Not that markets and school-choice are fundamentally incompatible with equity-except in abstract theory, markets operate within institutional and programmatic constraints. It is almost certainly possible to design a progressively structured choice system that would favor minorities and the poor. Rather, the debate hinges on predictions about response to the needs of disadvantaged families in the rel-145 atively privatized and deregulated environment that a "markets over government" orientation is likely to develop and sustain. The concerns of market skeptics reflect both "demand-side" and "supply-side" dynamics. On the demand-side, they worry whether parents-particularly lowincome parents-have sufficient information to allow them to play the consumer role effectively and whether the values and preferences of racial and ethnic subgroups might lead them to voluntarily segregate into homogeneous school settings Proponents of school choice present market-based competition as a means of leveling disparities between race, class and performance in public school systems. Opponents see school choice as threatening to exacerbate this problem because competition for students will pressure individual schools into targeting students with the highest performance and the least encumbered with personal and social disadvantages. We suggest that some charter schools, by background and affiliation, are likely to be more market-oriented in their behavior than others, and test the proposition that market-oriented charter schools engage in cream-skimming while others disproportionately serve highly disadvantaged students. Comparing student composition in market-oriented charter schools, nonmarket-oriented charter schools, and traditional public schools in Washington, DC, we find little evidence that marketoriented charters are focusing on an elite clientele, but they are less likely than the other two types of schools to serve some high need populations. Rather than skimming the cream off the top of the potential student population, market-oriented charter schools may be "cropping off" service to students whose language or special education needs make them more costly to educate.

Most research on the lobbying strategies of organized interests is venue specific. Yet organized interests frequently lobby in many different kinds of institutional venues, often on a single issue. I develop and test a model of the decision to lobby in one venue over another on a specific issue. Included in the model is the impact of oppositions from opposing interests in a particular venue, a factor that has not been considered in past research. I test the model with data from interviews with lobbyists for groups that were active on the issue of financial modernization between 1997 and 1999. I find significant variation in the amount of lobbying performed by different organizations on this issue in different venues; expectations of opposition from other interests are a significant factor in the decision to lobby in a given venue. NOTE: I would like to thank

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This article investigates how interest group competition, a state of conflicting policy preferences stemming from how organizational memberships are defined, can resolve into conflict or cooperation. The strategic choices of competing lobbyists are modeled as the results of a trade-off between the need to represent members and please legislators, and the additional advocacy resources they hope to gain by agreeing to form coalitions with their competitors rather than fight them in resource-draining conflicts. Hypotheses derived from the model are tested with data from interviews with lobbyists on six issues taken up by the U.S. Congress from 1999 to 2002. The results suggest that while group members do have some limited power to constrain the policy positions taken on issues by their lobbyists, it is primarily the pressures from legislators and competitor groups that push lobbyists into collectively supporting coalition positions different from those desired by their members.

Public policy, Punctuated equilibrium, Pluralism, Charter schools, Education,