Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T08:31:51.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Interest Groups, Iron Triangles and Representative Institutions in American National Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

President Carter will perhaps be remembered most for his perceived incompetence, an impression produced largely by his inability to forge coalitions in Congress, and by his failure as an ‘outsider’ to intervene effectively in the established policy-making processes in Washington. In his farewell address, Carter alluded to what he believed to be the source of his troubles – the fragmentation of power and decision-making exploited by influential special interests. Carter believed that he was trapped in a web of organized groups allied with well-placed congressional and bureaucratic sympathizers seeking to protect their narrowly defined interests and frustrating his own broader vision of the public good.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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 ‘President Jimmy Carter's Farewell Address’, 14 01 1981Google Scholar, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 39 (17 01 1981), p. 156.Google Scholar

2 Seidman, Harold, Politics, Position and Power: The Dynamics of Federal Organization, 3rd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 116.Google Scholar

3 The best known is Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1969)Google Scholar. Also see, for example, James, Dorothy Buckton, The Contemporary Presidency (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 126Google Scholar; Cronin, Thomas E., The State of the Presidency, 2nd edn (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1980), pp. 177–8, 335–9Google Scholar; and Lammers, William W., Presidential Politics: Patterns and Prospects (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), pp. 1920, 146–7, 258–61Google Scholar, and Dodd, Lawrence C. and Schott, Richard L., Congress and the Administrative State (New York: John Wiley, 1979).Google Scholar

4 ‘Subgovernments’: Cater, Douglass, Power in Washington (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), p. 17Google Scholar; ‘policy subsystems’: Freeman, J. Leiper, The Political Process: Executive Bureau – Legislative Committee Relations, revised edn (New York: Random House, 1965), p. 11Google Scholar; and ‘whirlpools’: Griffith, Ernest S., The Impasse of Democracy (New York: Harrison-Milton Books, 1939). p. 182.Google Scholar

5 Heclo, Hugh, ‘Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment’, in King, Anthony, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), p. 88.Google Scholar

6 Heclo, , ‘Issue Networks’, pp. 94105.Google Scholar

7 King, Anthony, ‘The American Polity in the Late 1970s: Building Coalitions in the Sand’Google Scholar, in King, , ed., The New American Political System, p. 391.Google Scholar

8 The development of this concept of subgovernments began when Freeman studied the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1928 to the late 1940s, Freeman, , The Political Process, p. 67Google Scholar; Maass, Arthur investigated the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s, Muddy Waters – The Army Engineers and the Nation's Rivers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McConnell, Grant concentrated on business, agricultural, public works, and public lands groups operating up to the end of the early post-war period, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966)Google Scholar; and Kariel, Henry summarizes literature from the pre-war and early post-war period in The Decline of American Pluralism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961).Google Scholar

9 Freeman, , The Political Process, p. 22Google Scholar; McConnell, , Private Power and American Democracy, pp. 67, 244, 339Google Scholar; and Kariel, , The Decline of American Pluralism, p. 11.Google Scholar

10 Ripley, Randall B. and Franklin, Grace A., Congress, the Bureaucracy, and Public Policy, revised edn (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1980), pp. 820, 90, 212Google Scholar. Also see Lowi, Theodore, ‘Four Systems of Policy, Politics, and Choice’, Public Administration Review, XXXII (1972), 298310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Ripley, and Franklin, , Congress, the Bureaucracy, and Public Policy, pp. 123–4, 152–6, 212.Google Scholar

12 Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).Google Scholar

13 For a summary of these data, see Miller, Warren E., Miller, Arthur H. and Schneider, Edward J., American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook: 1952–1978 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

14 See the Appendix for a description of the survey.

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

16 Moe, Terry, ‘Toward a Broader View of Interest Groups’, Journal of Politics, XLIII (1981), 531–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Moe's book: The Organization of Interests (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).Google Scholar

17 For a discussion of the significance of patrons see Walker, Jack L., ‘The Origins and Maintenance of Interest Groups in America’, American Political Science Review, LXXVII (1983), 390406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 For further analysis of the choice of tactics by the interest groups in our survey, see Gais, Thomas L. and Walker, Jack L., ‘Pathways to Influence in American Politics: Factors Affecting the Choice of Tactics by Interest Groups’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association (04 1983)).Google Scholar

19 See the estimates of growth summarized in the introduction to: Washington Representatives: 1981 (Washington, DC: Columbia Books, 1981), pp. 510Google Scholar; the discussion by Heclo, Hugh, ‘Issue Networks’Google Scholar; Wilson, Graham K., Interest Groups in America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Shabecoff, Philip, ‘Big business on the offensive’, New York Times Magazine (9 12 1979), pp. 134–46.Google Scholar

20 Cantor, Joseph E., Political Action Committees: Their Evolution and Growth and Their Implications for the Political System (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, 1982), p. 62.Google Scholar

21 Walker, Jack L., ‘Setting the Agenda in the US Senate: A Theory of Problem Selection’, British Journal of Political Science, VII (1977), 423–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Change in the range of interests represented within the House Agriculture Committee is manifested in the establishment of the Subcommittee on Domestic Marketing, Consumer Relations and Nutrition, chaired by Representative Fred Richmond, a Democrat from Brooklyn, New York. Indeed, the Agriculture Committee has changed from its position as the most conservative of all House Committees in the 1960s to one whose central ideological tendency does not diverge much from that of the parent chamber – see Bibby, John F., Mann, Thomas E. and Ornstein, Norman J., Vital Statistics on Congress, 1980 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), p. 110Google Scholar. On change in the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, see Fenno, Richard F., Congressmen in Committees (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 285.Google Scholar

23 Schick, Allen, Congress and Money (Washington: Urban Institute, 1980), p. 432.Google Scholar

24 Rudder, Catherine E., ‘Committee Reform and the Revenue Process’, in Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce I., eds, Congress Reconsidered (New York: Praeger, 1977), pp. 126–7.Google Scholar

25 Fiorina, Morris, Representatives, Roll Calls, and Constituencies (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974).Google Scholar

26 Hayes, Michael T., Lobbyists and Legislators (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1979).Google Scholar

27 On the use of the geographical distribution of benefits to stabilize policy coalitions, see Arnold, R. Douglas, Congress and the Bureaucracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

28 Fiorina, Morris P. and Noll, Roger G., ‘Majority Rule Models and Legislative Elections’, Journal of Politics, XLI (1979), 1081–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Compare, for example, Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce I., ‘The House in Transition’, in Dodd, and Oppenheimer, , eds, Congress Reconsidered (New York: Praeger, 1977)Google Scholar, with Fiorina, Morris P., Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment (New Haven: Yale, 1977).Google Scholar

30 See, for example, Cronin, , The State of the Presidency, pp. 177–8, 335–9Google Scholar; Lammers, , Presidential Politics, pp. 20, 146–7, 258–61Google Scholar; Seidman, , Politics, Position, and Power, pp. 38, 162, 164Google Scholar; James, , The Contemporary Presidency, pp. 126–7Google Scholar; and Hardin, Charles M., Presidential Power and Accountability: Toward a New Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 135Google Scholar

31 King, , The New American Political System, p. 391.Google Scholar

32 The problem faced by presidents has been further aggravated in the 1970s and 1980s by the change in issues towards those which create many more enemies than potential supporters, such as energy or welfare reform. Light, Paul, The President's Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Carter (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), p. 206.Google Scholar

33 Hess, Stephen makes this argument in Organizing the Presidency (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1976), p. 159.Google Scholar

34 Cronin, , The State of the Presidency, pp. 243–7.Google Scholar

35 Hess, , Organizing the Presidency, p. 159Google Scholar. See also Wehr, Elizabeth, ‘Public Liaison Chief Dole Reaches to Outside Groups to Sell Reagan's Programs’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, No. 39 (6 06 1981), 975–7.Google Scholar

36 Pika, Joseph A., ‘Dealing with the People Divided: The White House Office of Public Liaison’ (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 1982), pp. 6, 50.Google Scholar

37 Pika, , ‘Dealing with the People Divided’, pp. 15, 20Google Scholar. See also Keller, Bill, ‘Special Interest Lobbyists Cultivate the “Grass Roots” to Influence Capitol Hill’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, No. 39 (12 09 1981), 1740–1.Google Scholar

38 Lippman, Walter, Drift and Mastery (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914).Google Scholar