy processes force groups to specialize in order to be effective. >As links between diverse problems have become more transparent, a wider range of organized interests has pushed into formerly isolated issue domains. >Specialization responds not only to changes in the external environment but also to organizational imperatives.
How much influence do PACs have?
>One view suggests that PACs corrupt the entire legislative process, giving citizens "the best Congress money can buy" because members vote with an eye more to the interests of their PAC donors than to those of their constituents or the nation- according to this view, PAC high a large influence. PAC officials counter that they are merely helping to elect legislators who share their own conception of the public interest. >One study found that PAC contributions stimulated committee activity in behalf of the PAC's legislative goals. >Congress, however, are in a much stronger position to influence PACs than by PACs are to influence them. The activities of PACs are largely defensive- they ignore invitations to fundraisers held by legislators at their peril because they risk losing access and putting the interests they represent at a competitive disadvantage, yet for politicians, granting access is relatively cheap- it does not promise action, merely the opportunity to be heard. Groups are thus "awash in access but often subordinate in influence". >Most politically active interest groups do not form PACs at all, rather they use one or more of the other methods to influence politics. If PACs were to be abolished tomorrow, interest group politics would continue unabated.
What is pluralism? (pluralist defense of interest groups)
>Pluralism is a theory describing a political system in which all significant social interests freely compete with one another for influence over the government's decision. >Truman and other pluralist scholars emphasized that the American political system was particularly conductive to pluralist politics. Its decentralized structure offered numerous points of access-political politics, congressional committees and subcommittees, the courts, the enormous variety of federal, state and local governing agencies-where groups could bid for favorable policies. >In this idealized conception, pluralist politics created a policy balance that reflected both the distribution of interests in society and the intensity with which they were pursued. >Interest groups were regarded as essential and valuable participants in the democratic politics of a modern industrial society. Without their participation, policy would be made in far greater ignorance of what citizens actually wanted from their government.
Why do we have so many interest groups?
>The federal government has played a very significant role by stimulating the organization of business interests and encouraging the proliferation of organizations in the nonprofit and public sectors. >>Ex.) Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, American Farm Bureau Federation, & National Organization for Women >Moral incentives (the personal satisfactions of active self-expression); the personal satisfaction of self-expression; there are a lot of issues that people want to draw attention to.
Lobbying
Activities through which individuals, interest groups, and other institutions seek to influence public policy by persuading government officials to support their groups' position.
What are outsider/indirect tactics?
Altering the political forces >These tactics do not require any personal contact with politicians and may take the form of implicit or explicit threats- real pressure- rather than offers of reciprocally helpful exchanges. The strategy is to persuade politicians to act as the group desires by altering the political forces they feel obliged to heed. >Common tactics include: Use of mass media to shape public opinions, demonstrations, picketing, marches, and reports and news conferences. >Large, visible, and contentious issues are more likely to spur outside tactics, relying on grassroots lobbying. >Civil disobedience, one outside tactic, such as sit-ins and other demonstrations that openly violate the law, dramatizes the intensity of commitment- it is difficult to ignore a cause for which large numbers of people are willing to go to jail.
Social movements
Amorphous aggregates of people sharing general values and a desire for social change.
Insider/direct tactics
Interest group activity that includes normal lobbying on Capitol Hill, working closely with members of Congress, and contributing money to incumbents' campaigns. Contrasts with outsider tactics.
Grassroots lobbying
Lobbying conducted by rank-and-file members of an interest group.
Policy gridlock
Political paralysis in the face of pressing national problems.
Selective incentives
Private goods or benefits that induce rational actors to participate in a collective effort to provide a collective good.
Lobbyists
Professionals who work to influence public policy in favor of their clients' interests.
Moral incentives
The personal satisfactions of active self-expression through contribution or other involvement to social cause.
How are interest groups related to collective action problems?
To succeed in organizing the group and finding the resources in an interest group, organizers have to overcome a standard collective action problem: most political interest groups pursue collective goods that, by definition, all group members will enjoy whether or not they help provide them. Rational self-interest could lead to universal free riding, dooming the organization and the effort unless some way is found around this difficulty.
What are insider/direct tactics?
Trafficking in information and cultivating access >Lobbyists spend a lot of their time keeping in touch with the government officials who deal with their issues so they can know when their interests are at stake. Much of their work lies in responding to proposals or actions, and early warning of a proposed action often is essential to an effective response. Keeping in touch facilitates cordial relations with the officials they might do business with someday. >Depend on personal access to government officials and work through mutually beneficial exchanges between lobbyists and politicians. >Go directly to the source and supply information of their clause. The informational needs of politicians and interest groups create a basis for mutually beneficial exchanges. Information from interest groups is inherently suspect because it is intended to inform AND persuade. >Lobbyist gather intelligence by reading newspaper and more specialized publications, they also talk to other lobbyist as well as to government officials >People are more inclined to listen to friends than strangers- lobbyists need to become very familiar with their source, become friends, rather. >They must have their information correct. If info is misleading or inflicts political damage, its source is damaged and they fail.