Matt Grossmann

Party Coalitions and Interest Group Networks

We analyze affiliation networks of interest groups that endorse the same candidates in primary elections, donate to the same candidates in general elections, and voice support for the same legislative proposals. Patterns of interest group ties resemble two competing party coalitions in elections but not in legislative debate. Campaign endorsement and financial contribution ties among interest groups are consistently correlated but legislative ties do not follow directly from electoral alliances. The results challenge the consensus in the emerging literature on the expanded party organization; interest groups have distinct incentives to join together in a party coalition in elections but also to build bipartisan grand coalitions to pursue legislative goals. We also modify conventional views on party differences. The Democratic coalition is not fractured into many small constituencies. The Democratic campaign and legislative networks are denser than equivalent Republican networks, with a core of labor organizations occupying central positions.

What voters want from political campaign communication

Conventional wisdom holds that the public dislikes campaigns for their negativity and superficiality, preferring a cleaner, substantive, and more deliberative process. By contrast, the implication of Hibbing and Theiss-Morses (2002) Stealth Democracy is that, while citizens will indeed dislike campaigns, they do not necessarily desire more deliberation, debate, and discussion of issues. Instead they want simple cues that allow them to size up candidates with minimal effort. In this article, we test these theories with survey and focus group data collected during the 2002 California gubernatorial race. Ultimately, the ideal campaign envisioned by the public falls somewhere between the substantive and participatory campaign envisioned by reformers and what we call an “undemanding campaign.” We also find that attitudes toward campaigns vary substantially based on political involvement and demographic attributes. Most important, politically involved citizens desire the more substantive campaigns envisioned by reformers, but less involved citizens want less demanding campaigns. This finding suggests not only that any generalizations about what the public wants from campaigns must be cautious, but also that reformers may need to tailor their proposals to the tastes of different groups of citizens if these proposals are to be effective.

Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats: The Asymmetry of American Party Politics

Scholarship commonly implies that the major political parties in the United States are configured as mirror images to each other, but the two sides actually exhibit important and underappreciated differences. The Republican Party is primarily the agent of an ideological movement whose supporters prize doctrinal purity, while the Democratic Party is better understood as a coalition of social groups seeking concrete government action. This asymmetry is reinforced by American public opinion, which favors left-of-center positions on most specific policy issues yet simultaneously shares the general conservative preference for smaller and less active government. Each party therefore faces a distinctive governing challenge in balancing the unique demands of its base with the need to maintain broad popular support. This foundational difference between the parties also explains why the rise of the Tea Party movement among Republicans in recent years has not been accompanied by an equivalent ideological insurgency among Democrats.

Do Voters Perceive Negative Campaigns as Informative Campaigns

We argue that citizens distinguish the tone of a campaign from the quality of information that it provides and that evaluations on each dimension respond differently to positive and negative political advertising. We test these claims using survey and advertising data from the 2000 presidential campaign and two 1998 gubernatorial races. In each race, citizens separate judgments about the tone of a campaign from judgments about the quality of information they have received. Furthermore, negative campaigning affects the former, but not the latter, set of evaluations. These results have implications for the debate over the impact of negative advertising and for how citizens perceive campaigns as political processes.

Artists of the Possible : governing networks and American policy change since 1945

Introduction Chapter 1: Policymaking in American Institutions Chapter 2: Aggregating Policy History Chapter 3: How Much Does the Issue Agenda Matter? Chapter 4: The Long Great Society Chapter 5: Variations on the Policy Process Chapter 6: Partial Explanations for Policy Change 211 Conclusion Appendix A: Policy History Sources and Data Collection Procedures Appendix B: Models of Explanations for Policy Change References

The Variable Politics of the Policy Process: Issue-Area Differences and Comparative Networks

The politics of policy-issue areas differ in multiple ways, including the venues where policies are enacted, the frequency and type of policy development, the relative importance of different circumstantial factors in policy change, the composition of participants in policymaking, and the structure of issue networks. The differences cannot be summarized by typologies because each issue area differs substantially from the norm on only a few distinct characteristics. To understand these commonalities and differences, I aggregate information from 231 books and 37 articles that review the history of American domestic policy in 14 issue areas from 1945 to 2004. The histories collectively uncover 790 notable policy enactments and credit 1,306 actors for their role in policy development. The politics of each issue area stand out in a few important but unrelated aspects.

Campaigning as an Industry: Consulting Business Models and Intra-Party Competition

American political campaigns have become a multi-billion dollar industry. Rather than assume that only political factors affect the campaigns that voters see, scholars must assess the importance of the business incentives associated with political consulting. Economic competition does not match political competition; firms compete for clients within the two major parties, against their political allies. I argue that the supply of firms in each party, the revenue models in the industry, the diversification of client types, and the cooperative structure in each party all may affect political campaigns. The way the industry operates and the different patterns of behavior within each party create incentives and practices that may alter campaigns in response to economic factors having little to do with optimal political strategy. Using two original surveys and a network analysis, I analyze how the industry is changing and how consultants in each party cooperate and compete.

Going Pro? Political Campaign Consulting and the Professional Model

Does the sociological model of professionalism apply to the occupation of political campaign consulting? Using survey data from consultants involved in U.S. Congressional campaigns as well as in-person interviews, this article describes how consultants see their role in shaping campaigns and appraises their degree of consensus regarding appropriate campaign strategy and occupational behavior. Although consultants face some structural barriers to professionalization, the results suggest that they have the key components for a successful professional project: occupational institutions, a base of applied knowledge, and a service ethic. This consultant professionalization has important implications for the structure and content of modern campaigns.

Do the Strategists Know Something We Don't Know? Campaign Decisions in American Elections

Political consultants believe that strategic decisions made by candidates in the midst of campaigns help determine election outcomes. Political scientists have traditionally been skeptical of these claims. Indeed, we have produced little evidence that consultant decisions, other than routine actions driven by obvious electoral circumstances, affect outcomes. Despite an increasing overlap between the interests of practitioners and scholars, current research limits the potential for ideas to travel between them. The result is that claims made by consultants about the effects of myriad decisions regarding advertising, public relations strategies, mobilization, and responses to opposition messages remain largely unassessed. Likewise, the practitioner focus on the importance of campaign messages is not central to scholarship. To make academic literature speak to the concerns of practitioners, scholars need to combine their work on the contextual determinants of campaign strategy with their knowledge of the multiple factors that influence voter decision-making.

Environmental advocacy in Washington: a comparison with other interest groups

Abstract Environmental organisations in Washington are one sector of a larger interest group community, but environmental advocacy is typically studied independently. Descriptive and comparative analysis of 92 Washington environmental organisations and more than 1,600 other advocacy organisations reveals that the structure and behaviour of environmental groups is typical of constituency interest organisations and differs in only a few systematic ways. On average, environmental organisations are better staffed than other groups and more likely to be actively involved in the courts. Yet in most respects, environmental representation matches the broader patterns of organised interest advocacy in Congress, the administration, and the media.