Interest Groups

For Wednesday, Rauch: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/political-realism-rauch2.pdf 

CA ballot measures

Prop 30 would tax the rich in order to subsidize electric vehicles.  So it is the wealthy special interests on one side, the people on the other, right?  Not quite so simple:

VIDEO ON INTEREST GROUPS AND THE LOBBYING INDUSTRY

Tocqueville (Lawrence/Mayer ed., p. 518):

It often happens in democratic countries that many men who have the desire or directed toward that light, and those wandering spirits who had long sought each other the need to associate cannot do it, because all being very small and lost in the crowd, they do not see each other and do not know where to find each other. Up comes a newspaper that exposes to their view the sentiment or the idea that had been presented to each of them simultaneously but separately. All are immediately in the shadows finally meet each other and unite.

• ECONOMIC INTEREST GROUPS:
• Corporations and other for-profit businesses
• Trade and Professional Associations: The IRS recognized 66,358 trade and professional associations in FY2021 (p. 30). Examples More than 20% of US workers need an occupational license, up from about 5 percent in the 1950s.
• Labor Unions: BLS data

 You will find more infographics at Statista

Non-economic Interest Groups (Tocqueville on associational life)

• Data on nonprofits.
• Churches -- Chavez -- Souls to the Polls

WHY THE GUN LOBBY HAS POWER (NOT JUST THE CAMPAIGN MONEY)

Giving by party

Lobbying and Shadow Lobbying

 

Inside game 

• In-house lobbying and contract lobbying
• Access -- the real value of campaign money
• The key:  knowing your stuff, making a case on the merits

Outside game

• Advertising
• Ballot measures
• Litigation

For next time;

Political Money

• Official federal contribution limits
• Super PACs
• Other Outside Spending and Dark Money