A Bias Towards Business? Assessing Interest Group Influence on the U.S. Bureaucracy

Abstract

We test the proposition that the federal bureaucracy exhibits a "bias toward business" during notice and comment rulemaking. We analyze over 30 bureaucratic rules and almost 1,700 comments over the period of 1994 to 2001. We find that business commenters, but not nonbusiness commenters, hold important influence over the content of final rules. We also demonstrate that as the proportion of business commenters increases, so too does the influence of business interests. These findings contrast with previous empirical studies and generally suggest that notice and comment procedures have not succeeded in "democratizing" the agency policymaking process to the extent sometimes suggested in the normative rulemaking literature.

studying preference attainment using spatial models

“…Then, the researcher reduces the political space into dimensions and/or factors. Actors' preferences on those dimensions/factors are either a priori assumed (Dür, 2008a) or inferred from data through interviews/surveys (Mahoney, 2007;Baumgartner et al, 2009;Bernhagen et al, 2014;Gilens and Page, 2014) and various documents (Klüver, 2011(Klüver, , 2013Yackee and Yackee, 2006, Yackee, 2004Costa et al, 2014) and the same is done for the initial and final policy outputs. 1 Then, the researcher measures whether and to what extent the final policy output has moved towards the actors' preferences.…”

“…Two main modes of causal inference may be identified in the analysis of interest group influence. Large N observational studies (Bernhagen, 2012;Klüver, 2009Klüver, , 2013Yackee and Yackee, 2006;Yackee, 2004Yackee, , 2006 using data set observation data (Collier et al, 2010a;Collier, 2011) rely on a frequentist mode of causal inference (Goldthorpe, 2001). Put simply, influence is conceived as the causal link between the interest group's action and the policy change under analysis for which evidence is found in how frequently the former precedes the latter.…”

“…The strength of this spatial assumption varies greatly among studies, moving from those considering space in what Benoit and Laver (2012) call an orientational manner to explicitly spatial models of political competition. Nonetheless, even in the latter the political space is considered as being unidimensional, such as more or less regulation (Klüver, 2011(Klüver, , 2013Yackee and Yackee, 2006;Yackee, 2004Yackee, , 2006, the closeness to opposite interests (Costa et al, 2014) or the degree of approval on a proposal (Bernhagen, 2012). Also very recent attempts to rejuvenate the preference attainment concept (Bernhagen et al, 2014) still rely on the assumption of a one-dimensional political space.…”

“…As for large N observational studies, the methodological approach used has so far been an a priori one following methodological needs rather than theoretical guidance. The researcher identifies a dimension which is as externally valid as possible, for instance more regulation v. less regulation or the level of support for a proposal, and, then, he or she either implicitly (Bernhagen, 2012, Bernhagen et al, 2014Costa et al, 2014) or explicitly (Klüver, 2011(Klüver, , 2013Yackee and Yackee, An a priori methodological approach to dimensionality bears a major issue: the justification of dimensions in terms of exhaustiveness (Benoit and Laver, 2012). In other words, by using an a priori methodology the researcher cannot know whether the dimensions selected are exhaustive.…”

Studying Power with the Social-Ecological System Framework

“…This is the second face of power, wherein groups with identifi able interests or grievances are prevented from even representing their interests in political processes by virtue of the overt and covert actions of some other group. For example, one group may exercise power over another by preventing the fi rst group from voting, or by constructing institutional barriers that increase the costs of participation in political or administrative decisionmaking processes (Yackee and Yackee 2006 ;Obar and Schejter 2010 ), thereby producing policies that favor the subjective interests of the dominant group. Lukes also offers a third face of power centered on the manipulation of the subjective interests of a group as described below:…”