Organizing for Policy Influence

Comparing Parties, Interest Groups, and Direct Action

Benjamin Farrer

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367371951
• eBook ISBN: 9781351754408
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this book, Benjamin Farrer explains how activists can influence the policies they care about, even when they are outnumbered and their issues are ignored. The solution lies in a surprising place: organizational choice. Different types of organizations will be more influential under particular democratic institutions. If they choose the optimal type of organization - given their institutional context - then even minority groups can be influential. Environmentalists are a key example of how small groups can sometimes punch above their weight. Environmentalists in different countries have made different organizational choices. These choices explain whether or not they succeeded in influencing policy. In the empirical chapters that follow, Farrer shows that environmentalists can sometimes be more influential if they form interest groups, but under other institutions, political parties are the optimal organizational choice. Although interest groups are often easier to create, national institutions can sometimes insulate mainstream politicians from niche interest groups. When institutions deny access to interest groups, activists are forced to send the stronger signal of party entry.

Using a variety of methods, including a formal model, an experiment, and a wealth of empirical data from a variety of settings, Farrer proves that this theory of organizational choice adds to our understanding of several crucial phenomena. First, it helps explain patterns of political participation, by showing the importance of instrumental, rather than purely expressive, motivations for activism. Second, it provides an important modification to Duverger's (1954) law, by showing that new party entry is a function not only of electoral rules but also of the rules that govern interest groups. Third, it extends research on the role of institutions in determining policy outputs, by showing that policy outcomes are a function of the interaction between organizational choices and institutional context.

1 Introduction

Minorities in democratic societies are playing a game that is rigged against them. They are promised a government of the people, for the people, by the people. But what they often get is a government of the majority, for the majority, by the majority. This may be no bad thing. After all, the principle of majority rule embodies much of what is important about democracy. But if a government abides only by majority rule, then it runs the risk of creating a tyranny of the majority: a triumphant 51 percent expropriating at will from the 49 percent. Democratic countries can prevent such a tyranny, though, by limiting majority rule. Governments temper the powers of the majority by turning to other principles of democracy, such as constitutional protections for fundamental minority rights. This can prevent the worst excesses of a tyranny of the majority – but in essence, it only protects the status quo. If the only thing that any minority group has is their fundamental rights, then a tyranny of the majority might also take a more subtle form. The concerns of small groups, however pressing, might never become a priority for politicians. Democratic institutions take careful measure of the volume of votes, but they will ignore the volume of a few voices. Small groups will never be able to get their concerns onto the mainstream political agenda, and so will be chronically under-represented.

Yet their story does not end there. All democratic states privilege majorities over minorities, and they erect barriers of one type or another against the influence of minorities. But some under-represented groups are able to overcome the obstacles they face, and press for significant progress on the policies they care about. On the other hand, some movements suffer a life of irrelevance, exhausting their scant resources in pushing hopelessly against doors that never open. This book is about how under-represented groups can open some of these doors.

In this book, I argue that the explanation for the success of under-represented groups is to be found in a somewhat unlikely place: the type of organization they choose to form. A small but passionate group of activists can exert a strong influence, if they organize themselves in a way that takes best advantage of their institutional context. Previous research has not studied this possible explanation, arguing instead that aggregate levels of public support, the overall presence or absence of institutional barriers, or the actions of existing political heavyweights, are the three main factors explaining the political success of under-represented groups. However, none of these factors are within the control of the activists themselves. They cannot snap their fingers and increase public support for their cause. They cannot simply wish away the electoral systems and other national institutions that limit their influence. Nor can they control the choices of their major political rivals. But they can, and they do, make very different organizational choices. Sometimes they use political parties, sometimes they use interest groups, and sometimes direct action groups. Therefore although existing scholarship has added greatly to our understanding of under-represented groups, it has neglected the many important effects of their own agency. Specifically, prior research has not paid enough attention to the organizational choices made by activists in under-represented groups.

This book helps explain those choices. I argue that activists in under-represented groups want to maximize their policy influence, and can use different types of organizations in order to do so. I find that it is not merely the level of public support for a group that determines its policy influence. High levels of public support can sometimes translate to precious little policy influence, if organizations squander those resources. On the other hand, low levels of public support may nevertheless lead to surprising policy leverage if that public support is well-organized. Nor is it simply the nature of a country’s institutions that determines whether under-represented groups can be influential. In fact, the same institutions can have dramatically different effects depending on whether or not an under-represented group actually takes advantage of those institutions. Similarly, existing heavyweights in the mainstream political system can play apparently identical strategies, and yet under-represented groups will achieve different levels of policy influence, because of their different organizational strategies. I explain how these under-represented groups, also called ‘niche’ groups, can organize so as to maximize their influence. From this theory of organizational choice, I draw out important implications for the study of political participation, party systems, and policy outcomes.

At the center of this book is the idea that in order to get policies changed in their favor, activists from under-represented groups must offer policy-makers something in return. Essentially, they must offer votes. By mobilizing their group into some type of organization, these activists credibly signal that they have the potential to get involved in elections. This signal of electoral relevance is picked up by mainstream politicians, who must then decide how to respond. Giving policy concessions to any mobilized group is costly for mainstream politicians – it involves changing their rhetoric, diluting the attention given to other groups, and potentially confusing voters. Crucially though, institutions can raise the costs to mainstream politicians of responding to one type of political organization, while simultaneously lowering the cost of responding to another type. To take one important example, under some institutions, the costs of responding to an interest group are low, so mainstream politicians will find it relatively painless to pay heed to the signals sent by such groups. If this is the case, then activists in under-represented groups will choose to organize as an interest group. But under a different set of institutions, the costs of responding to an interest group might be much higher. This will force activists to turn to the more costly strategy of party entry.

However, an under-represented group might choose to neither form a party nor form an interest group. If institutions render both of those organizational forms equally ineffectual, then such groups might eschew democratic politics altogether and instead form a direct action group. Direct action involves influencing policy outcomes without using the formal democratic policy-making process. Direct action is private action: it may still sometimes take place in the public sphere, but it does not engage the public policy-making process. Direct action can therefore include illegal political activities such as terrorism and sabotage, or peaceful and legal private actions such as lifestyle changes, changes in consumption patterns, or charitable enterprises. Direct action essentially means making change outside of the democratic system. More resources will be put into these tactics if other organizational choices seem less likely to lead to policy influence. This book explains how under-represented groups choose between these three organizations, and how these choices can lead to them breaking the subtle tyranny of the majority.

So who are these under-represented groups? The theory here encompasses any set of individuals for whom one issue is highly salient, but where this issue is not salient in wider society. This set of individuals may or may not be conscious of themselves as a ‘group,’ but they are by definition under-represented: they care about some issue that is neglected by the mainstream political agenda. This definition is informed by two streams of scholarly research, one that prefers the term ‘niche community’ (Adams et al. 2006; Bischof 2015; Ezrow 2010; Hug 2001; Meguid 2008; Meyer and Miller 2015; Spoon 2011; Wagner 2012) and another that prefers the term ‘minority group’ (Bawn et al. 2012; Dahl 1971; Lewis 2013; Lublin 2014; Manin et al. 1999; Niemi and Weisberg 1972; Riker 1988; Schattschneider 1960). I use the term ‘under-represented’ to emphasize the breadth of the definition above.¹ Consider some examples. Environmentalists fit this definition because they are a small group of individuals who attach very high salience to the issue of ecological sustainability, at a time when most mainstream politicians attach much lower salience to the natural environment. Populist radical right groups also fit this definition. They too are not a majority in any society, and they place a much higher value on national identity and immigration policy than do mainstream political actors. Ethnic minority activists fighting for civil rights, or sexual identity and gender identity movements engaged in similar struggles – all of these can be conceptualized as a small group of citizens trying to force a proposed policy change onto the mainstream agenda. And all of these groups can make different organizational choices.

In sum, the goal of the theory is to explain which types of organizations – party, interest group, or direct action group – will tend to emerge and be influential in any given institutional context. This question is important because it addresses the lack of attention given to activists’ agency in previous research, and because it adds to our understanding of participation, of party systems, and of policy outcomes. That is, it helps us understand where activists should put their time, it helps us understand why some countries have more crowded party systems than others, and it helps us understand which combinations of national institutions and niche organizations will lead to which policy outcomes.

The book focuses on aggregate patterns and quantitative evidence. Activists, and perhaps especially activists in under-represented groups, are often skeptical of whether large-n social science has any relevance for their own individual campaigns. Zelko (2013) advises caution about any attempts to systematically analyze the organizational choices of under-represented groups:

Among social scientists there is a strong tendency to study such movements as aggregates, analyzing and explaining them in broad, structural, and frequently rather abstract terms. In the process, movements can sometimes be reified into collective responses to broad socioeconomic changes. While such approaches undoubtedly produce their fair share of innovative and insightful studies, they frequently overlook the face-to-face interaction that occurs among the activists at the core of a movement, thereby neglecting not just an important locus of the decision-making process but also the myriad arguments, debates, and personality disputes that help determine the shape and direction that a movement will take.

(p. 78. By permission of Oxford University Press)

Although under-represented groups may be small by modern democratic standards, they do contain thousands upon thousands of individuals. Studying their aggregate organizational choices might seem like an overly abstract approach, given that each individual activist might have an entirely different perspective on their own organizational choices. By looking at the bigger picture, and by generalizing about the factors that influence aggregate organizational choice, some violence is inevitably done to each of the individual stories that constitute the overall pattern. Cross-national theories run the risk of obscuring lived experiences behind a screen of large-n data. This book is still rooted in the individual stories, and individual choices, of activists from under-represented groups. But the focus is not on any one individual’s decision. The question here is an aggregate one: studying which organization is obtaining the balance of resources from an under-represented group. Despite the risks of such an approach, it may be worth exploring this aggregate picture.

The rest of this introduction explains why. I highlight the three main contributions of this theory: first, it helps resolve controversies among activists about how to allocate their time. Second, it revises our understanding of how political party systems work. Third, it adds to our knowledge about how institutions shape policy outcomes. I describe each of these contributions in turn. I begin by describing who under-represented activists are, and what an ‘organizational choice’ is. This section also describes the backlash that activists have faced over their controversial organizational choices, and shows how empirical evidence can help resolve those debates. Second, I go into more detail regarding what this theory offers with respect to party systems. I describe the key existing work on party systems, following Duverger’s (1954) law, and then I outline how the evidence in this book suggests a revision to that law. Third, with respect to policy outcomes, I introduce the idea that different organizations should have different levels of impact depending on institutional context. After discussing these three contributions, I draw out some wider implications for how we think about democracy. Then, I revisit the discussion about whether a quantitative methodology is appropriate. I conclude with an overview of how the rest of the book will proceed.

Activists and Organizational Choice

This book helps us understand the organizational choices of activists from under-represented groups. Each under-represented group faces unique concerns, but they share a common dilemma. Whether they are groups who have experienced systemic oppression, or groups who are simply trying to make their voices heard, they face similar problems of representation. They need to get their issue on the agenda. But how? Groups facing this problem are not a rarity in democratic societies. If a set of individuals shares strong preferences about a non-salient issue, and at least some of them want to do something about it, then it falls into the domain of the theory outlined here. These under-represented groups possess different resources, and they may be formed around issues that affect everyone or issues that only affect their group, but the central logic of organizational choice will apply as long as these activists are aiming to maximize their policy influence. This book posits that policy influence is the primary goal of activists in under-represented groups. If activists are trying instead to simply vent their frustration, to prove their radical credentials, to pursue personal career goals, or to instigate revolution, then the theory in this book would no longer apply. Activi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Possibilities of Political Organizations
• 3 The Effect of Institutions on Organizational Choice
• 4 Translating Formal Theory into Empirical Hypotheses
• 5 Explaining Emergence
• 6 Explaining Choices
• 7 Explaining Policy
• 8 Explaining Motivations
• 9 Conclusion
• 10 Appendices
• Index