Interest Group? Eh… Maybe

Geoff McGovern’s comment on my last post brings to mind a conversation I had a few years ago in graduate school. As part of my dissertation work, I attended two of the law student annual meetings of the Federalist Society.  I was impressed with the level of networking happening right before my eyes. I was also impressed with the level of debate that went on and how obvious ideological divisions became visible among the various panelists (and even more so when talking with the students who attended the functions). My primary interest at the time was how conservative libertarians were framing property rights issues in legal arguments. Upon returning from the first of those meetings, one that was held at Harvard, I met with my dissertation advisor to discuss what I had seen and to go over my notes of some of the presentations. At some point, he said something about the way interest groups frame discussions, and I paused in puzzlement. “Well,” said I, “I don’t think it’s an interest group.” My advisor tilted his head, gave me a very direct look, and said, “Are you sure?” This was his way of asking indirectly whether I’d checked the literature on this matter – I had not, but comprehensive exams weren’t far away and I felt reasonably certain that what I was seeing in my research was not an organization that fit that particular literature. It seemed somehow a hybrid of sorts. 

 Now, nearly six years later, I’m still not sure, but I think my initial assessment was probably a reaction to the focus of the interest group literature on the way groups pressure governmental processes. There are characteristics of the Federalist Society that make it a political group (not least of all its advocacy of a particular set of ideologies – all of which are nowadays labeled “conservative”), but what intrigues me is that this group does not fit that literature as it developed – by and large with an eye to understanding how interest groups shape policy in Congress and the Executive branch.

 Interest group literature tends to focus on those groups that attempt to shape government policy through pressure on particular governmental institutions and agencies. The notion of interest groups themselves tends to be shaped by the scholars attentiveness to the arena in which the group is active. Lobbying, the endorsement of particular political candidates, involvement in administrative hearings through various mechanisms, are clearly part of this activity. And for those interested in courts and judicial politics, filing as amici, case sponsorship, and activity in the judicial selection process (mostly in the form of lobbying but also providing expert testimony concerning the backgrounds of various judicial nominees) are all within the domain the practices of the interest groups we study. Individuals who may be current or past Federalist Society members are involved with lobbying or other interest group/pressure group activity at any given time, on behalf of other organizations. But the Society itself, as Geoff points out, does few of those things political scientists generally look for in interest group studies.

In fact, it seems the leadership has fairly consciously chosen to step away from those particular activities and to focus, instead, on the networking and scholarly debate that is at the heart of the organization. Indeed, it seems to be at the heart of professional legal practice. The focus of attention, then, is on the structure of the legal profession, the development of ideas that shape the arguments made in the course of legal practice and legal education, and the culture of the profession itself. This means that some of the more obvious conceptual tools available in the study of judicial politics are not going to work very well in understanding the Federalist Society or its influence.

 To formulate a concept that will help us understand what the Federalist Society is and what it does, we can begin with some of the fundamental questions in the interest group literature even though that cannot be the endpoint of inquiry. Some of the earliest formulations of the literature drew on Truman’s classic, The Governmental Process. Truman began his project with first attempting to understand what a group is (i.e., any kind of group), and then moved on to understand how political groups are different from other social groups. In the case of the Federalist Society, we could ask a similar question about it and other organizations which have, in the past, also worked to shape legal culture. I think here of the American Bar Association (though, former members of the National Lawyers Guild might also want to think about how the organizations are, structurally, comparable or contrastable).

 In the case of the ABA, which does lobby and is involved through various committees within the organization with the governmental process, we see a professional organization that has become an interest group in most senses of the term. It has developed internal structures that enable it to engage with Congress, the Executive and the Judiciary. The same is not true of the Federalist Society – they have not developed the structures internally that would allow them to participate in the congressional arena or the executive branch in the same manner as the ABA.  But they have developed structures for educating and continuing to educate practicing lawyers, judges and professors as well as law students. The realm of ideas – which is often forgotten when we talk about resource mobilization among interest groups – seems to be of paramount importance to this organization.

 I think some of the most interesting work today on interest groups is done in political development studies, where the issues of how changes in society and institutions give rise to various waves of group mobilizations have produced some fascinating work on the formation and maintenance of these groups. It appears that there remains much to be learned, but scholars have moved our knowledge forward in important ways. I think here, in particular, of work by Gamm and Putnum, Andrew McFarland, Jack Walker, Theda Skocpol and her colleagues (APSR 2000), as well as Daniel Tichenor and Richard Harris’s work. One could ask to what degree the Federalist Society is a manifestation of the most recent wave of organizations and associations that have responded to institutional changes in the polity? This seems a very good departure point, especially given the critique of the New Deal that is often prominent among Federalist Society panelists. However, the lawyer’s penchant for organizing to restructure legal culture is time honored, as Elliott Krause demonstrates in Death of the Guilds. Beginning with a reaction to the New Deal only gets a part of the story, I think. The issue has more to do with the intricate relationship lawyers have developed with state structures. This seems to be a more theoretically intriguing place to begin.

 So, if we step away from the political scientists’ focus on institutions of government themselves, and instead ask about other types of institutions in society (that may be – are -- deeply tied to state structures), then the Federalist Society’s relationship to that institution we call the legal profession comes into sharper focus. Their work, then, is geared toward influencing this incredibly important institution that is, itself, deeply implicated in governing processes. While not an interest group in the sense many political scientists’ write about (and so hard to see as such when working within that literature), it does have an internal structure and goals that fit with the notion of a professional association. And the activity of organizing to shape legal culture is one that is time honored in the legal profession.

And that will be the topic of my next post.

Comments

[Geoff McGovern]

Laura, I look forward to reading the post! We've had some very interesting discussions so far.

[Laura Hatcher]

QUOTE: "Is the classification problem the result of the social scientific literature focusing too much on lobbying and too little on information production and networks?"

I think so. I also think there is a very useful literature coming out of other parts of the social sciences that might be helpful, and am preparing a post about that for later this evening. I think, also, that influence can actually be more *pervasive* if it's indirect. But that's really just a theory -- if true, though, it creates a nasty measurement problem for social scientists, partly because we don't have good descriptions of this sort of influence to theorize from.

[Geoff McGovern]

Laura,

Great post. The statement “Interest group literature tends to focus on those groups that attempt to shape government policy through pressure on particular governmental institutions and agencies” highlights the problem of comfortably classifying Fed-Soc as an interest group (it avowedly is not a pressure group). “[The ABA] has developed internal structures that enable it to engage with Congress, the Executive and the Judiciary. The same is not true of the Federalist Society – they have not developed the structures internally that would allow them to participate in the congressional arena or the executive branch in the same manner as the ABA.” (emphasis added)

We might pause here to identify the difference in formal structures for influencing/pressuring the congressional arena or the executive branch, and informal networks that accomplish the same goals without the overt pressure. Tracey Lightcap mentions networks in her comment, and I think some productive time might be spent developing what this term means. For it seems to me that the network phenomenon at work in the Fed-Soc is both powerful and empirically difficult to analyze.

The case of Fed-Soc highlights the difference between direct pressure groups and an interested group. The latter seem to have at least two alternative ways of affecting policy: creating buzz and direct informal contact with policy-makers. As for buzz, like Cato Fed-Soc neither lobbies nor supports candidates. And yet Fed-Soc’s ideas are influential. I think this is because there is a network of Fed-Soc information consumers—HJLPP readers, conference attendees, ambitious law students looking to be well versed in a clerkship interview with one of the Fed-Soc’s sympathetic judges.

The indirect informal contacts play a different sort of role. When I was with the organization, judges, justices, Members of Congress, and the White House staff were in almost daily contact with the office to discuss various matters. These relationships likely have an affect on policy outcomes even though the outcomes are not the result of pressure.

I’m wondering if we might come up with other examples of FS-style interest groups—those that seek to engage industry professionals on political topics but refrain from lobbying. The Ripon Society comes to mind as another libertarian-minded group of professionals who sought intellectual exchange on public policy. American Constitution Society is the left’s response to the Fed-Soc, and has adopted their model of journal-conferences-networking.

An interesting question is the degree to which this Fed-Soc style interest group is limited to think-tanks. Is the classification problem the result of the social scientific literature focusing too much on lobbying and too little on information production and networks?