Abstract
“Why this book?” asks Lobbying and Society: A Political Sociology of Interest Groups (p. 13). Author John C. Scott’s first answer is to give a sociological approach to “institutional politics” (p. 13), stating that the book “in particular hopes to show that both the theories and tools of sociology are especially relevant in understanding political processes and outcomes” (p. 13). The second argument is “incorporating interest groups into political sociology” (p. 14). To a large extent, these goals are fulfilled, but I also have some reservations.
Why sociology and lobbying? According to the book, “the study of political activity traditionally has divided between sociology studying social movements and contentious politics and political science studying interest groups and lobbying” (p. 135). While I agree with the statement regarding social movements, I am less sure about contentious politics as a special field for sociologists. However, never mind, it is always interesting to see how different perspectives on the same phenomenon can enrich each other.
The book is a textbook. It is well written and an easy read. The five core chapters—Groups, Power and Influence, Groups as Intermediaries between Nation-States and Citizens, Inequality and Interest Groups, and Interest Groups in an International Context—are enriched by cases to illustrate the book’s points. The cases typically start somewhere outside the political system in a narrow sense. An example is the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 for not moving from her bus seat for a white person. The mobilization of civil rights groups, as well as counter-groups, and the following political processes and regulations nicely bind individuals, society, group mobilization, and political responses together. A political scientist would probably have chosen cases closer to the political process. The cases illustrate the value of a sociological take on groups.
The chapter on “Interests and Groups” mainly refers to the political science literature from Alexis de Tocqueville, Arthur Bentley, and David Truman over C. Wright Mills, Mancur Olson, James Q. Wilson, and Theodore Lowi to Marie Hojnacki, Christine Mahoney, and Frank Baumgartner. There are few references to the recent European literature even though it is booming, with many new scholars bringing interesting analyses of national interest group systems, comparative studies, and many, many studies on EU lobbying. There is a small section—less than two pages—on corporatism. The author refers to this reviewer’s definition of corporatism. While that in itself is flattering, I am less happy with the spelling out of the “privileging” part of the definition of corporatism. Privileging is not—as postulated in the book—only a formal recognition of some groups; it is also an informal status some groups win because of many years of mutual and positive political exchange with state actors.
The chapter that best brings about something new by merging a sociological and a political science view on interest groups is that on “Inequality and Interest Groups.” The chapter simply asks whether lobbyists contribute to economic and political equality. They, of course, do. It is a short but interesting chapter that draws on Robert Merton’s Matthew effect, among others. Elmer Schattschneider’s famous phrase “the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent” already pointed in the direction of the Matthew Effect, and many, many examples of lobbyists bringing more wealth and other advantages to the well-off are evident. Luckily, there are also examples of the opposite—of groups mobilizing to protect or enhance the interests of the less privileged. Lobbyism is biased, but it is difficult to see what an unbiased lobbyist system would look like. Lobbyism is a democratic gain and evil at the same time.
In the similarly interesting chapter on “Interest Groups as Intermediaries between Nation-States and Citizens,” the evil role of lobbyism is most present. The chapter asks whether lobbying is bad for democracy (p. 83). The answer is not quite clear, but from the reviewer’s perspective, lobbyism is a necessary evil. The question should rather be how lobbyism could be regulated so that it becomes less evil.
Textbooks serve multiple purposes. Ideally, they introduce a field, they present the state-of-the-art literature in the field, they illustrate theories and ideas with examples and cases, they discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, and they pave the way for students to make their own studies in the field. Lobbying and Society does well in most cases. However, it also underperforms in a couple of cases. The chapter on “Power, Access, and Influence” ends with a section titled “How Do We Study Interest Group Access and Influence?” (pp. 69–70). One is liable to expect ideas for students to make their own interest group studies. Yet, no. We get one reference to Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page and one to Hanegraaff et al.—not much help to students, and actually discouraging because what we get to know is that it is difficult to study influence. A few pages earlier (p. 55), we learned that access is a pretty good indicator of influence. Why then not tell the students how to study access? And, on top of that, one can actually find studies of influence. It gets even more confusing when there is yet another section on “Measuring influence” on pages 137 and 138. However, this one is a little more optimistic on the issue, since we get some ideas here with reference to Andreas Dür.
The last chapter is dedicated to “New Directions in the Study of Lobbyists and Interest Groups” (pp. 134–47). In my opinion, it is too wordy in general and too silent on what is actually going on in interest group studies—not least in a European context. It is not fully state-of-the-art.