Influence and the Administrative Process: Lobbying the U.S. President's Office of Management and Budget

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON F. HAEDER ◽  
SUSAN WEBB YACKEE
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Government Regulations ◽  
Administrative Process ◽  
Rule Change ◽  
Public Interest Groups ◽  
The U.S

All administrative processes contain points of entry for politics, and the U.S. president's use of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to review government regulations is no exception. Specifically, OMB review can open up a pathway for interest groups to lobby for policy change. We theorize that interest group lobbying can be influential during OMB review, especially when there is consensus across groups. We use a selection model to test our argument with more than 1,500 regulations written by federal agencies that were subjected to OMB review. We find that lobbying is associated with change during OMB review. We also demonstrate that, when only business groups lobby, we are more likely to see rule change; however, the same is not true for public interest groups. We supplement these results with illustrative examples suggesting that interest groups can, at times, use OMB review to influence the content of legally binding government regulations.

Leaders' Communications in Public-interest and Material-interest Groups

1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-540
Author(s):  
R. A. Young ◽  
Shirley M. Forsyth
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Patent Protection ◽  
Group Leaders ◽  
Material Interest ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Public Interest Groups ◽  
Internal Communications ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThis article analyzes the internal communications between interest group leaders and their memberships. The case is Bill C-22, which increased patent protection for Pharmaceuticals in Canada. The object was to test for differences between “material” groups seeking benefits for their members and “purposive” groups pursuing policies which will benefit others. Significant differences were found in the kinds of appeals made by group leaders. This implies that it can be realistic and useful to distinguish between types of group according to their purposes and the motivations of their members. The findings also provide some insight into the language of policy debates and allow some speculation about the perennial question of why people adhere to large public-interest groups.

Good and Evil in the Chairmen's 'Boiler Plate': An Analysis of Corporate Visions of the 1970s

1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie E. Kendall
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Public Interest Groups ◽  
The Government ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The U.S

Boiler plates, the chairman's message that begins each corporation's annual report, provide a reflection of the self-image of American big business. This paper uses the method of dramatism for discovering and interpreting corporate dramas inherent in the language of the boiler plates of the Dow Jones Industrials. The U.S. economy of the 1970s provides the dramatic setting, with the company as hero, the government as villain and public interest groups as minor players. The overriding corporate drama can be traced to the archetypal drama of pure competition. Understanding corporate dramas allows us to see how companies create a shared rhetorical vision to unify their shareholders with management and employees, label actions as good or evil, and influence the public by putting forward a positive corporate self-image.

Seeds of Cynicism: The Struggle Over Campaign Finance, 1956–1974

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian E. Zelizer
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Finance Reform ◽  
Campaign Finance Reform ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Public Interest Groups ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines how antecedent political events created a window of opportunity for campaign finance reformers during the period 1956–1974, including a series of scandals such as Watergate. In the 1960s, campaign finance reform emerged from a reform coalition composed of legislators, experts, philanthropists, foundations, and public interest groups. The coalition succeeded in placing campaign finance reform on the national agenda even without widespread public interest or support. It left intact most of the underlying pressures on campaign finance. For example, they did not tackle the declining importance of political parties, leaving high-cost television as the principal medium of political communication. The chapter highlights the tensions that arose over campaign finance that reached a boiling point when President Richard Nixon began his second term in office.

scholarly journals Regulating Off-Road: The California Desert and Collaborative Environmentalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-343
Author(s):  
Keith Makoto Woodhouse
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
The West ◽  
Road Racing ◽  
Federal Administration ◽  
National Environmental

Historians often understand the 1970s and 1980s in terms of a declining New Deal order, in which an antistatist right as well as a conflicted relationship between public interest movements and administrative authorities undermined the notion of an effective federal government. Nowhere was the erosion of federal administration seemingly more apparent than in the West. An examination of the regulation of off-road racing in the California desert, focusing on everyday administration rather than on elections and lawsuits, reveals how federal agencies actually worked more collaboratively and productively with different interest groups than familiar narratives about these polarized decades would suggest. Contrary to depictions of federal agencies as administrating from afar, and of environmental organizations as overly litigious and out of touch, regulatory work in the California desert happened locally and through relationships shaped by new laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act.

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