Politicizing Pluralism: Interest Groups, Party Programs and Issue Polarization

• In Event: Comparative Party Polarization

Abstract

Traditionally, interest groups are depicted as pragmatic and particularistic actors in a political system, counter-balancing election-focused and programmatic political parties. Under their most positive depiction, interest groups contribute to a pluralist political system characterized by both interest diversity and flexible legislative coalitions. However, recent research has shown that interest groups in modern U.S. politics exhibit much of the ideological polarization and broad, programmatic policy interests emblematic of modern American political parties. In this paper, we posit and test a theory for contemporary interest group polarization, arguing that the competitive pressures of insecure majorities have generated incentives for interest groups to signal alignment with one party or the other. More specifically, we test a theory of interest group partisanship that predicts groups will tend toward polarized, programmatic position-taking when their core issue area becomes increasingly politicized or tied to the brand of one party or the other. To test this expectation, we analyze an original dataset of hundreds of thousands of interest group positions on bills before Congress, ranging from 1976 to present day. We then join these data to an original measure of issue-area politicization, calculated via recent advances in text scaling. Our theory and findings speak to a growing literature on the role that interest groups play in the polarization of American politics—namely whether interest groups contribute to or are themselves influenced by growing polarization in American politics.

Author

• Jesse M. Crosson, Trinity University