Interest Groups and Political Time: Cycles in America

Abstract

This article seeks to delineate a general theory of interest-group dynamics in America since 1890. Interest groups are seen to act in issue areas which cycle through phases of business control to reform activity and back again. Economic producer groups have a more stable incentive to participate in issue-area decision making than the reform groups that challenge their control. However, after a few years of the business-control phase of the cycle, unchecked producer groups tend to commit ‘excesses’, violations of widely shared values. This leads to political participation by reformers, most of whom lose interest in issue-area participation after a few years. Across the scope of hundreds of issue areas, business control or reform phases tend to occur at the same time. This is an important cause of similar cycles in the politics of the entire system, as described by such writers as Samuel Huntington, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr and Albert Hirschman. Interest-group cycles theory is based on critical pluralism, a new outlook that incorporates concepts of collective-action paradoxes, business power and social movements into interest-group studies.

Reconsidering The Counter-Mobilization Hypothesis: Health Policy Lobbying In The American States

“…The most striking element of their punctuated equilibrium model, of course, is the long-term rise and fall of policy issues and the organized interests supporting and opposing them, something that was not the focus of Truman's argument. Instead, these transitions are superficially similar to the long-term patterns of mobilization and counter-mobilization observed by McFarland (1991) and Salisbury (1969). But Baumgartner and Jones (1993, p. 5;2002) resist interpreting these transitions as homeostatic counter-mobilizations.…”

“…Some think that the period is quite long. Accordingly, they examine counter-mobilization in terms of decades-long equilibrating processes in the lobbying activities and influence of such macro-level interests as business and social movements or liberal secularists and the religious right (Layman, 2001;McFarland, 1991;O'Connor and Epstein, 1983;Salisbury, 1969, pp. 1-8).…”

Interest Group Success in the European Union

“…While some authors have argued that business is the single most powerful actor type in pluralist polities (e.g. McFarland, 1991), others have held that the political clout of all organized business actors is limited (e.g. Bauer, de Sola Pool, and Dexter, 1963).…”

“…On the one hand, a considerable body of research suggests that business interests are the most powerful non-state actors in capitalist democratic systems (see, for example, Olson, 1965;Schlozman & Tierney, 1986;McFarland 1991). This should be no different in the case of the EU.…”

Interest Groups, Veto Points and Electricity Infrastructure Deployment

“…We therefore expect political actors to promote white elephants to a lesser degree as industrial representation rises, ceteris paribus. the pro-discipline lobby on the rate of white elephant deployment (i.e., the effect of an increase in IR on K WE while all other influences are held constant), and not the "net" effect of the 30 Organized interest groups seeking self-serving policy changes often attempt to mobilize unaffected groups using a "collective action frame" (Benford and Snow, 2000) that facilitates negative interpretation of the status quo ante by appealing to pre-existing "cultural preoccupations and political biases" (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988: 63;McFarland, 1991). Research in social movement theory has examined the use of such frames in varied contexts, for example, national competitiveness frames used by interest groups seeking to influence standards for high definition television (Dowell, Swaminathan and Wade, 2002) and environmental justice frames in recycling policy (Lounsbury, Ventresca and Hirsch, 2003).…”