INTEREST GROUPS AND INEQUALITY POLITICS

OBJECTIONS TO INTEREST GROUPS

• Despite all these seemingly democratic things, perhaps it is not exactly the case
  • Strong upper class ‘accent’
• Representational inequalities
  • Not all segments of society are equally represented by interest groups to the same extent
  • Lobbying game dominated by business interests
    • Decline in organized labor becomes more apparent
  • Even more social-based interest groups rely mostly on higher-income donors, therefore supporting their issues (ex. quality of life issues) rather than other issues (ex. poverty issues)
    • Civil rights, gay marriage. etc.

RESOURCE INEQUALITIES

• Interest groups require money
  • Therefore, the groups that represent the most wealthy have the largest amount of power
  • Business groups and drug companies have huge networks of lobbyists
• Political Action Committees (PACs) and Super PACs
  • Groups that are created to raise money for candidates
    • Lead all the other groups in terms of sheer spending
  • Super PACs are groups that don’t have to disclose financial information as long as they aren’t directly tied with a candidate

GRAPH: Amount of money that interest groups spend per year

• It is dominated by Finance/ Insurance/ Real Estate and other miscellaneous businesses category

ACCESS INEQUALITY

• Iron Triangle
  • Alliance between an interest group, congressional committee and bureaucratic agencies (This has been used before; they work/act together to support a specific government program; it is very hard to break into this triangle)
• Issue Network
  • Public and Private coalitions with experts and officials that exists around an issue and is publicly visible. (This is used now; Instead of three networks, there are huge amount of groups that work/act together to create an open, liquid interaction that is very hard to track, and very hard to understand as to who hold power)
    • Move from a closed network to a more open and liquid one
      • Makes policy-making predictable
    • Hard to break in this system

GRAPH: The Iron Triangle

GRAPH: Issue Network

PRIVILEGED PLACE OF BUSINESS CORPORATIONS

• Do Corporations undermine Democracy?
• Do they have too much influence?
• They have huge amounts of influence and lobbyists
• High regard for business in American society
  • Fundamental capitalist society
  • Politicians can’t be seen to be anti-business
  • Tied closely with economy and health of American people
• Corporations are most powerful in good economic times, and when they build alliances among themselves

FACTION IN INTEREST GROUPS

• The Mischief of Faction
  • Problem of Faction originated in Federalist 10
  • Using disclosure as a tool against factions
    • Registering lobbyists so you know who they are and what they are doing
  • Revolving door
    • Ex-politicians becoming lobbyists for things they once supported officially
    • Some restrictions and ‘waiting periods’
  • More efforts to reign this in but it creates loopholes
    • Creation of PACs as a loophole in the Tax Code
  • Corruption by Jack Abranoff lead to a call for more reform

GRAPH: THE REVOLVING DOOR

• 43% of those who leave Congress become lobbyists
  • 42% of the House become lobbyists
  • 50% of the Senate become lobbyists