Robert H. Salisbury

Interest Representation: The Dominance of Institutions

Interest group theory traditionally assumed that policies advocated by group representatives in some sense grow out of the interests or values of the groups members. Mancur Olson and others compelled important revisions in this assumption, but still left the process of interest advocacy to membership groups. It is contended here that institutions, such as corporations or local governments, occupy a dominant position with respect to interest representation in Washington, and this finding requires substantial revisions in both theoretical and descriptive formulations of the governmental process.

The Hollow Core: Private Interests in National Policy Making

Preface Acknowledgments PART I: Introduction The Lawyer and the Heavyweight The Policy Domains Representatives and Their Clients PART II:The Washington Representatives The Organization of Work The Careers of Representatives Ideology, Colleague Networks, and Professional Autonomy PART III: Targets of Representation Contact with Government Institutions The Government officials PART IV: Consensus and Conflict Allies and Adversaries Elite Networks in National Policy Making Participation and Success in Policy Decisions Conclusion Structure and Uncertainty in Private Interest Representation Notes References Index

Who Works with Whom? Interest Group Alliances and Opposition

Interest-group interactions may be examined in ways comparable to the analysis of conflict and coalition in other areas of political science. We seek to measure and compare the structure of interest-group participation and conflict in four domains of U.S. domestic policy: agriculture, energy, health, and labor. Data are drawn from a survey of 806 representatives of organizations with interests in federal policy, supplemented by interviews with 301 government officials in the same four domains. Several types of data are adduced regarding the intensity and partisanship of group conflict in each domain and the range and variety of group participation. Coalitional patterns are described and the mutual positioning of different kinds of organization—peak-association groups versus more specialized trade, professional, or commodity groups, for example—are examined.

The Transformation of American Politics: The New Washington and the Rise of Think Tanks.

Part 1 Introduction: Thinking About Think Tanks. Part 2 Expertise: From Knowledge to Politics. Part 3 Dissonance: Currents of Moral Uncertainty. Part 4 Marketing: Television, Newspapers, and the News. Part 5 Disorder: Political Transformations The New Washington. Part 6 The New Political System: The Rise of Think Tanks The Politics of Ideas. Part 7 Think Tanks and Wisdom The Great Conversation.

Who You Know versus What You Know: The Uses of Government Experience for Washington Lobbyists

Private interest representatives in Washington are often said to exploit prior experience with the federal government, especially their contacts with officials, to gain advantage for their client groups. Data on 776 interest representatives are examined to estimate the frequency and institutional location of prior governmental experience. Just over half of the respondents had had some such service; twice as many in the executive branch as in the milieu of Capitol Hill. For those with experience, the extent and character of its advantages for their work as lobbyists are assessed. In general, representatives assign greater value to the knowledge gained of both substantive policy and decision-making processes than to contacts with officials or other lobbyists.

Congressional Staff Turnover and the Ties-That-Bind

Individual members of the U. S. Congress work with staffs ranging in size from a minimum of 18 to a maximum of well over 100. Each member has come to preside over a personnel system and, consequently, may best be understood as an enterprise manager. In this article we examine these congressional enterprises in order to gain some insight about the autonomy of individual staffers, the stability of these member-centered enterprises, and generally, the responsiveness of staffers to member objectives. While it is difficult to observe or measure responsiveness directly, some purchase on the question is gained through an investigation of the causes and consequences of staff turnover; this is the major empirical focus of the research reported here.

Class and Party in Partisan and Non-Partisan Elections: The Case of Des Moines

In a recent monograph, Professor Heinz Eulau begins his analysis by quoting two “evidently antagonistic formulations” of the theoretical underpinnings of voting behavior in the United States: 1. “A person thinks, politically, as he is socially.” 2. Crucial among the elements in the electoral decision are “traditional or habitual partisan attachments.” These rival conceptions of primacy among politically relevant variables are often summarized by the terms “class” and “party.” As Eulau points out, “from Aristotle to Harold J. Laski, the relationship between class and party has been one of the ‘grand problems,’ so-called, of speculation about political systems. It has also remained one of the most neglected areas of systematic theory and of empirical analysis.” Data drawn from Survey Research Center surveys have recently been used to explore the relative importance and specify the interdependence of class and party in American voting. Generally, they show party to be more immediately relevant to the voting decision than class, though class position clearly shapes and sets limits to possible party identification and party-related perspectives. Difficult problems are involved in attempting to sort out and define the two postulated independent variables. The extent to which, in some sense, class determines party orientation is perhaps the most difficult. For example, even when it is found that a certain portion of the working class prefers the Republican party, it may still be that a generation or two earlier the families of this group were Republican on class grounds, and have perpetuated the identification through the socialization process. Campbell et al. , conclude that party identification has a “conserving influence,” inhibiting or, at least, slowing down the political manifestation of changes in class position. Their dat a strongly suggest that in any immediate situation class will be much less highly correlated with the vote than party preference. Campbell et al. , do not attempt to control for class in relating party identification to the vote, although they do explore the separate effect of class. Eulau deals with this problem at length, but his focus is rather different. He does not attempt to specify the relative weight of each independent variable in predicting the vote, but concentrates on exploring the interrelationships of the two variables.

Lawyers and the Structure of Influence in Washington

Despite the widespread perception that lawyers exercise considerable influence over national policy making in the United States, their participation in the process has previously received little systematic empirical analysis. Based on a variety of evidence gathered in interviews with more than eight hundred Washington representatives, including data on their work, careers, contacts with government agencies, networks of acquaintance, and relationships with clients, we argue that lawyers are not as prevalent, active, or influential in national policy making as the popular image suggests. Rather, the findings indicate that lawyers occupy a relatively specialized niche in the system of interest representation, one that allows them to command substantial economic rewards and to maintain a measure of independence and autonomy in their work, but that limits their influence in policy formation.