Interest Group Agenda Convergence in Polarized Times

• In Event: Group Interests and Polarization

Abstract

Interest groups once pursued distinctive agendas. Coalitions, where they existed, were typically among groups in policy niche. From Schattschneider onward, lobbies were seen as more parochial than and distinct from political parties. In practice some have long had party ties, but these alignments have grown ever stronger. Such groups once came together in election campaigns, and scholars have also shown diverse “interest group coalitions” lobbying on a few matters of shared concern such as the confirmation of a nominee for Supreme Court Justice. Yet each group traditionally focused chiefly on its own agenda, reflected in its scorecard rating legislators based on votes and occasionally cosponsorship of bills. These ratings were publicized and linked to endorsement decisions and campaign contributions.

However, examination of those scorecards and other policy statements reveals greater overlap than in the past. Not only do we see an increasing number of cases of groups prioritizing measures of broad concern that are not narrowly focused on their interests -a Supreme Court nominee, a general appropriations bill or NARAL and Emily’s List announcing that support for filibuster reform and voting rights is now required for endorsement- but even striking instances of the endorsement of the agenda of a coalition ally, e.g. the League of Conservation Voters including a 2020 vote on the removal of statues of leaders of the Confederacy from the U.S. Capitol, a measure that has no discernible connection to the group’s environmental focus. Similarly, the LGBT-focused Human Rights Campaign has backed gun control and immigrants' rights. This can be seen both as coalition politics and a gesture of solidarity toward other Democratic interest groups, or as a reflection of staff or donor sentiment. In either case, it marks an important shift in what had once been labelled “single-issue groups” and the culmination of their gradual absorption into parties.

The plan for this paper is threefold. First a contribution will be made in simply documenting the underappreciated change noted here. In previous work, I have shown this trend among environmentalists. This study expands to explore the positioning of LGBT advocates. Beyond this, two related questions will be explored- whether this pattern is equally evident among interest groups aligned with the Republican Party as well as the Democrats, given the asymmetries and differences in party organizational culture scholars note, and an assessment of the extent to which groups actually focus on their more parochial concerns, as opposed to the increasingly broad agenda their scorecards reflect in making campaign contributions. To this end I will calculate ratings that include and exclude the measures less directly related or wholly unrelated to a lobby’s ostensible focus to assess whether they actually give equal weight to the broader or coalitional concerns along with more parochial ones, in making contributions to candidates for Congress. The results of these investigations will help shed light on interest groups and parties in this polarized era, and their relationships to legislators.

Author

• David Karol, University of Maryland