Interest Group Coalitions and Minority Representation in Rulemaking

• In Event: Interest Group Identity, Representation, and Coalition Building

Abstract

Strategic coalition building by interest groups can improve the visibility, viability, and equity of government agendas and proposals, and, in the case of interest groups representing minority populations (such as those historically marginalized by race, gender, class, and sexual orientation), provide an avenue for overcoming "upper-class" bias in lobbying (Strolovitch 2007). However, the broader scholarship has overlooked the effects of this tool on the representative quality of lobbying outcomes.

In response, I present a theory of minority interest group representation and coalitional lobbying in policymaking. I posit that coalitional lobbying attracts the attention of core government actors and lends increased (wo)manpower to the lobbying efforts of minority interest groups, all of which advance their policy goals. Further, I argue that resource, organizational, and partisan diversity in the makeup of these coalitions lends reputability to coalitions and their proposals, offering similarly improved lobbying outcomes.

I test these claims using an original, large-N dataset identifying coalitions of minority interest groups through signatures on public comments submitted on proposed federal agency rules. This dataset contains every public comment submitted by a random sample of 100 minority interest groups between 2005 and 2015, weighted by policy sector. Each observation (comment) is coded for its coalitional nature and policy content, and links to data on accompanying proposed and final rules and hand-coded characteristics of coalition members.

I operationalize the "lobbying success'" of public comments using plagiarism detection software to compare the text of each comment to that of its corresponding final rule and produce a measure of textual similarity between each comment-final rule pair. To assess my claims, I model the relationship between lobbying success and the use and diversity of coalitions, and report results that strongly support the hypotheses posed.

Author

• Maraam Dwidar, University of Texas, Austin