3.2.1.7 Pressure groups

Question 1

Roles of pressure groups

Answer 1

• Representation
• Scrutinise government
• Benefits
• Increase political participation
• Campaign for issues not relevant to government.
• Information and education
• Policy formation

Question 2

pluralism

Answer 2

• A theory that political power does not rest simply with the electorate or the governing elite but is distributed among groups representing widely different interests.

Question 3

Mills 1960s

Answer 3

The Power Elite - argued that the United States was ruled by a small governing elite - wealthy and powerful individuals - and that, therefore, ordinary Americans had little real control over how they were governed or who governed them.

Question 4

Dahl 1960s

Answer 4

Who Governs - claimed that US society was based not on elitism but on pluralism. In three critical areas - political party nominations, urban redevelopment, and public education - Dahl claimed that widely differing groups of ordinary Americans were both active and influential.

Question 5

Dahls theory

Answer 5

• Dahl’s theory was that democracy was not so much a theory about ‘50% plus 1’ as a ‘process in which there is a high probability that an active and legitimate group in the population can make itself heard effectively at some crucial stage in the process of making decisions’.
• Hence, to Dahl, democracy was all about compromise - compromise between competing groups.

Question 6

different types of sectional groups

Answer 6

• Business/trade groups
• Labour unions and agricultural groups
• Professional groups
• Intergovernmental groups

Question 7

different types of causal groups

Answer 7

• Single-issue groups
• Ideological groups
• Policy groups
• Think-thanks

Question 8

single interest groups

Answer 8

A pressure group created in response to a specific issue to promote policies that the group desires concerning that issue.

Question 9

methods used by pressure groups

Answer 9

• Electioneering and endorsement
• Lobbying
• Voting cues and scorecards
• Organising grassroots activities

Question 10

2016 endorsement

Answer 10

In 2016, the pro-life group the National Right to Life endorsed Donald Trump while the pro-choice group NARAL endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Question 11

League of Conservation Voters

Answer 11

• Every two years, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) publishes its ‘dirty dozen’ list - the 12 candidates with what they regard as the worst record on environmental conservation. Its ‘dirty dozen’ list for the 2016 elections included eight members of Congress - four from each house.
• But the CV’s record was far from impressive with only three of its dirty dozen defeated, including only one incumbent, had been far more impressive in previous election cycles

Question 12

lobbying example

Answer 12

The Podesta Group, started by John Podesta, who is a former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and air also served in the Obama White House, with headquarters just five blocks east of the White House at 10th and G Streets.

Question 13

voting cues examples

Answer 13

Liberal Democrats look to such groups as the AFL-CIO, the NAACP and Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) to provide reassurance that they are taking the right stand on a particular issue.
Conservative Republicans find the American Conservative Union (ACU), Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) and the US Chamber of Commerce equally helpful.

Question 14

astro turf groups

Answer 14

A grassroots organisation that is fake and is set up by a big business/organisation to make it appear that ordinary people are organising themselves.

Question 15

total federal lobbying revenue 2022

Answer 15

$4.08 billion.

Question 16

Impact of pressure groups on congress

Answer 16

Pressure groups seek to influence the way House and Senate members vote.
They do this by several methods.
- Lobbying members of congress
- Lobbying congressional committees
- Organising constituents
- Publicising voting records and endorsing candidates

Question 17

Lobbying members of congress

Answer 17

Pressure groups make direct contact with members of Congress as well as senior members of their staff

Question 18

lobbying congressional committees

Answer 18

• They also contact the relevant congressional committees – especially those who chair or are ranking minority members on those committees.
• Congress does most of its work in committees – specifically the standing committees
• Standing committees have significant power to amend legislation which they consider during the legislative process.
• This provides pressure groups with one of their most valuable access points into the legislative process.

Question 19

comment on lobbying congressional committees

Answer 19

You must start at the bottom. You must start at the subcommittee level. If you wait until the bill gets to the floor (of the House or the Senate], your efforts will very seldom work.

Question 20

berry and wilcox quote

Answer 20

‘If you have a (committee) staff member on your side, it might be a lot better than talking to the member of Congress! Pressure groups will also target standing committee oversight hearings.

Question 21

organsing consitutents

Answer 21

Pressure groups attempt to organise constituents to write to, telephone, e-mail or visit their member of Congress to express either support for or opposition to a certain policy. This is most likely to occur just before a high-profile committee hearing, floor debate or final passage vote.

Question 22

organsing constituents - 2016

Answer 22

a united cross-sector set of over 1,500 pressure groups representing, among others, organised labour, and environmental groups, organised a joint letter-writing campaign urging Congress to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
‘As you would expect from a deal negotiated behind closed doors with hundreds of corporate advisers, the TPP would reward a handful of well-connected elites at the expense of our economy, environment and public health,’ said Arthur Stamoulis, the executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign, which organised the campaign.

Question 23

Publicising voting records and endorsing candidates

Answer 23

Pressure groups publicise the voting records of House and Senate members, sometimes offering their own rankings. At election time they endorse supportive and oppose non-supportive incumbents by fundraising and media advertising.

Question 24

Impact of pressure groups on the executive

Answer 24

• Pressure groups seek to maintain strong ties with relevant executive departments, agencies, and regulatory commissions.
• This is especially the case when it comes to the regulatory work of the federal government - regulations, for example, regarding health and safety at work, business, the transport and communications industries, and the environment.
• Problems can emerge when regulatory bodies are thought to have to cosy a relationship with the group that they are meant to be regulating. Are they acting as ‘watchdogs or lapdogs’.

Question 25

Impact of pressure groups on the judiciary

Answer 25

• Pressure groups take a lively interest in the nominations the president makes to the federal courts, especially those to the US Supreme Court.
• ## Pressure groups can hope to influence the courts by offering amicus curiae briefings.

Question 26

American Bar Association

Answer 26

evaluates the professional qualifications of nominees, and their evaluation can play a significant role in the confirmation process conducted by the Senate – Clarence Thomas was ruled under qualified by the ABA but was still appointed.

Question 27

what do amicus briefs allow pressure groups to do

Answer 27

pressure groups have an opportunity to present their views to the court in writing before oral arguments are heard.

Question 28

Amicus Briefs example

Answer 28

In 2005, the ACLU was at the Supreme Court in the case of McCreary v ACLU, in which the Court ruled that a display of the Ten Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse was unconstitutional.

Question 29

low profile pressure group in court

Answer 29

Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS), brought a landmark case to the Supreme Court in 2007, PICS V Seattle School District, in which the Court declared it unconstitutional to assign students to public (i.e. state-run) schools solely for the purpose of achieving racial balance.

Question 30

2008 NRA court

Answer 30

In 2008, the National Rifle Association played a significant role in the landmark case of District of Columbia v Heller, in which the Supreme Court declared Washington DC’s ban on handguns to be unconstitutional.

Question 31

2012 NFIB case

Answer 31

In 2012, it was the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) that brought the landmark legal challenge to President Obama’s healthcare reform - Obamacare - the case making it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Question 32

2017 ACLU

Answer 32

In 2017, ACLU was back at the Supreme Court again, fighting a gender discrimination case concerning transgender student rights in Virginia, in Gloucester County School Board v C.G.

Question 33

arguments in favour of pressure groups

Answer 33

• They provide legislators and bureaucrats with useful information and act
  as a sounding board for legislators at the policy formulation stage in the
  legislative process.
• They bring some kind of order to the policy debate, aggregating views and
  channelling the wishes of the clients and members whom they seek to
  Parties and pressure groups
  represent.
• They broaden the opportunities for participation in a democracy.
• They can increase levels of accountability both for Congress and for the executive branch.
• They increase opportunities for representation between elections, as well as offering opportunities for minority views to be represented that would be lost in the big tent of political parties.
• They enhance the two fundamental rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association.

Question 34

Arguments and pressure groups

Answer 34

• The revolving door syndrome.
• The Iron-triangle
• inequality of groups
• Special interests versus the public interest
• Buying political influence

Question 35

the revolving door syndrome

Answer 35

• The practice by which former members of Congress (or the executive) take up well-paid jobs with Washington-based lobbying firms, using their expertise and contacts to lobby their previous institution.
• Many pressure groups work through hired lobbyists employed by lobbying firms - many based in Washington DC - whose full-time job is to lobby government. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

Question 36

Criticisms of revolving dooe syndrome

Answer 36

Is that a high proportion of these professional lobbyists are former members of Congress or former congressional staff members. This is what is known as the revolving-door syndrome: people walk out of the political door, so to speak, perhaps having just been defeated in an election, but immediately re-enter the political world as a Washington lobbyist.

Question 37

federal law on lobbyists

Answer 37

• Federal law forbids former public officials from taking up a job as a lobbyist within a year of leaving public office, but after that year has elapsed, the traffic through the revolving door from public official to professional lobbyist is quite heavy. Critics argue that this constitutes an abuse of public service.

Question 38

Iron triangle

Answer 38

A strong relationship between pressure groups, the relevant congressional committees and the relevant government department which attempts to achieve mutually beneficial policy outcomes.

Question 39

example of an iron triangle

Answer 39

The veterans’ iron triangle. On one side of the triangle would be veterans’ groups such as the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Disabled American Veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the American Legion.
On another side would be the Veterans’ Affairs committees of the House and the Senate. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs would constitute the third side of this iron triangle.

Question 40

link between iron triangle and revolving door syndrome

Answer 40

• The iron triangle is linked with the revolving-door syndrome. A Pentagon general might, after the lawful waiting period, end up as a lobbyist for a missile manufacturer. Similarly, a former staff member from the Senate Armed Services Committee might get a job lobbying for a defence contractor.

Question 41

iron triangle vs pluralism

Answer 41

• The existence of these iron triangles raises the question of whether pressure group activities are compatible with a pluralist society.
• A pluralist society is one in which political resources such as money, expertise and access to both government and the mass media are spread widely and are in the hands of many diverse individuals and groups.
• In contrast, many see pressure groups as fostering an elitist view of society in which the political resources are in the hands, not of the many, but of the few.

Question 42

what do critics argue about pressure groups

Answer 42

• Groups adding to a splintering, or ‘atomisation’, of US society. Pressure groups tend to accentuate ‘me’ rather than we.
• As they spend too much time fighting for their special interest and little time working for the wider public interest.

Question 43

what percenatges of BLM marches were violent

Answer 43

2%

Question 44

2020 presidential and congressional spending comapred to 2017 general election

Answer 44

Super PACs spent $1.8 billion of the total $14 billion spent on the election, whereas in the 2017 UK general election non-party campaigners spent £2.5 million of the total £41.5 million election spending.

Question 45

lobbying firms us vs uk

Answer 45

The UK has around 140 registered firms and individuals, but its lobbying industry has grown in recent decades, particularly because of Brexit. US has 9443.

Question 46

lobbying industry worth us vs uk

Answer 46

The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency estimated that the UK lobbying industry was worth £2 billion a year in 2017, while opensecrets.org put the value of the US lobbying industry at $3.47 billion in 2019.

Question 47

2016 cost of winning

Answer 47

In 2016 the average cost of winning a House seat was $1.5 million, and more than $19 million for a Senate seat.