Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T06:12:41.167Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Interest Groups and Political Time: Cycles in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Truman, David B., The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951), pp. 52–5.Google Scholar

2 Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, The Cycles of American History (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), p. 31.Google Scholar

4 Key, V. O. Jr, ‘A Theory of Critical Elections’, Journal of Politics, 17 (1955), 318CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burnham, Walter Dean, ‘Party Systems and the Political Process’, in Chambers, William N. and Burnham, Walter Dean, eds, The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 277307Google Scholar; Sundquist, James L., Dynamics of the Party System (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1983).Google Scholar

5 Skowronek, Stephen, ‘Presidential Leadership in Political Time’, in Nelson, Michael, ed., The Presidency and the Political System, 2nd edn (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1988), pp. 115–19.Google Scholar

6 An especially sophisticated example is Pious, Richard M., The American Presidency (New York: Basic Books, 1979).Google Scholar

7 Burnham, Walter Dean, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 91174Google Scholar; Nie, Norman H., Verba, Sidney and Petrocik, John R., The Changing American Voter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

8 Skowronek, , ‘Presidential Leadership in Political Time’.Google Scholar

9 The most specific of these writers is Vogel, David in Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America (New York: Basic Books, 1989), pp. 315, 290300Google Scholar. See also Wilson, James Q., Political Organizations (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 201–4Google Scholar; Wilson, Graham K., Business and Politics (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1985), p. 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McFarland, Andrew S., ‘Public Interest Lobbies Versus Minority Faction’, in Cigler, Allan J. and Loomis, Burden A., eds, Interest Group Politics, 1st edn (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1983), pp. 324–53.Google Scholar

10 Truman, , The Governmental Process, pp. 5986.Google Scholar

11 Salisbury, Robert H., ‘An Exchange Theory of Interest Groups’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, 13 (1969), 132CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Salisbury, Robert H., ed., Interest Group Politics in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 3267.Google Scholar

12 Boorstin, Daniel J., The Genius of American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).Google Scholar

13 Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955).Google Scholar

14 Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961).Google Scholar

15 Dahl, Robert A., ‘A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model’, American Political Science Review, 52 (1958), 463–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Lowi, Theodore M. Jr, ‘American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory’, World Politics, 16 (1964), 677715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Heclo, Hugh, ‘Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment’, in King, Anthony, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), pp. 87124Google Scholar; Kingdon, John W., Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1984)Google Scholar; Laumann, Edward O. and Knoke, David, The Organizational State: Social Choice in National Policy Domains (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).Google Scholar

18 McFarland, Andrew S., ‘Interest Groups and Theories of Power in America’, British Journal of Political Science, 17 (1987), 129–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Almond, Gabriel A., ‘The Return to the State’, American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 853–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Wilson, James Q., The Politics of Regulation (New York: Basic Books, 1980), chap. 10 and passim.Google Scholar

21 Riodan, William L., Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (New York: Dutton, 1963), p. 17.Google Scholar

22 Lowi, Theodore J., At the Pleasure of the Mayor (New York: The Free Press/Macmillan, 1964).Google Scholar

23 McFarland, , ‘Interest Groups and Theories of Power in America’.Google Scholar

24 Olson, Mancur Jr, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

25 Wilson, , The Politics of Regulation, chap. 10.Google Scholar

26 Stigler, George J., The Citizen and the State: Essays on Regulation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Derthick, Martha and Quirk, Paul J., The Politics of Deregulation (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1985).Google Scholar

27 McFarland, , ‘Interest Groups and Theories of Power in America’, p. 143Google Scholar; Redford, Emmette S., Democracy in the Administrative State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), chap. 5Google Scholar; Ripley, Randall B. and Franklin, Grace A., Congress, the Bureaucracy, and Public Policy, 3rd edn (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1984), chap. 1.Google Scholar

28 McFarland, , ‘Interest Groups and Theories of Power in America’, p. 141.Google Scholar

29 This is my interpretation of the well-known article by Schlozman, Kay Lehman and Tierney, John T., ‘More of the Same: Washington Pressure Group Activity in a Decade of Change’, Journal of Politics, 45 (1983), 351–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to interest-group cycle theory, comparisons of interest-group power between the Eisenhower era, when Schattschneider wrote The Semisovereign People, and the Reagan era, when Schlozman and Tierney conducted their research, will reveal ‘more of the same’ in finding a relatively high degree of business power.

30 This outlook on Progressivism is shaped by Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order: 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).Google Scholar

31 Wiebe, , The Search for Order, chap. 7.Google Scholar

32 Vogel, , Fluctuating Fortunes, chap. 4.Google Scholar

33 Hirschman, Albert O., Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

34 Mitchell, Robert Cameron, ‘National Environmental Lobbies and the Apparent Illogic of Collective Action’, in Russell, Clifford S., ed., Collective Decision Making: Applications from Public Choice Theory (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), pp. 87121Google Scholar; Hardin, Russell, Collective Action (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 61–6, 120–1Google Scholar; Hansen, John Mark, ‘The Political Economy of Group Membership’, American Political Science Review, 79 (1985), 7996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Edelman, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964).Google Scholar

36 Walker, Jack L., ‘Setting the Agenda in the US Senate’, British Journal of Political Science, 7 (1977), 423–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Hirschman, , Shifting Involvements, chap. 1Google Scholar; also see Margolis, Howard, Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality: A Theory of Social Choice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).Google Scholar

38 Vogel, , Fluctuating Fortunes, chaps 6–7.Google Scholar

39 Wilson, James Q., The Politics of Regulation, chap. 10.Google Scholar

40 Hays, Samuel P., The Response to Industrialism: 1885–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).Google Scholar

41 Orfield, Gary, Congressional Power: Congress and Social Change (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975)Google Scholar; Vogel, , Fluctuating Fortunes.Google Scholar

42 This term was coined by Paul D. Schumaker in a book to be published in 1991 by the University Press of Kansas.

43 King, David C. and Walker, Jack L., ‘The Provision of Benefits by American Interest Groups’ (Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 06 1990).Google Scholar

44 Vogel, , Fluctuating Fortunes, p. 299; Wilson, Business and Politics, pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

45 Schlozman, Kay Lehman and Tierney, John T., Organized Interests and American Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), pp. 5887Google Scholar; Schattschneider, E. E., The Semisovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1960).Google Scholar

46 Lindblom, Charles E., Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977), chap. 13.Google Scholar

47 Dahl, , Who Governs?Google Scholar

48 Vogel, , Fluctuating Fortunes, chap. 2.Google Scholar

49 Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton, ‘Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review, 56 (1962), 947–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Bachrach, Peter, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1967).Google Scholar

51 Olson, , The Logic of Collective Action, chap. 6.Google Scholar

52 Douglas, Mary and Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).Google Scholar

53 Schattschneider, , The Semisovereign People, p. 31Google Scholar; Gaventa, John, Power and Powerlessness (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Lindblom, , Politics and Markets.Google Scholar

54 Walker, Jack L., ‘A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy’, American Political Science Review, 60 (1966), 285–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 See Freeman, Jo, The Politics of Women's Liberation (New York: David McKay Co., 1975).Google Scholar

56 Freeman, , The Politics of Women's LiberationGoogle Scholar; Costain, Anne N., ‘The Struggle for a National Women's Lobby: Organizing a Diffuse Interest’, Western Political Quarterly, 33 (1980), 476–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klein, Ethel, Gender Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Mowry, George E., The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), chap. 4.Google Scholar

58 Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard A., Poor People's Movements (New York: Pantheon, 1977), chaps 1–3.Google Scholar

59 Freeman, , The Politics of Women's Liberation, pp. 63–7, 214–18.Google Scholar

60 Rogin, Michael Paul, The Intellectuals and McCarthy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Polsby, Nelson W., ‘Toward an Explanation of McCarthyism,’ Political Studies, 8 (1960), 250–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Huntington, Samuel P., American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

62 Schlesinger, , The Cycles of American History, p. 31.Google Scholar

63 Schlesinger, , The Cycles of American History, p. 32.Google Scholar

64 McClosky, Herbert and Zaller, John, The American Ethos: Public Attitudes Toward Capitalism and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 McClosky, and Zaller, , The American Ethos, p. 292.Google Scholar

66 McClosky, and Zaller, , The American Ethos, pp. 291–2.Google Scholar

67 Schlesinger, , The Cycles of American History, pp. 2748.Google Scholar

68 McClosky, and Zaller, , The American Ethos, pp. 290302.Google Scholar

69 Kingdon, , Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies;Google ScholarCohen, Michael, March, James and Olsen, Johan, ‘A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 17 (1972), 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 McAdam, Doug, The Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 40–3.Google Scholar

71 Truman, , The Governmental Process, p. 59Google Scholar, emphasis added.

72 Truman, , The Governmental Process, pp. 6674.Google Scholar

73 Truman, , The Governmental Process, p. 60.Google Scholar

74 Wilson, James Q., Political Organizations, p. 198Google Scholar; Salisbury, Robert H., ‘An Exchange Theory of Interest Groups’Google Scholar, in Salisbury, , ed., Interest Group Politics in America, pp. 35–6, 39Google Scholar; Schlozman, and Tierney, , Organized Interests and American Democracy, p. 122Google Scholar, n. 2; Berry, Jeffrey M., ‘On the Origins of Public Interest Groups: A Test of Two Theories’, Polity, 10 (1978), 394CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, Jack L., ‘The Origins and Maintenance of Interest Groups in America’, American Political Science Review, 11 (1983), 390–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Micheletti, Michele, ‘Interest Groups in Post-Industrial Sweden’Google Scholar, in Thomas, Clive S., ed., Interest Groups in Post-Industrial DemocraciesGoogle Scholar, forthcoming.

75 Truman, , The Governmental Process, p. 107.Google Scholar

76 Truman, , The Governmental Process, p. 60.Google Scholar

77 McCarry, Charles, Citizen Nader (New York: Signet, 1972), pp. 173–5, 198–9.Google Scholar

78 Schlesinger, , The Cycles of American History, p. 31.Google Scholar

79 McClosky, and Zaller, , The American Ethos, p. 292.Google Scholar

80 Schlesinger, , The Cycles of American History, p. 47.Google Scholar

81 Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power (New York: Wiley, 1960).Google Scholar

82 Galbraith, John Kenneth, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, Sentry edn, 1956).Google Scholar

83 Olson, , The Logic of Collective Action, chap. 3.Google Scholar

84 McConnell, Grant, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1966)Google Scholar; Lowi, Theodore M. Jr, The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1969).Google Scholar

85 McCann, Michael W., Taking Reform Seriously (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 15121.Google Scholar

86 Heclo, , ‘Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment’Google Scholar; Kingdon, , Agendas, Alternatives and Public PoliciesGoogle Scholar; Gais, Thomas L., Peterson, Mark A. and Walker, Jack L., ‘Interest Groups, Iron Triangles, and Representative Institutions in American National Government’, British Journal of Political Science, 14 (1984), 161–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laumann, and Knoke, , The Organizational State: Social Choice in National Policy Domains.Google Scholar

87 Heclo, , ‘Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment’, p. 102.Google Scholar

88 Berry, Jeffrey M., Feeding Hungry People: Rulemaking in the Food Stamp Program (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Bosso, Christopher, Pesticides and Politics (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Browne, William P., Private Interests, Public Policy, and American Agriculture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988)Google Scholar; Culhane, Paul J., Public Lands Politics (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

89 Katzenstein, Peter J., Small States in World Markets (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 205–11.Google Scholar

90 Salisbury, Robert H., ‘Why No Corporatism in America?’ in Schmitter, Philippe C. and Lehmbruch, Gerhard, eds, Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1979)Google Scholar; Wilson, Graham K., ‘Why Is There No Corporatism in the United States?’ in Lehmbruch, Gerhard and Schmitter, Philippe C., eds, Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1982), pp. 219–36.Google Scholar

91 McFarland, Andrew S., ‘Cooperative Pluralism: The Coal Policy Experiment’Google Scholar (Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Chicago). See also Quirk, Paul J., ‘Toward a Theory of the Cooperative Resolution of Policy Conflict’, American Political Science Review, 83 (1989), 905–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar