Abstract
In the last fifteen years, there has been a significant accumulation of research on lobbyists and lobbying offices that represent state and local governments either in Washington or in state capitals. This essay seeks to review the scope of these and earlier efforts and assess where our knowledge is deepest and where significant unanswered questions remain. In general, there is substantially more research on lobbyists who represent governors than those representing other types of public officials. Further, research has paid more attention to lobbying in the federal arena than to lobbying in state capitals. Recent research on local government lobbying, however, has led to significant gains in our ability to measure the financial benefits of intergovernmental lobbying.
For many years—largely from the 1960s to the 1980s—there was comparatively little academic work on lobbying efforts by state and local governments. Those citing research in this area referred to Brooks’s When Governors Convene: The Governors’ Conference and National Politics (1961), Farkas’s Urban Lobbying: Mayors in the Federal Arena (1971) , Haider’s When Governments Come to Washington: Governors, Mayors, and Intergovernmental Lobbying (1974), and Beer’s (1976, 1978) rich discussions of the intergovernmental lobby. The visibility of these major contributions dwarfed other research at that time, as well as research in the years that followed. However, the common reliance on these seminal works from earlier decades is deceptive as it overlooks important more recent contributions. As research on in this area has expanded, it is time to take stock. This essay seeks to assess the accumulation of knowledge in the area of the intergovernmental lobby. It seeks to address what is known about intergovernmental lobbying, how generalizable these insights might be across state and local lobbying subcommunities, and what gaps in understanding remain to be filled.
This essay has two parts. The first presents a review of the literature, beginning with a discussion of the major works that first examined state and local government associations. In turn, it reviews research on lobbying by state governments and state government associations, as well as local governments and local government associations. The second half of this essay takes stock. It examines the research areas where we know the most and discusses the gaps that remain for future research.
This essay limits discussion to the efforts of individual lobbyists who are employees of a state or locality with specific lobbying duties or who are hired by contract for these efforts and to the public official associations that have lobbying as an explicit portion of their mandates. It does not review research—often historical case studies—on how public officials advocate. This review also excludes lobbying by those representing governments that are outside the United States and discussions of state and local government lobbying that appear in public officials’ biographies.
The Scope of the Literature
By using lobbyists, state and local governments are acting explicitly as organized interests. Some interest group literature of the 1950s and 1960s included state and local government lobbying organizations in their examinations of the broader universe of interest groups (e.g., Dexter 1969). When scholars began to conduct large studies of interest groups (i.e., Schlozman 1984; Schlozman and Tierney 1986; Walker 1983, 1991), they often excluded state and local government lobbyists, perhaps because of the unique structure and attributes of governmental lobbies. Eventually, researchers stopped making these exclusions.
Subnational Government Associations in Washington: Examinations of the Community
An influential subset of early work on intergovernmental lobbying examines state and local government associations collectively, as one community of lobbying organizations. Grounded in political development, this research blends an investigation of organization formation and operations with an investigation of their lobbying impact. These works offer an important foundation, yet too often their citations are inserted, sometimes rather perfunctorily, into literature reviews without any comment beyond their status as seminal investigations.
Exploring the history and political development of the intergovernmental lobby in Washington, 1 Haider’s (1974) scholarship is the best known work on intergovernmental lobbying. Haider identifies three phases of intergovernmental lobbying: from the New Deal to the mid-1960s, from the mid-1960s to 1969, and from the initiation of federal revenue sharing to the time of publication. His work emphasizes the importance of two factors that have remained important in intergovernmental lobbying to this day. The first is the importance of fund transfers and their mechanisms—grants-in-aid, revenue sharing, and tax policies. The second is the interplay between the various governments. Haider demonstrates that each subnational lobby was influenced not only by the actions of the federal government but also by the activities of its subnational lobbying brethren.
Cammisa (1995) builds on the work of Haider (1974) by adding a fourth phase of intergovernmental lobbying to the classification, a phase of decreasing federal grants-in-aid and lessening of regulation that she argues began in 1979. She argues that, as the national policy mood and organizational structures had shifted, the governors’ political power had begun to eclipse that of the mayors. Cammisa also attempts to measure the various groups’ influence in a systematic way, asking association and congressional staff members to rate each group’s impact regarding particular initiatives. Whereas Haider identified local governments as particularly powerful, Cammisa sees local government influence as declining and the National Governors Association (NGA) on the rise.
Scholars also examined public official association development from the perspective of public administration. Arnold and Plant (1994) detail how these associations both mirrored and facilitated the growing professionalism of public officials. The organizations and their leaders became more organizationally sophisticated with a broader portfolio of services for their members beyond simple lobbying.
This research is illustrative of the development of research on state and local government lobbying. Over time, research projects have tended to narrow—either by the level of government investigated or by the focus of the research question at hand. Furthermore, the range of methodological tools applied to the projects has become more varied, and hypotheses have become more clearly delineated (e.g., Hays 1991). The research of the 1980s and 1990s took place when state and local government lobbying in Washington was itself becoming robust; the tools of political research were also becoming more robust. Those two factors together led to increasingly vigorous scholarship in this area—scholarship that was increasingly powerful, but also narrower in scope.
Lobbying by State Governments and State Public Official Associations
Most research on lobbying by state governments has focused on governors. State legislatures have been given their due in some studies of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), but the attention given to lobbying by state legislatures has been thin. Likewise, with few exceptions, there has been only modest exploration of lobbying by the associations who represent other state officials. It could be that some of these public official associations lobby more effectively than the NGA or NCSL. For example, Palazzolo and McCarthy (2005) argue that in lobbying for the Help America Vote Act, the functionalist associations were more effective than the generalist groups such as the NGA, who were limited by partisan divides. Regardless of these findings, the governors’ lobbyists have received the lion’s share of attention.
Early scholarship told the story of the origin and development of the Governors’ Conference, which initially did relatively little direct lobbying (Brooks 1961). In the 1960s, as the Governors’ Conference became the National Governors’ Conference and eventually the NGA, it flourished as a Washington lobbying organization and hit its lobbying heyday in the 1980s and 1990s (Weissert 1983; Jensen 2016). Building on this early scholarship, Jensen (2016) provides a glimpse into the ramifications of partisanship on the NGA, in part stemming from the activities of the Democratic Governors Association and the Republican Governors Association—a theme she explores further in later work (Jensen 2017).
Scholars also explained how these associations—regional and partisan—fill different representation roles and bring different benefits to their constituencies (Jensen 2016). For example, the literature often states or implies that lobbying by state governments and state government associations began in the 1960s. In fact, this sort of lobbying started not with the desire for funds and voice during the Great Society era but rather the desire for war contracts during World War II. The states that sought these World War II funds—New York and Connecticut—had state characteristics and gubernatorial characteristics that led them to seek those federal benefits long before other states began to lobbying in Washington (Jensen and Emery 2011). Regional associations—particularly the Southern Governors Association—were an effective voice in Washington years before the NGA (Nixon 1944; Teaford 2002).
Research on state lobbying offices in Washington have demonstrated that the goals of these offices, as identified by their directors, help explain how they spend their time and help analyze how they work collectively or in opposition to each other (Cingranelli 1983; Pelissero and England 1987; Jensen 2016). Scholars have also sought to understand the factors that lead some states to develop offices, while other governors do not. For example, Jensen (2016) finds that governors are more active advocates in state-federal relations; in part because gubernatorial ambition plays a role. Ambitious governors may be using advocacy to enhance current or future political prospects (Grady 1987; Jensen 2016). Scholars have also explored how governors’ Washington offices spend their time (Jensen 2016) and how they rank policy priorities in part to maintain organizational support (Karch 2007, ch. 4).
Another set of research focuses on the role that lobbyists in Washington play in defending state interests within a federal system. These are studies that focus on process and impact. Using interview-based research, Nugent (2009) suggests that powerful politicians and their lobbying organizations work in concert. This examination of actors and interests provides a nuanced contribution to federalism scholarship. When viewed through the lens of interest groups scholarship, this approach makes it more difficult to differentiate the impact of the politicians—the partners in government—from that of their hired hands. Yet despite this challenge, one of Nugent’s biggest contributions is presenting a strong overview of what interests the lobbyists are representing. He points out that it is “admittedly difficult to separate a state government’s interests from the interests of certain constituencies in the state” but argues forcefully that states have interests that go beyond those of the sum of some or all constituents or constituent governments, private, or public organizations.
Many case study analyses provide evidence of the conditions under which the governors’ lobby can be effective (e.g., Farber 1983; Posner 1998, ch. 5; Herian 2011; Jensen 2016). For example, Rose (2013) makes excellent use of primary sources, particularly NGA meeting proceedings, to demonstrate both the internal debates between governors (and their parties) and the role governors played in Medicaid politics. There is scant research attempting to quantify the successes or effectiveness of state lobbying operations, however. It is difficult to identify the financial costs of state lobbying offices in Washington, as they are not often line items in state budgets, and most are not required to file federal reporting forms. Furthermore, a governor’s decision to lobby is not simply about the money; political costs and benefits play a sizable role (Jensen 2016).
Finally, some scholarship focuses on state lobbying by those who are not governors. Governors’ offices and associations are not the only subnational government lobbyists in Washington. State legislatures, state attorneys general, state highway and transportation officials, and other state officials are all represented by lobbyists in Washington (Cigler 1995). This means that any particular state can be represented by multiple associations in Washington. As Radin (1990) points out, California had approximately eighty officials and agencies represented in Washington. For many years, the New York governor, the New York Assembly, and the New York Senate each maintained their own office in Washington. Yet the functionalist (rather than generalist) public official associations—such as the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and the National Association of State Budget Officers—have received significantly less scholarly attention. Berechman (2018), Marbach and Leckrone (2002), Perl and Dunn (1997), and Dilger (2002) each have significant discussion on AASHTO and intergovernmental lobbying on transportation more broadly. Particularly at a time with fraught relations between the president and Congress, and with governors less unified, the state attorneys general may become an even more dynamic group to watch; they have become adept at using the courts to advance their states’ policymaking and political agenda.
Lobbying by Local Governments and Local Public Official Associations
Scholars have paid less attention to local government lobbying—lobbying by associations representing local governments, as well as lobbying by individual cities. There are fewer studies, and collectively they have focused on a narrower range of research questions. That said, examinations of lobbying by local governments have covered significant groundwork, and recent literature has made particular contributions to our understanding of the impact of government lobbying.
Lobbying by local government associations
Several works help us situate municipal government lobbying organizations as, well, lobbying organizations; these works examine issues such as organization formation, maintenance, and representational bias. Farkas’s (1971) seminal work, Urban Lobbying, examines the “urban interest network,” concentrating particularly on a set of case studies involving the activities of the US Conference of Mayors. Like Haider’s work, Farkas’s monograph was written when federal grants-in-aid were powerfully reshaping the activities of subnational governments. Both these works offer commentary not only on governmental associations as lobbyists but also on federalism more broadly.
Browne and Salisbury (1972) provide an early look at the organizational structure and activities of the Washington associations, but they pay limited attention to lobbying, which is presented as one of several purposes of the urban lobbying organizations. Browne (1976, 1977) uses interviews of association staff members and government officials to discuss the role of lobbying in organizational maintenance. Relying on the theories of Olson (1971) and Salisbury (1969), Browne (1977) examines the internal maintenance and operations of state (Missouri), local (St. Louis area), and national associations for municipal governments, finding that most members belong to the association because of the selective benefits it offers—not the broader lobbying benefits. Using quotes by public officials, Browne argues that lobbying is indeed valuable to members and that they rely on their associations to do the lobbying that they cannot do themselves. However, research also suggests that lobbying representation among cities may not be equal. Browne (1978) demonstrates that small cities were not well represented in the federal arena, finding that local officials in Missouri had neither the resources nor the interest to press their associations to better represent small cities.
The quantity of research on lobbying by municipal government associations hit a peak in the 1970s. While this was not the first time that municipalities were active in lobbying (Arnold and Plant 1994; Flanagan 1999; Johnson 2005), scholars capitalized on the government’s focus on urban issues and cities’ mobilization in response. Farkas (1971) argues that an “urban policy subsystem” has developed, one that stretches far beyond urban public official associations and other lobbyists. Associations and lobbyists are only one part of the subsystem, which includes members of Congress, congressional committees and their staffs, executive agencies, White House liaisons on urban affairs, mayors, and public officials and policy specialists in areas such as housing and urban development.
If there is a theme in the examinations of the views of local government officials on their role in our federal system, it is that they feel left out. Using survey data from forty-five associations of counties in forty-two states for Cigler (1994) identifies 1,600 specific agenda items sought by the associations, creating a classification system that is useful for its four broad categories and its detail within each category. Most association representatives thought their legislature treated counties as “just another interest group” (p. 5). Likewise, they expressed concern that counties did not have a strong voice in national intergovernmental relations. Cigler’s work reminds us that among the associations, there may be significant differences in political recognition and lobbying effectiveness.
The research on lobbying by individual municipalities has been quite limited. Freeman and Nownes (1999) were among the first to conduct large-n surveys of lobbyists that included intergovernmental lobbyists. Using a survey of lobbyists in California, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, they find that these lobbyists—representing cities and counties, and also, it should be noted, school boards and other special districts as well as state agency lobbyists—are less likely to do favors for public officials, engage in informal contacts, advertise, or be active in campaigns and elections. Nownes (1999) uses the same survey to determine what factors lead to lobbyists having an “advice advantage” or to their being asked for advice more often. Those who lobby on behalf of public officials are more likely to have this advice advantage.
Lobbying by local governments
In the last few years, there has been particularly well-crafted research on cities’ use of lobbyists both in state capitals and in Washington. As Lowery et al. (2013) indicate, the number of public sector organizations, including local governments and lobbying state governments, has increased significantly. Using federal lobbying disclosure reports, Loftis and Kettler (2015) examine the factors that influence whether cities elect to lobby the federal government and the factors that lead cities to spend more on lobbying. This article, which is unusual in examining cities’ lobbying the federal government, breaks new ground by capitalizing on thousands of data points provided in the form of the lobbying records of 498 cities between 1998 and 2008 accessed through the Center for Responsive Politics’ lobbying database. Among their more interesting findings are that cities with higher unemployment rates—a function of local economic needs—are more likely to engage a lobbyist and that cities in competitive House districts are more likely to spend more on lobbying—a function, they argue, of the potential to receive greater benefits from a constituent-focused US representative. Their findings demonstrate that “although cities have geographically connected representation in Congress, they are willing to pay for additional attention when their needs are especially pressing, and they are willing to invest more in paid representation when they are better positioned to get what they want in Washington” (p. 204).
Goldstein and You (2017) use Lobbying Disclosure Act reports to identify lobbying disclosures submitted by cities with populations greater than 25,000 between 1999 and 2006 (the 106th–112th Congresses). It turns out that individual cities hire lobbyists quite a bit; these cities submitted 13,838 reports of the more than 42,000 submitted by all types of government entities. Like Loftis and Kettler, Goldstein and You perform two major analyses: one identifying the factors that lead some cities to lobby and the second identifying the factors that influence how much money cities spend to lobby. Even at an aggregate level, their classification of lobbying activity is intriguing. Using state and city ideology scores to define red and blue cities and states, they find that red cities in red states lobby the least and blue cities in red states lobby the most. Using public finance data, they measure the difference in cities’ expenditures per capita and their corresponding states’ expenditures per capita. They call this difference a public goods gap and find that this gap is both statistically and substantively significant in explaining both the decision to lobby and funds committed to lobbying.
Their findings demonstrate the complexity of effects at work. For example, in addition to the public goods gap, ethnic heterogeneity, and income inequality also lead to increased likelihood of lobbying participation and greater lobbying funds expended; increases in poverty, intergovernmental transfers as a share of revenue, and property tax as a share of revenue lead to decreased likelihood of both lobbying participation and lobbying funds expended. Furthermore, and quite importantly, Goldstein and You demonstrate that lobbying expenditures are linked to both federal grant funding and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funding. 2 As they explain, “city lobbying is effective, in the sense that it draws more federal earmarks and grants to a city than it would otherwise receive” (p. 875).
There is even less research on municipalities lobbying state governments. A major recent study is one by Payson (2018), who frames her investigation on local governments lobbying their state within both the lobbying literature and the fiscal federalism literature. Payson describes the contributions of fiscal federalism research to our understanding of local government lobbying, but notes that: “scholars have generally lacked the rigorous empirical measures to capture subnational efforts to influence the center. As a result, we lack systematic evidence about the conditions under which local governments lobby and the effects of this behavior on public policy.” Payson’s findings quantify the benefits of city lobbying of state governments, finding that cities secure approximately US$9 per capital in additional state revenue in the year after they begin lobbying. Furthermore, Payson makes a powerful normative point about her empirical findings. If the point of fiscal federalism, in part, is to smooth regional inequality, local government lobbying does not aid this process. In fact, this lobbying seems to be exacerbating the condition that fiscal federalism aims to mitigate, as it appears that “affluent cities appear to benefit disproportionately” (p. 6).
Payson points out that following the money—linking the lobbying expenditure to a particular financial benefit to a city, which might be through an improved funding formula or through a grant from one of many agencies—is tremendously difficult. Rather than “disentangling” the sources of transfers, she links lobbying expenditures to overall net transfers to cities. As with Goldstein and You, Payson’s documenting of this link is a major accomplishment. Her recognition that this must be done at the level of aggregate funding to a city speaks to how complicated it is to connect the dots between any sizable sample of specific lobbying efforts and specific financial transfers to cities.
There is an irony to the findings of these recent studies, because just as Cigler (1994) finds among association representatives, De Soto (1995) uses survey data to find that mayors and city managers in cities with populations greater than 60,000 feel “unappreciated” by state legislators. “Apparently, cities have the ability to express their interests, but states do not necessarily wish to hear what they have to say” (p. 192). What Goldstein and You, and Payson, make apparent is that with the right lobbying, cities can reap tangible appreciation.
Taking Stock—Avenues for Future Research
It should be clear that the research discussed here contributes significantly to our understanding of state and local government and to our understanding of federalism. Yet the accumulation of knowledge about state and local government lobbying has been uneven.
Scholars have noted that public official associations initially moved to Washington to have a voice in federal policy-making and were not started with lobbying in mind (Arnold and Plant 1994; Beyle 1988; Brooks 1961; Flanagan 1999; Haider 1974; Weissert 1983). Jensen (2016) illuminates the development of individual state lobbying offices in Washington, noting that the intergovernmental lobby has waxed and waned over time and that its growth has been linked to phases of government spending and policy-making activity.
The literature, however, has paid less attention to the development of public official associations in the states and about their decisions to lobby. Providing these sorts of taxonomic assessments takes tremendous time. Yet the collective understanding of these organizations is weaker without this foundation. Likewise, while scholars have examined the factors that influence cities to hire lobbyists (Loftis and Kettler 2015; Goldstein and You 2017; Payson 2018), less is known about the decision processes of those deciding to hire a lobbyist.
The literature provides a deep understanding about the activities of federal lobbying organizations, both intergovernmental associations and state lobbying offices. However, it does not include nearly as much research on the state associations. For example, little has been written about the activities of private consultants and firms hired by individual states and localities. Given that they are used by so many city and state governments to lobby at both the state and federal level, this area is ripe for investigation. Furthermore, lobbyists in both states and Washington have identified Congress and state legislatures as their highest lobbying priority. Yet these lobbyists also work with the executive branches and with agencies. In part because these lobbyists have indicated that lobbying agencies is not as prominent to them, we have asked fewer questions here—or they have told us less.
Several researchers (e.g., Pickerill and Bowling 2014) have pointed out that partisan divides can be challenging for associations of chief executives. We have evidence that partisanship is less of a problem for associations of agency heads at the federal level; it is unclear whether this is true at the state level. This is another area needing additional research.
The literature also needs more investigation of the impact and effectiveness of government lobbying. Research suggests it is easier for government lobbyists in Washington to block an initiative than to succeed in moving forward their own proposal. This should be no surprise, as it mirrors something we know well about lobbying generally. We presume that the same is true in state capitals, but research could examine this relationship.
Understanding interest group impact is messy. This is true for a few reasons. First, impact is challenging to define and measure. Second, there are broadly varying standards regarding what evidence is suitable to demonstrate impact. Much of the accumulation of knowledge about government lobbying comes from case studies. With enough interviews, narratives, and process tracing, scholars determine that a particular group had a particular impact on the policy process or funding request. This is the sort of evidence research has included in the state government lobbying literature. This knowledge accumulates regarding one particular case or across cases and, somewhere along the way, it is used to identify impact and effectiveness. Yet case studies do not provide the type of clear correlation offered by statistical models that can link lobbying effort X to funding increase Y. Recent investigations of lobbying by local governments at both the state and federal level may not lead to an understanding of exactly how hired lobbyists seek to influence the governmental process, but they do provide evidence that lobbying makes an impact.
Considerations for Moving Forward
This review has not been an exhaustive presentation of every piece of scholarship on state and local lobbying, but it identifies major works and the findings of both those and more narrowly tailored scholarly contributions. While preparing this work, two additional themes have resonated. The first centers on the compartmentalization of segments of lobbying research. The second is about the need to disentangle the impact of the lobbyists from the impact of the government(s) they represent.
Looking at the literature on lobbying by states and state officials and the literature by cities and city officials, it is very clear that much of these two sets of research developed largely independent of each other. Much research into governmental lobbying has focused on state governments and this research has done so to the exclusion of local government lobbying. For its part, the research on local government lobbying—much of which has come more recently—often situates itself only within the literature on lobbying by local governments including public administration research. This leads to statements such as, “Many studies acknowledge that governments lobby each other…, but only a handful treat them as distinct theoretical or empirical units.” In fact, there have been several books and many more articles in peer-reviewed journals examining lobbying by state and local governments.
In their investigation of the political development of organized interests in the United States, Tichenor and Harris (2002) point out that though “something remarkably similar may have been happening at both ends of the 20th century” with regard to interest group development, the “impressive body of scholarship” on interest groups in the twentieth century “routinely concentrates” the latter half of this century (p. 587). They point out that “one of the prevailing assumptions is that reliable data on organized interests active in Washington politics first appear in the 1950s” (p. 588). Tichenor and Harris lay out a framework for characterizing interest group systems and emphasize that while scholars often attribute the surge in interest groups to the aftermath of the New Deal, they point out that “vibrant, protean interest group politics…flourished during the Progressive Era.” I will take from Tichenor and Harris’s arguments two points that are particularly relevant to the study of state and local government lobbying today.
First, all too often scholars dive into the interest groups literature and swim past informative work on state and local government lobbying during a time that significantly predates their own work. This is particularly true if the research appeared in a monograph or book chapter no longer regularly assigned in graduate courses or read in full, set aside in favor of more recent literature; or if it is published in a history or public administration journal. Of course, no scholar can be responsible for locating (and citing!) all relevant literature from a century of work. Yet Tichenor and Harris’s work underlines why researchers should take particular care when making statements such as “individual state governments began to lobby in the 1980s” unless one has done a careful review of earlier decades. State and local government lobbying has a longer history than often assumed.
Second, the long history of state and local government lobbying is varied. Although there are common themes—government activity tends to draw interest activity during any era—the activities and most especially the impact cannot be taken to be constant. There is significant and important scholarship on the NGA and state lobbying efforts at the federal level that is based on research conducted during the late 1990s; but with twenty years of hindsight, these studies may be characterizing a period of unusual gubernatorial strength in Washington. This leads to the need for scholars to recognize the changing nature of interest group systems and the need for research on these organizations at multiple time points.
The second major theme that has resonated with me is this: Is it the lobbyists or the lobby that matters? The literature quite commonly conflates two distinct sets of political actors: the professionals who staff public official associations and lobbying offices and the public officials themselves. Lehne (1972), in an effort to move beyond the framework of dual and cooperative federalism, presents a framework for thinking of states as interest groups. Lehne is not examining state government lobbying organizations, and yet he is making explicit a point quite significant to this literature: that with or without lobbyists, states governments themselves are interest organizations. This presents some significant challenges for our understanding of effectiveness of the intergovernmental lobby. Using the NGA as an example, when several governors sign a letter sent to congressional leaders seeking a particular policy position, and they sign it in their capacity as the executive leadership of the NGA—setting aside the difficulties of linking a congressional action to any particular advocacy, is this advocacy that of the governors or the NGA? Is the NGA strong because it has strong members, or it is strong because of the professional lobbying value that it gives its (often also strong) members?
These are significant questions, but the scholars pursuing research in this area are up to these tasks. This essay can in no way record or assess all research in this area nor can it provide the definitive assessment of what the field knows. However, it has provided some guideposts to scholars who need a preliminary map of the collective accumulation of knowledge over more than half a century.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
