Book Project

An Interest in Democracy
How Interest Groups Educate and Engage Members and Strengthen Democracy in the Process - under contract with University of Chicago Press

Political scientists often lump interest groups together when studying them. But in reality, the interest group system contains a wide variety of groups – many of which use nonpartisan strategies to accomplish their policy goals. In this project, I develop a method for identifying the partisanship of interest groups and explore the ways that different types of groups communicate with their members. Groups that adopt nonpartisan policy strategies lobby and mobilize members differently compared to those that adopt more partisan policy strategies. Specifically, nonpartisan groups communicate differently with their members, emphasizing the importance of bipartisanship, providing civic education that helps people understand why members of Congress want to hear from their constituents, and encourages interest group members to engage with members of Congress regardless of their party affiliation. Notably, these strategies have an impact on the way group members perceive government and politics – leading to higher levels of trust in government and efficacy and lower levels of affective polarization. For decades, we have understood that higher levels of political involvement lead to higher levels of polarization. My research yields a surprising finding – when involvement is mediated by nonpartisan interest groups, affective polarization levels actually go down. 

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Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1: Interest Groups and a Different Kind of Political Behavior

This chapter introduces the main arguments of the book – namely that interest groups vary in the strategies they choose to achieve their policy goals, and that groups choosing nonpartisan groups strengthen democratic norms among group members by teaching them about the importance of civic involvement, emphasizing bipartisan strategies, and providing opportunities for mediated interaction with policymakers. The chapter also provides examples from interviews with interest group members and leaders regarding how groups engage their members in politics and public policy.

Part 1: Interest Groups and Partisanship

Chapter 2: Interest Groups and Policy Strategy

This chapter lays out the theory for the first part of the book, which focuses on the interest group as an institution and how its policy decisions influence the way the group interacts with members. I introduce the concept by discussing how two groups with similar policy agendas can use very different policy strategies to accomplish their goals. This is because an interest group’s policy agenda – the policies the group chooses to focus on – is distinct from its policy strategy – the way the group decides to approach achieving policy goals. Many groups incorporate partisanship into their policy strategies, with some groups choosing to affiliate closely with a political party and other groups keeping their distance from both parties. Second, I describe how a group’s partisanship and a group’s type can influence the way they communicate with their members, with partisan groups using more confrontational language and nonpartisan groups encouraging bipartisan cooperation and pragmatism.

Chapter 3: Interest Group Party Proximity

In this chapter, I develop a measure called Party Proximity Index to operationalize interest group partisanship for 2,040 interest groups. I use political contributions data from the Federal Elections Commission to identify the ratio an interest group’s PAC gives to Democrats and Republicans, then compare that ratio to the ratio of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Through analyzing these data, I find that while some interest groups maintain partisan profiles, there is a significant amount of variation in party proximity among interest groups. I find that group type is a statistically-significant predictor of a group’s partisanship, with associations and companies more likely to maintain distance from parties and issue advocacy nonprofits and labor unions more likely to affiliate with one of the political parties. I use this measure throughout the book to predict interest group communication and other engagement strategies. This chapter was previously published in the journal Interest Groups and Advocacy.

Chapter 4: How Partisanship Drives Interest Group Communication

In this chapter, I uncover the ways interest groups use language differently depending upon the group’s partisanship and group type. Using a novel dataset of over 14,000 emails sent from 233 different interest groups, I find that groups primarily focused on electoral goals and issue advocacy groups are likely to use more partisan language in their communications compared to associations, while less partisan groups and associations are more likely to use language that links public policy to association member goals. I use Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC), which is a method of conducting supervised text analysis, to conduct this research and find that a group’s partisanship and type drive the ways groups communicate with members, which tells us important  things about the way groups go about achieving their policy goals.  This chapter provides an important piece of the overall puzzle by connecting a group’s partisanship with its communication to members, which sets the table for later chapters exploring the way these communication strategies influence members’ perceptions of government.

Part 2: How Interest Groups Shape Member Perceptions of Government

Chapter 5: Interest Groups and Perceptions of Government

In this chapter, I shift discussion to the ways interest groups influence their members’ perceptions of government and politics. I focus here on three theoretical mechanisms. First, the civic education provided by interest groups is often the only such training people receive after taking high school government. These educational opportunities provide valuable information about government responsiveness and how groups use policy strategy to accomplish their legislative goals and lead to a stronger belief in responsive government. Secondly, interest groups provide an opportunity to interact with government that is mediated by public affairs professionals. These mediated interactions have powerful effects on individual perceptions of government, including alleviating partisan animus and strengthening belief in responsive government. Finally, involvement in interest groups provides opportunities to interact with members of the opposite party. These interactions are increasingly rare in modern society, and provide important opportunities to shape perceptions of the political system and alleviate partisan animus.

Chapter 6: How Interest Group Participation Influences Levels of Affective Polarization

In repeated studies, political scientists have found that as involvement increases, so do levels of affective polarization. I find that, when it comes to involvement in interest groups, the opposite happens. As levels of involvement in nonpartisan interest groups increase, levels of affective polarization go down. In an era marked by intense polarization, political practitioners and scholars alike are searching for ways to bring down the temperature in our political environment. The findings from this chapter provide a way to do that, which is why this third thematic chapter will be of interest to a wide range of both scholars and political practitioners. I use a variety of methods, including interviews with interest group leaders and members, survey experiments, and a survey of professionals to understand the link between interest group involvement and affective polarization. I find that exposure to bipartisan messaging, interaction with interest group members with different party affiliations, and interaction with policymakers from both political parties all contribute to these lower levels of polarization. I also discuss how these findings relate to members’ support for bipartisan public policy strategies.

Chapter 8: Where Do We Go From Here?

The final chapter of the book provides a look at possible next steps that can come out of this research. While the findings in this book provide important ways for interest group leaders to reinforce democratic norms among members, it is important to acknowledge that not every American belongs to a group. Most interest group members are well educated and have higher socioeconomic status than the average American, meaning that the effects found here are not evenly distributed across the population. This chapter provides some potential ways to make these effects available to a broader group of people through collaboration with educational institutions and community service organizations. This chapter also provides potential additional streams of research that could flow from this project – namely comparing the effects of involvement in partisan interest groups with the effects found in this project and examining effects at multiple levels of government.