This study examines the 2019 ‘FEG’ through policy process and interest-based lenses, thus aiming to address the relationship between labour shortages and migration policy. Hence, the roles of political stakeholders and interest groups in the policy process are discerned.

Did interest groups influence the Supreme Court’s interpretation of federal economic regulatory authority under the Commerce Clause leading up to the Supreme Court’s 1937 reversal? Recent scholarship has begun a renewed study of this tumultuous era seeking alternative explanations for the Court’s behavior beyond the conventional explanations concerning Roosevelt’s court packing plan. I build on this literature by extending the discussion to the influence that interest groups may have had on the Court. I propose that interest groups served as a supporting and influential audience for the Supreme Court as the justices’ institutional legitimacy became threatened by both the political pressure and legal changes that the Court faced during this era. To test these theoretical assumptions, I compiled a dataset of Supreme Court cases using the U.S. Supreme Court Library Official Reports Database ranging from the beginning of the 1920 Supreme Court term through the end of the 1937 term. Cases were included if 1) the case had one or more filed amicus briefs; and 2) the questions and arguments in the case were based on the Commerce Clause or legislation that relies wholly or in part on the Commerce Clause. Applying a basic logit model, I find support for the assumption that amicus briefs influenced the Court by providing the justices with a supporting audience. To further test the influence of amicus briefs, I compare the arguments and information provided exclusively by amicus briefs in this group of cases to the Supreme Court majority’s opinions to test for similar content. Amicus briefs are considered influential if the Court included information exclusively from an amicus in their majority opinion. I find that in the largest number of cases, amici influenced the Court majority’s opinions in favor of their preferred litigant when they provide unique arguments and information. Consequently, I find moderate support for the influence of interest groups on the Court both externally by providing a supporting audience and internally by providing the Court with supporting information.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Nonprofit organizations that “speak for, act for, and look after the interests of their constituents when they interact with government are, by any definition of political science, interest groups.” Indiana’s recent implementation of the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0 (HIP 2.0) under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) opened a window of opportunity to closely examine the role of nonprofits in shaping the implementation of health care policy. Existing literature on health and human service nonprofit organizations did not examine in depth the role and influence of nonprofits as interest groups in the implementation of public policy. This study examines a deeper research question that was not given adequate attention under existing studies with a special focus on the health care policy field: whose interest do nonprofit organizations advance when they attempt to influence the implementation of public policy? To answer this question, it is critical to understand why nonprofits engage in the public policy process (motivation and values), the policy actions that nonprofits make during the implementation of the policy (how?), and the method by which nonprofits address or mitigate conflicts and contradictions between organizational interest and constituents’ interest (whose interest do they advance?). The main contribution of this study is that it sheds light on the implementation of the largest extension of domestic social welfare policy since the “War on Poverty” using Robert Alford’s theory of interest groups to examine the role of nonprofit organizations during the implementation of HIP 2.0 in Indiana. Given the complexity of the policy process, this study utilizes a qualitative methods approach to complement existing quantitative findings. Finally, this study provides a deeper examination of the relationships between nonprofits as actors within a policy field, accounts for the complexity of the policy and political environment, analyzes whether or not dominant interest groups truly advance the interest of their constituents, and provides additional insights into how nonprofits mitigate and prioritize competing interests.

This study utilizes theories from the population ecology and political strategy to make inferences about the mobilization and maintenance of gay and lesbian interest groups. Interest organizations typically have high mortality rates and are constantly replaced by new organizations. By noticing population ecology trends throughout the history of a specific population of interest organization, the entrepreneurs of a specific organization will be better able to develop an effective mobilization and maintenance strategy to keep their organization alive in the long run and allow the organization to effect more change in the broader political environment.

No description available.

The “Great Recession” of 2008 decimated many facets of the U.S. economy in the short-term but the long-term effect of the recession on the retirement security of millions of Americans is a story in progress. This study investigates the impact of the 2008 recession on the public pensions of state and local government employees. Prior to the recession, the 19 million current state and local government employees enjoyed the prospect of a retirement built on the tradition FDR’s three “legs”: a private pension from their employer, personal savings, and Social Security. Although the “first leg” of retirement, the private pension, disappeared in the late 20th century for the majority of American workers, state and local public sector employees were the exception-with about 90% eligible for a defined benefit pension at the beginning of the 21st century (GAO 2008). The 2008 recession, effected all U.S. states, however the response to reduced investment earnings for state-administered public pensions varied. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) noted in one year, 44 states enacted 269 pension bills (NCSL 2013). The changes enacted in state legislation, all involved a reduction in benefits. The retrenchment actions ranged from suspended cost-of-living allowance (COLA) increases and increased employee contributions to the loss of the defined pension benefit. Several states, after the 2008 recession, terminated the defined pension benefit for future employees, one state (Rhode Island) changed to a hybrid plan for current employees. Scholars seeking to understand retrenchment of benefits argue the lack of a “public outcry” permit elected officials to act without fear of a backlash (Pierson 1994). Conversely, conditions that prevent political opponents to transfer costs to a losing coalition and instead compromise on a long-term sharing of costs, is considered policy investment (Jacobs 2011). This study seeks to use retrenchment and investment theories to explain the public pension actions U.S. states took following the 2008 recession. The quantitative analysis confirms several expectations of retrenchment theory, such as the importance of interest groups, represented by the number of public sector employees in a state and the level of unionization within a state’s public sector. Investment theory predictions are not confirmed in the quantitative analysis, however a case study analysis of Delaware does find conditions of political compromise resulting in long-term stability for the pension plans. The quantitative analysis expected to find a strong “mirror” relationship between a pension plan’s funded ratio (assets to liabilities) and the state’s annual required contribution (ARC). The relationship between the two key measures, while positive and significant, is small. The unexpected finding led to a focus on ARC payments and the political conditions surrounding the decision to fund or not fund a state’s annual contribution. Delaware and Oklahoma are examples of states with adequate ARC payments yet contradictory public pension actions. Rhode Island and New Jersey are states with inadequate ARC payments, yet also contradictory public pension actions. Understanding the conditions that led to a state’s decision to pay or not pay the ARC also uncovers a host of actions states take to manipulate their required contributions. Regardless of similar institutions and budget processes across the 50 states, not every political institution gets the same results. Politics and state norms will change the outcome. / Political Science

Despite well documented evidence that both the level and diversity of amicus participation in state high courts have been growing, we know little about whether or under what conditions amicus briefs have an impact on court outcomes. This dissertation investigates how interest groups attempt to influence state supreme courts through their participation as amicus curiae. Using an original dataset assembled from content analysis of more than 2300 state supreme court decisions handed down between 1995 and 2010 and spanning three distinct areas of law - products liability, environmental law, and free speech/expression - I find that amicus briefs submitted by interest groups have the most influence over judicial outcomes in areas of law where interest groups routinely make large-scale donations to judicial campaigns. These results raise serious concerns about the influence of big money in judicial elections. The second part of this dissertation tests two competing theories of amicus influence to determine how state high court judges utilize amicus brief information in judicial decision making. The informational theory assumes the influence of amicus brief information to be evenly distributed across judges. However, theories of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning suggest that the information in amicus briefs may be received and evaluated differently depending upon the ideological predispositions of individual judges. Using multi-level modeling, I analyze the votes of more than 12,000 individual state high court judges to determine whether judge ideology conditions the influence of amicus briefs such that judges are more receptive to pro-attitudinal information contained in briefs from interest groups that share their predispositions. Results suggest that method of judicial retention and area of case law structures the mechanism of amicus brief influence. Amicus briefs appear to play an informational role in complex areas of case law but the presence of competitive judicial elections appear to alter the mechanism of amicus brief influence such that judicial responsiveness to amicus briefs is more closely tied to the reelection and campaign fundraising considerations of individual judges. The final portion of this dissertation investigates the case-level and court-level factors that attract interest group participation as amicus curiae in state high courts in order to better our understanding of interest group strategies when engaging state judiciaries. This paper tests the hypothesis that groups strategically target cases that will best serve the policy and institutional interests of the group, while focusing group resources on cases and courts where they are most likely to be successful. Results indicate that both liberal and conservative groups target state high courts that are elected through competitive and retention election processes rather than those that are appointed, suggesting that interest groups believe their influence will be greater with judges who are accountable to the public. Results also show that both liberal and conservative groups target courts from states that are ideologically sympathetic, but not necessarily from courts that are ideologically similar. / Political Science

In recent decades, there has been a considerable expansion of citizen participation in protests and voluntary advocacy groups. To analyze this development, the social movement literature and the interest group literature have emerged. Yet these two bodies of literature have not communicated with each other and have rarely incorporated knowledge from other fields in political science. As a result, critical questions remain unanswered regarding the political influence of advocacy groups. How do they affect politicians? To what degree do informal groups use lobbying tactics? Are socioeconomically advantaged groups more influential? This thesis endeavors to address the above shortcomings by bridging the literature on social movements, interest groups and political parties. The purpose of the thesis is to explain if and how advocacy groups affect public policy and to analyze which resources that are required to influence political decisions. The focus is on informal and loosely organized social movement organizations (informal SMOs): parental networks, staff networks, and village networks. To test my arguments, I use a unique database on protests and lobbying against school closures in Sweden. Closures of public schools have been one of the most important drivers of political activism in Sweden. The results are presented in three essays. Essay I tests new electoral mechanisms that could condition the political influence of advocacy groups. The results suggest that the political influence of informal SMOs on school closure decisions varies according to the type of voter they mobilize: swing voters or core voters. Essay II demonstrates how informal SMOs use lobbying tactics, such as presenting policy-relevant information, to influence politicians. Social movement scholars often focus on protests and ignore lobbying tactics. However, the results show that SMOs that present policy-relevant information are more likely to stop school closures than SMOs that mobilize large protests. Essay III analyzes which informal SMOs exchange policy-relevant information with politicians. Previous studies on the use of lobbying tactics have ignored activist resources. My results suggest that SMOs mobilizing high-income activists and activists with analytical and civic skills are more likely to present policy-relevant information. This is problematic given normative ideals of equal access to decision-making by all members of society.

A substantial amount of prior research has focused on the relation between Central Bank Independence (CBI) and inflation control. However, this research is mainly theoretical or conducted using cross-country statistical regressions and correlations in the developed world. Little attention has been given to understanding this relation in emerging nations or the influence of interest groups on CBI and inflation in a specific context. This thesis addresses both gaps by conducting an in-depth observation and analysis of this relation in a single country (Lebanon) and the influence of the banking sector on both CBI and inflation during a period of high inflation. This empirical evidence in the case of Lebanon shows that Central Bank Independence from the government – even though abundant and complete – was not enough to control inflation. The influence of the banking sector on both CBI and inflation was more important. This work makes a contribution to knowledge through highlighting the importance of national contexts when evaluating the CBI-inflation relation. Furthermore, this research extends our understanding of the literature and its gaps, and presents a new way to conduct in-depth studies in the field. Finally, it provides practical insights that are of importance to central bankers, especially in emerging nations.

The main aim of this thesis is to analyze the history of evolution of American health care system with respect to influence of interest groups. Further, I will try to find reasons, why American health care costs grew enormously during 20th century.