Lobbying Communities in the American States
This examination of lobbying communities explores how interest group populations are constructed and how they influence politics and public policy. By examining how populations of interest groups are comprised, this work fills an important gap between existing theories of the origins of individual interest groups and studies of interest group influence. The population ecology model of interest communities developed here builds on insights first developed in population biology and later employed by organizational ecologists. The model's central premise is that it is the environmental forces confronting interest organizations that most directly shape the contours of interest populations. After examining the demography of interest organizations in the fifty American states, the population ecology model is used to account for variations in the density and diversity of their interest communities, the nature of competition among similar interest organizations to establish viable niches, and the impact of alternative configurations of interest communities on the legislative process and the policies it produces. These empirical findings suggest that the environment of interest communities is highly constraining, limiting their size, composition, and potential impact on politics. Virginia Gray is Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota. David Lowery is Burton Craige Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For the most part, however, this literature has been descriptive, with scholars
contending over whether balkanization provides an accurate description of
interest organization communities. Given the importance accorded to how we
answer this question, it is surprising that much less attention has been devoted to
explaining why and under what conditions balkanization can be sustained. The
best explanation we have is niche theory. J. Q. Wilson (1973, 263), although not
employing the ...
