Vested Interests, Venue Shopping, and Policy Stability: The Long Road to Improving Air Quality in Oregon's Willamette Valley

Abstract

A lot of scholarly attention has focused on why groups choose to pursue their policy goals in one venue over another. This manuscript adds to the literature by testing a new theory of venue shopping, the Adaptive Venue Shopping Framework. This manuscript finds empirical support that groups choose venues by strategically assessing the institutional context which involves three primary elements: the group's mix of resources, their opponent's resource strengths, and the degree of venue accessibility, which is a combination of opponents' degree of control over a venue and a venue's image amiability or receptivity. In addition to confirming these findings, this case study links the literature on venue shopping with recent scholarship about "vested interests" by demonstrating how a powerful agricultural group came to dominate in a legislative venue, how it protected its policy victories from reversal, and how it kept policy making from shifting into alternative venues, thus leading to long-term policy stability. Furthermore, it demonstrates how newly emerged groups can achieve policy success against stronger opponents by threatening to seek their policy goals in alternative institutions.

Inside Lobbying on the Regulation of New Plant Breeding Techniques in the European Union: Determinants of Venue Choices

“…Research has shown that venues differ from each other institutionally in many ways and that advocates take features such as internal rules, decision‐making procedures, and institutional actors into account before choosing in which venues to pursue their policy objectives (Constantelos, ; Holyoke et al, ; Huwyler et al, ; Ley, ; Ley & Weber, ; Marshall & Bernhagen, ). In light of this, the first major argument of this article is that Cibus will choose venues that are characterized by institutional “closedness.”…”

“…Research has shown that venue shoppers take several venue‐related factors into account before making their choices (see e.g., Buffardi et al, ; Holyoke et al, ; Ley, ; Ley & Weber, ; Marshall & Bernhagen, ; Pralle, ). Nevertheless, venue decision makers ultimately represent the key actors, who determine whether their activities will be successful.…”

“…This study draws on the concept of venue shopping, which originally relates to advocates who face obstacles in certain decision settings and therefore look out for other ones, which they consider more promising for the promotion of their policy objectives (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009, p. 36). Recently, scientific attention surrounding advocates' decision to select certain venues has increased; scholars refer to this as venue choice (Huwyler et al, 2018;Ley, 2016;Ley & Weber, 2015;Marshall & Bernhagen, 2017). This study concentrates on the factors that influenced Cibus' venue choices when this firm looked out for the most suitable decision settings for promoting NPBT deregulation in the EU multilevel system.…”

“…Our first interest is which venues Cibus chose for the promotion of the unpopular issue of NPBT deregulation in the EU, whose multilevel polity provides advocates with multiple channels and targets for lobbying their objectives (Beyers & Kerremans, ; Princen & Kerremans, ). Second, we are interested in the factors which explain Cibus’ venue choices because previous research has revealed various venue‐internal and ‐external factors accounting for advocates’ choices of venues (see e.g., Buffardi, Pekkanen, & Smith, ; Holyoke, Brown, & Henig, ; Ley, ; Ley & Weber, ; Marshall & Bernhagen, ; Pralle, ).…”

The aftermath of ballot box success and failure: evidence from land preservation referendums

“…the courts, the legislature, or the ballot box) and level of government they pursue (e.g. Congress, the state, or a locale) (Roberts and King 1991; Weissert 1991; Mintrom and Norman 2009; Ley and Weber 2015; Ley 2016; Petridou and Mintrom 2021), little work investigates how PEs react to succeeding or failing in their quests at the ballot box. Understanding these dynamics provides politically relevant insight about how to proceed after a successful or defeated attempt at policy change.…”