Hostname: page-component-5db6c4db9b-5lzww Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2023-03-26T07:43:27.473Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "useRatesEcommerce": false } hasContentIssue true
  • English

The Ideologies of Organized Interests and Amicus Curiae Briefs: Large-Scale, Social Network Imputation of Ideal Points

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2023

Sahar Abi-Hassan ,
Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier Open the ORCID record for Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier[Opens in a new window] ,
Dino P. Christenson Open the ORCID record for Dino P. Christenson[Opens in a new window] ,
Aaron R. Kaufman Open the ORCID record for Aaron R. Kaufman[Opens in a new window]  and
Brian Libgober
Sahar Abi-Hassan
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Kathryn P. Hannam Professor of American Studies, Department of Public Policy and Political Science, Mills College, Oakland, CA, USA. E-mail: sabihassan@mills.edu
Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier
Affiliation:
Vernal Riffe Professor of Political Science and Sociology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA. E-mail: box-steffensmeier.1@osu.edu
Dino P. Christenson*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, USA. E-mail: dinopc@wustl.edu
Aaron R. Kaufman
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Division of Social Sciences, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. E-mail: aaronkaufman@nyu.edu
Brian Libgober
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego, San Diego, USA. E-mail: blibgober@ucsd.edu
*
Corresponding author Dino P. Christenson
Get access Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Interest group ideology is theoretically and empirically critical in the study of American politics, yet our measurement of this key concept is lacking both in scope and time. By leveraging network science and ideal point estimation, we provide a novel measure of ideology for amicus curiae briefs and organized interests with accompanying uncertainty estimates. Our Amicus Curiae Network scores cover more than 12,000 unique groups and more than 11,000 briefs across 95 years, providing the largest and longest measure of organized interest ideologies to date. Substantively, the scores reveal that: interests before the Court are ideologically polarized, despite variance in their coalition strategies; interests that donate to campaigns are more conservative and balanced than those that do not; and amicus curiae briefs were more common from liberal organizations until the 1980s, with ideological representation virtually balanced since then.

Keywords

interest groupsideologyideal pointssocial networksamicus curiae
Type
Article
Information
Political Analysis , First View , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology

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.)

Footnotes

Edited by Daniel Hopkins

References

Abi-Hassan, S., Box-Steffensmeier, J., Christenson, D., Kaufman, A., and Libgober, B.. 2022. “Replication Data for: The Ideologies of Organized Interests & Amicus Curiae Briefs: Large-Scale, Social Network Imputation of Ideal Points.” Harvard Dataverse, V1. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TOYNMH CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adamic, L. A., and Glance, N.. 2005. “The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog.” In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Link Discovery. LinkKDD’05, 36–43. Chicago: ACM.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, S., de Figueiredo, J. M., and Snyder, J. M. Jr. 2003. “Why is There so Little Money in US Politics?” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 17 (1): 105–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, S., Snyder, J. M. Jr, and Tripathi, M.. 2002. “Are PAC Contributions and Lobbying Linked? New Evidence from the 1995 Lobby Disclosure Act.” Business & Politics 4 (2): 131–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arsov, N., and Mirceva, G.. 2019. “Network Embedding: An Overview.” Preprint, arXiv:1911.11726.Google Scholar
Bailey, M. A., and Maltzman, F.. 2011. The Constrained Court: Law, Politics, and the Decisions Justices Make. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Barber á, P. 2015. “Birds of the Same Feather Tweet Together: Bayesian Ideal Point Estimation using Twitter Data.” Political Analysis 23 (1): 76–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumgartner, F. R., Berry, J. M., Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D. C., and Leech, B. L.. 2009. Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumgartner, F. R., Larsen-Price, H. A., Leech, B. L., and Rutledge, P.. 2011. “Congressional and Presidential Effects on the Demand for Lobbying.” Political Research Quarterly 64 (1): 3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, J. M. 1999. “The Rise of Citizen Groups.” In Civic Engagement in American Democracy, 367–394.Google Scholar
Bertelli, A. M., and Grose, C. R.. 2011. “The Lengthened Shadow of A nother Institution? Ideal Point Estimates for the Executive Branch and Congress.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (4): 767–781.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, R. C., and Owens, R. J.. 2012. The Solicitor General and the United States Supreme Court: Executive Branch Influence and Judicial Decisions. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonica, A. 2012. “Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections: Public V ersion 2.0.” [Computer file]. https://data.stanford.edu/dime.Google Scholar
Bonica, A. 2013. “Ideology and Interests in the Political Marketplace.” American Journal of Political Science 57 (2): 294–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonica, A. 2014. “Mapping the Ideological Marketplace.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (2): 367–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonica, A. 2018. “Inferring Roll-Call Scores from Campaign Contributions u sing Supervised Machine Learning.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (4): 830–848.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonica, A. 2019. “Are Donation- B ased Measures of Ideology Valid Predictors of Individual- level Policy Preferences?” The Journal of Politics 81 (1): 327–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., and Christenson, D. P.. 2012. “Database on Supreme Court Amicus Curiae Briefs. Version 1.0.” [Computer file]. http://amicinetworks.com.Google Scholar
Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., and Christenson, D. P.. 2014. “The Evolution and Formation of Amicus Curiae Networks.” Social Networks 36: 82–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., and Christenson, D. P.. 2015. “Comparing Membership Interest Group Networks across Space and Time, Size, Issue and Industry.” Network Science 3 (1): 78–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., Christenson, D. P., and Craig, A. W.. 2019. “Cue-Taking in Congress: Interest Group Signals from Dear Colleague Letters.” American Journal of Political Science 63 (1): 163–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., Christenson, D. P., and Hitt, M. P.. 2013. “Quality over Quantity: Amici Influence and Judicial Decision Making.” American Political Science Review 107 (3): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, G. A., and Wright, J. R.. 1988. “Organized Interests and Agenda Setting in the US Supreme Court.” American Political Science Review 82 (4): 1109–1127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christenson, D. P., and Box-Steffensmeier, J. M.. 2016. “Why Amicus Curiae Cosigners Come and Go: A Dynamic Model of Interest Group Networks.” In Complex Networks & Their Applications V: Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Complex Networks and their Applications, edited by Cherifi, H., Gaito, S., Quattrociocchi, W., and Sala, A., 349–360. Studies in Computational Intelligence. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50901-3_28 Google Scholar
Clinton, J. D., Bertelli, A., Grose, C. R., Lewis, D. E., and Nixon, D. C.. 2012. “The Ideology of Agencies, Presidents, and Congress.” American Journal of Political Science 56 (2): 341–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, J. P. M. 2007. “Lobbyists before the US Supreme Court: Investigating the Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs.” Political Research Quarterly 60 (1): 55–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, J. P. M., Corely, P. C., and Hamner, J.. 2015. “The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Content.” Law and Society Review 49 (4): 917–944.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, P. M. 2008. Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crosson, J. M., Furnas, A. C., and Lorenz, G. M.. 2020. “Polarized Pluralism: Organizational Preferences and Biases in the American Pressure System.” American Political Science Review 114 (4): 1117–1137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desmarais, B. A., La Raja, R. J., and Kowal, M. S.. 2015. “The Fates of Challengers in US House Elections: The Role of Extended Party Networks in Supporting Candidates and Shaping Electoral Outcomes.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (1): 194–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drope, J. M., and Hansen, W. L.. 2004. “Purchasing Protection? The Effect of Political Spending on US Trade Policy.” Political Research Quarterly 57 (1): 27–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enamorado, T., Fifield, B., and Imai, K.. 2019. “Using a Probabilistic Model to Assist Merging of Large-Scale Administrative Records.” American Political Science Review 113 (2): 353–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esterling, K. M. 2007. “Buying Expertise: Campaign Contributions and Attention to Policy Analysis in Congressional Committees.” American Political Science Review 101 (1): 93–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fellowes, M. C., and Wolf, P. J.. 2004. “Funding Mechanisms and Policy Instruments: How Business Campaign Contributions Influence Congressional Votes.” Political Research Quarterly 57 (2): 315–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, V., and Lowery, D.. 1996a. “A Niche Theory of Interest Representation.” The Journal of Politics 58 (1): 91–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, V., and Lowery, D.. 1996b. “Environmental Limits on the Diversity of State Interest Organization Systems: A Population Ecology Interpretation.” Political Research Quarterly 49: 103–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, R. L., and Deardorff, A. V.. 2006. “Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy.” American Political Science Review 100: 69–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, R. L., and Wayman, F. W.. 1990. “Buying Time: Moneyed Interests and the Mobilization of Bias in Congressional Committees.” American Political Science Review 84 (3): 797–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, J. M. 1991. Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919 – 1981. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hansford, T., and Depaoli, S.. 2015. “Estimating the Ideal Points of Organized Interests in Legal Policy Space.” Working Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, September 3–6.Google Scholar
Hill, S. J., and Huber, G. A.. 2017. “Representativeness and Motivations of the Contemporary Donorate: Results from Merged Survey and Administrative Records.” Political Behavior 39 (1): 3–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff, P. D., Raftery, A. E., and Handcock, M. S.. 2002. “Latent Space Approaches to Social Network Analysis.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 97 (460): 1090–1098.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holyoke, T. T. 2009. “Interest Group Competition and Coalition Formation.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (2): 360–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, A., and Klevs, A.. 2022. Adaptive Fuzzy String Matching: How to Merge Datasets with Only One (Messy) Identifying Field. Political Analysis 30: 590–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kearney, J. D., and Merrill, T. W.. 2000. “The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on the Supreme Court.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 148 (3): 743–855.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelleher, C. A., and Yackee, S. W.. 2006. “Who’s Whispering in Your Ear? The Influence of Third Parties over State Agency Decisions.” Political Research Quarterly 59 (4): 629–643.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemeny, J. G., and Snell, J. L.. 1983. Finite Markov Chains: With a New Appendix “Generalization of a Fundamental Matrix”. Springer.Google Scholar
Krivitsky, P. N., and Handcock, M. S.. 2008. “Fitting Position Latent Cluster Models for Social Networks with Latentnet.” Journal of Statistical Software 24: 5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LaPira, T. M., and Thomas, H. F.. 2014. “Revolving Door Lobbyists and Interest Representation.” Interest Groups & Advocacy 3 (1): 4–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lauderdale, B. E., and Clark, T. S.. 2012. “The Supreme Court’s Many Median Justices.” American Political Science Review 106 (4): 847–866.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawler, G. F. 2018. Introduction to Stochastic Processes. Chapman & Hall/CRC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leech, B. L., Baumgartner, F. R., LaPira, T. M., and Semanko, N. A.. 2005. “Drawing Lobbyists to Washington: Government Activity and the Demand for Advocacy.” Political Research Quarterly 58 (1): 19–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, J. B., Poole, K., Rosenthal, H., Boche, A., Rudkin, A., and Sonnet, L.. 2019. “Voteview: Congressional Roll-Call Votes Database.” https://voteview.com/.Google Scholar
Martin, A. D., and Quinn, K. M.. 2001. “The Dimensions of Supreme Court Decision Making: Again Revisiting the Judicial Mind.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.Google Scholar
Martin, A. D., and Quinn, K. M.. 2002. “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation v ia Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the US Supreme Court, 1953–1999.” Political Analysis 10 (2): 134–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKay, A. 2008. “A Simple Way of Estimating Interest Group Ideology.” Public Choice 136 (1/2): 69–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, L. L. 2008. The Perils of Federalism: Race, Poverty, and the Politics of Crime Control. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Connor, K., and Epstein, L.. 1983. “The Rise of Conservative Interest Group Litigation.” Journal of Politics 45: 479–489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peress, M. 2013. “Estimating Proposal and Status Quo Locations using Voting and Cosponsorship Data.” The Journal of Politics 75 (3): 613–631.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, K. T., and Rosenthal, H.. 1985. “A Spatial Model for Legislative Roll Call Analysis.” American Journal of Political Science 29 (2): 357–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spaeth, H. J., Epstein, L., Martin, A. D., Segal, J. A., Ruger, T. J., and Benesh, S. C.. 2015. “The Supreme Court Database.” [Computer file]. http://scdb.wustl.edu/data.php.Google Scholar
Spriggs, J. F., and Wahlbeck, P. J.. 1997. “Amicus Curiae and the Role of Information at the Supreme Court.” Political Research Quarterly 50 (2): 365–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tausanovitch, C., and Warshaw, C.. 2017. “Estimating Candidates’ Political Orientation in a Polarized Congress.” Political Analysis 25 (2): 167–187. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2017.5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thieme, S. 2018. “Ideology and Extremism of Interest Groups: Evidence from Lobbyist Declarations in Three States.” Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ward, M. D., Ahlquist, J. S., and Rozenas, A.. 2013. “Gravity’s Rainbow: A Dynamic Latent Space Model for the World Trade Network.” Network Science 1 (1): 95–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wawro, G. 2001. “A Panel Probit Analysis of Campaign Contributions and Roll-Call Votes.” American Journal of Political Science 45: 563–579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Abi-Hassan et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TOYNMH
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Abi-Hassan et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Abi-Hassan et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 6 MB