Most interest group analyses focus on the impact of interest group activity in the policymaking process, measured by the coincidence of interest demands and policy outputs. This study contends that the reverse case is important for a more complete understanding of State-interest group relations; it examines the impact of State support programmes on interest group leadership, and provides insights into how the State uses interest groups as agents for social intervention. The analysis shows that State-interest group relations can be affected by State funding programmes in two fundamental ways: first, as policy agents and political actors, interest group leaders can become "captured" in a vicious circle of financial and policy dependency which allows a minimum amount of freedom in community development activities; second, the State can undermine the link established between an interest group organisation and its interest community and, in so doing, hinder its own ability to pursue effective policy action. As a case study, the thesis takes the Federation des Franco-Colombiens (FFC), and shows how British Columbia francophone leaders modified their leadership activities as a result of access to federal government financial and policy support through the Official Languages Policy (1969). Essentially, the FFC grew from a largely local, Church-run community association into a full-fledged secular, bureaucratic, and political organisation. As Franco-Columbian leaders shifted their activity to the government arena as policy agents, they tended to pay less attention to their interest clientele, and thus severely jeopardized the effectiveness of their leadership. The implications of the study touch government, interest group leaders, and political scientists who wish to probe further into State-interest group relations. For the former two, it is crucial to be aware of the potentially negative effects of establishing too close a relationship, especially in those instances where the interest group has a low level of financial autonomy. For the latter, interest group activity should not be perceived as being uni-directional; interest groups are intermediaries in the policy process whose actions vis-à-vis the government and the interest clientele must both be considered for a more complete understanding of their role as societal actors. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

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by Lee Kim Ming. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Bibliography: leaves 171-[181]

I situate this dissertation and its contributions at the edge of the literature on interest group political behavior and congressional responsiveness. In particular, I use new strategies and tools to study interest group influence. In the first essay, I find that a machine-learning text-analysis detects latent patterns in the frequency of lobbying by the telecommunications industry in 2015. Meanwhile, members of Congress primarily focus on healthcare and taxes when they discuss policy issues on social media. In the second essay, I measure the change in political behavior of interest groups by ideology after the surprise result of the 2016 presidential election. The evidence suggests there was an increase in political spending by ideologically polarized interest groups shortly after the election. Finally, the cornerstone of this dissertation evaluates the results of two field experiments measuring congressional responsiveness to issue advocacy with a non-profit, non-partisan political advocacy organization. Counter to expectations in the interest group literature, I find that members of Congress are responsive on social media to interest group requests on a low-salience, non-partisan issue. These findings have important implications for representation and responsiveness in the U.S. Congress by highlighting areas of research that need further study and deeper evaluation.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 198-200). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1987.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences