Papers from graduating seniors are due at 11:59 pm on Wednesday.
All others are due 11:59 pm on Friday.
Questions on the paper?
Course evals: Seniors may access their surveys until May 4th at 5 pm, in order to accommodate their early completion schedule. All other students may access their surveys until 11:59 pm May 7th.
The rest of the story:
- Banks
- Paul Erickson and Maria Butina
- Foreign Influence and the Revolving Door
- Small-dollar donors and the complexity of campaign finance
Reviewing:
Interest group politics is inevitable.
Madison again:
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves.
...
Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.And the First Amendment specifically protects the right to petition government:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Summing up
Everybody has interests, both economic and cultural.
The ubiquity of business (Cigler 285) and the dominance of the top tier
- "Privileged position" of business
Much of interest-group influence is far upstream from high-profile votes and executive actions (Cigler 285-288)
Influence is not just "lobbying" campaign finance
- Influencing ideas and mass communication
- Mobilizing civil society
- Litigating
Three faces of power
- Decision
- Agenda
- Ideas about what constitutes an issue
