If the elections were any indication, super PACs will continue to spend large sums of money in an attempt to influence future election results. Interest groups support candidates in order to have access to lawmakers once they are in office. Lawmakers, for their part, lack the time and resources to pursue every issue; they are policy generalists. These voting cues give lawmakers an indication of how to vote on issues, particularly those with which they are unfamiliar.
But lawmakers also rely on lobbyists for information about ideas they can champion and that will benefit them when they run for reelection. Interest groups likely cannot target all lawmakers in both the House and the Senate, nor would they wish to do so. There is little reason for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence to lobby members of Congress who vehemently oppose any restrictions on gun access.
Instead, the organization will often contact lawmakers who are amenable to some restrictions on access to firearms. Thus, interest groups first target lawmakers they think will consider introducing or sponsoring legislation. Second, they target members of relevant committees. Many members of these committees represent congressional districts with military bases, so they often sponsor or champion bills that allow them to promote policies popular with their districts or state.
Interest groups attempt to use this to their advantage. Since lawmakers cannot possess expertise on every issue, they defer to their trusted colleagues on issues with which they are unfamiliar. So targeting committee members also allows the lobbyist to inform other lawmakers indirectly. Finally, since legislation must past both chambers in identical form, interest groups may target members of the conference committees whose job it is to iron out differences across the chambers.
At this negotiation stage, a 1 percent difference in, say, the corporate income tax rate could mean millions of dollars in increased or decreased revenue or taxation for various interests. Interest groups also target the budgetary process in order to maximize benefits to their group. In some cases, their aim is to influence the portion of the budget allocated to a given policy, program, or policy area.
For example, interests for groups that represent the poor may lobby for additional appropriations for various welfare programs; those interests opposed to government assistance to the poor may lobby for reduced funding to certain programs. It is likely that the legislative liaison for your university or college spends time trying to advocate for budgetary allocations in your state.
Interest groups also try to defeat legislation that may be detrimental to their views. For example, when Congress considers legislation to improve air quality, it is not unusual for some industries to oppose it if it requires additional regulations on factory emissions.
In some cases, proposed legislation may serve as a disturbance, resulting in group formation or mobilization to help defeat the bill. For example, a proposed tax increase may result in the formation or mobilization of anti-tax groups that will lobby the legislature and try to encourage the public to oppose the proposed legislation.
Ninety-five percent of the Republicans in Congress signed the pledge. Once legislation has been passed, interest groups may target the executive branch of government, whose job is to implement the law. The U. Other entities within the executive branch, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, which maintains and regulates financial markets, are not designed to be responsive to the interests they regulate, because to make such a response would be a conflict of interest.
Interest groups may lobby the executive branch on executive, judicial, and other appointments that require Senate confirmation. In stark contrast, there is no such relationship for campaign contributions, as is clear by the bottom row dot overlapping with the red vertical line. This suggests that groups that donate more do not necessarily have more of a say in policymaking.
Figure 1 — Membership rates, not campaign contributions, are positively related to perceptions of influence. But do these different types of power also shape policy outcomes? There is evidence that merit pay is among the policies that teachers and their unions most strongly oppose.
I analyze the relationship between merit pay bill outcomes and the two measures of power using data on merit pay policies across all 50 states between and For each state, I recorded the final outcome of the merit pay bill that went furthest in the legislative process during this period using LegiScan and the Education Commission of the States.
Not so for campaign contributions. Figure 2 — Membership rates, not campaign contributions, are related to policy outcomes. Despite the narrative of big campaign spenders and lobbyists controlling politics in the United States, interest group strength comes from having legislative allies setting the policy agenda. In fact, it is likely that contributions are often defensive. If groups are most influential where they spend the most, one might assume that the NRA spends the most in conservative, pro-gun states.
In fact, according to National Institute on Money in Politics , the group spends the most in battleground and blue states, such as Colorado, Washington, California, and Nevada. This is likely because the group already has the ability to set the agenda in the most conservative states through a large number of allies in the legislature and instead focuses funds where its influence is more tenuous.
Scholars and pundits should take heed that what often appears to be the origin of interest group strength may in fact reflect defensiveness or be supplementary to what is the real source of power — having allies setting the agenda. Please read our comments policy before commenting. Leslie K. Policy in areas such as telecommunications and banking generally emerges from much more complex issue networks involving diverse players who are united, if anything, by their expertise in the area.
An interest group can influence policy by marshalling its constituents and appealing to the public for support. It may urge its members to write to their representative and senator or even call them on the eve of an important vote. The NRA is known for its effective use of this tactic. Direct mail can also reach people who are not members and solicit both their backing for a particular policy and a contribution.
Interest groups may also directly help candidates who support their positions by providing them with campaign workers and using their own members to get people to vote; they may publicly endorse candidates for office as well as give money to the candidates' campaign funds.
Political action committees PACs are groups that raise and distribute money to candidates. They may be affiliated with an existing interest group, such as a labor union or trade association, but they can be independent. When changes in campaign financing laws in limited the amount of money an individual could contribute, PACs became a major force in American politics. The number of PACs has grown dramatically in the last 20 years, as has the amount of money they donate.
PACs are not always separate from other interest groups. Often they are the campaign-financing wing of a larger lobbying effort.
It is not surprising that labor unions give the overwhelming majority of their contributions to Democratic candidates while most business groups favor Republicans. It is unclear how much the contributions actually change policy.
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