Related Papers
Religions
Religious Groups as Interest Groups: The United States Catholic Bishops in the Welfare Reform Debate of 1995-1996 and the Health Care Reform Debate of 2009-2010 1
2016 •
Paul C Manuel
The United States has a long history of religious influence on public policy: the anti-slavery movement, progressivism, prohibition, civil rights, abortion, school vouchers, school prayer and nuclear disarmament are all issues that have involved religion and religious groups in policymaking. In recent decades, the number of religious interest groups (as well as interest groups in general) has greatly expanded, but the role that the religious organizations play as interest groups in the policy arena has received relatively little attention. How are they similar to and different from other interest groups? What tactics do they use? How successful are they? Under what conditions is success or failure more likely? This article examines Roman Catholic religious groups as interest groups in the congressional policymaking process. First, it places Catholic interest groups in the context of the interest group literature, and second, it examines Catholic interest groups' activity in the passage of welfare reform in 1996 and in the passage of health care reform in 2010. In both cases, they played a greater role in context-setting than in actually changing provisions.
Reform and the American Legislature: Perspectives from the Extension of Remarks Archive
Gary Moncrief
Prioritized Interests: Diverse Interest Group Coalitions and Congressional Committee Agenda-Setting
Geoffrey Lorenz
Many bills, addressing many public problems, demand the attention of Congress; only a few get it. Given limited time and resources, congressional agenda-setters must determine which bills to grant scarce agenda space, and which to neglect. How do they make this determination? I examine interest group influence on decisions to grant bills committee consideration, often both the critical legislative winnowing point and the focus of lobbying efforts. Little existing scholarship on interest group lobbying examines the effect of lobbying on legislative advancement, and what does emphasizes the role of organizational numbers and resources (particularly, campaign contributions) as sources of interest group influence. By contrast, I argue that committee agenda-setters have incentives to grant consideration to bills supported by organizations representing a diverse set of industries, social causes and other interests. Analyzing new data from interest group positions on over 4700 bills introduced in the U.S. Congress between 2005 and 2014, I find that bills supported by such interest diverse coalitions are more likely to attain committee markup, especially for majority-party sponsored bills and those introduced during divided government. This suggests that lobbying influences legislative advancement by helping committee agenda-setters predict bill viability in later legislative stages. In doing so, it "biases" legislative advancement in favor of bills supported by diverse interests.
Issue Advocacy and Interest-Group Influence
2001 •
Beth Leech
Towards a More Democratic, Modern Lobbying Process Acknowledgments Thanks to About New America About the Political Reform Program
2016 •
Thomas Susman
New America is committed to renewing American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age. We generate big ideas, bridge the gap between technology and policy, and curate broad public conversation. We combine the best of a policy research institute, technology laboratory, public forum, media platform, and a venture capital fund for ideas. We are a distinctive community of thinkers, writers, researchers, technologists, and community activists who believe deeply in the possibility of American renewal. Find out more at newamerica.org/our-story. On every dimension-elections, legislation, and in the states as well as in Washington-government increasingly fails to play its role in finding pragmatic solutions to known problems. Democracy is pulled and paralyzed by money, partisanship, and by the culture of the permanent campaign. Our institutions are not up to the challenge. The Political Reform program at New America seeks to develop new strategies and innovations to repair the d...
Catching Congress Up: Restoring the Office of Technology Assessment
2019 •
Bruno Youn
Congress has become infamous for its lack of understanding of technology, particularly with the Facebook and Google hearings in 2018. To improve this understanding, this thesis argues for the return of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a congressional support agency created in 1972 that provided science and technology expertise to Congress until its termination in 1995. It also considers potential changes that might be made to the old OTA model and the political environment in which a new OTA would need to survive.
Guns, Babies and Labor: Campaign Finance Networks in the 2000 Elections (working draft)
2008 •
Maksim Tsvetovat
This paper seeks to expand upon what we know regarding the structure of interest group networks. To explore the potential for Social Network Analysis in the larger context of group behavior and information sharing, we make use of existing federal contribution data to explore how non-corporate political action committees are linked to one another at the federal level via regulated campaign finance. Thus, we explore the density of networks, who the central players are and group relationships with respect to investment behavior. Here, we make use of FEC contribution data from the 2000 electoral cycle to describe and explore the relationships between the different types of contributions made to federal candidates.
Lobbying and Congressional Bill Advancement
Matt Grossmann
Lobbying influence：Meaning，measurement and missing
Danyang Jing
SSRN Electronic Journal
Friends or Foes? The Influence of Political Allies and Social Movement Activity on Environmental Legislation in Congress*
Marion Coddou
