Lester Milbrath’s The Washington Lobbyists,50 Years On: An Enduring Legacy

Abstract

Published in 1963, Lester Milbrath’s The Washington Lobbyists has become indispensable for understanding how lobbying operates and the societal benefits it brings. Milbrath there presented the first detailed survey of lobbying activities, and his findings have been generally affirmed by a range of later studies, although his conviction that lobbying was an essentially benign force which exerted relatively little impact on policy has been more contested. Milbrath’s theoretical model of lobbying as a communication process has enduring value to scholars and practitioners alike, and the definition of lobbying which he formulated continues to be useful. This article seeks explicitly to celebrate Milbrath’s outstanding research on lobbyists, more than 50 years after his book was published, and highlights some elements of Milbrath’s work which have not yet been fully explored by scholars.

Keywords

Lester Milbrath Washington lobbyists lobbying interest groups influence

The year 1963 saw the publication of Lester Milbrath’s The Washington Lobbyists – a landmark piece of research which utterly redefined the field of interest group studies. It is therefore somewhat surprising to realise that this is not even what Milbrath is most remembered for today. His book on political participation ran to two editions and had 3624 citations on Google Scholar as of 29 October 2016 (Milbrath, 1965; Milbrath and Goel, 1977). A series of books and articles established Milbrath as an early leading thinker about environmentalism and sustainable development (Milbrath, 1979, 1984, 1986, 1989, 1996) – and earned Milbrath a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 from the American Political Science Association (APSA). These other works represent monumental achievements in their own right.

Here, I seek explicitly to celebrate Milbrath’s outstanding research on lobbyists, over 50 years after his book was published. Its appearance was a genuine and rare landmark in the progression of interest group research, and the book continues to exert a significant impact on contemporary enquiry. Milbrath’s work was not without its critics. Notably, Heinz Eulau (who would later serve as APSA president) published a lengthy review of The Washington Lobbyists, the general tenor of which is evident from its provocative title, ‘Lobbyists: The Wasted Profession’. Heinz Eulau (1964: 29) regarded Milbrath’s data as ‘tedious and pedantic … described in dreary detail’ and was unable to ‘find any indication of what the communication model contributes to our understanding of lobby impact on decision making’ (Eulau, 1964: 37). Most readers, though, have lauded the book’s contribution. Salisbury et al. (1989: 176) described The Washington Lobbyists as a ‘pioneering study’, Alan Rosenthal (2001: 17) calls it ‘one of the seminal studies’ in the field, and Daniel Tichenor and Richard Harris (2005: 252) include it as one of a few works which ‘transformed interest group studies’.

Continuity and Change in Washington Lobbying

Whether Milbrath’s analysis of lobbying in the late 1950s remains relevant to today’s scholars and practitioners is a reasonable question (indeed one raised by this journal’s anonymous reviewers). Some argue, for instance, that Milbrath’s is an unrealistic and overly benign view – even at the time and certainly of the contemporary Washington lobbying scene. Loomis and Cigler (2012: 27) say that he ‘painted a Boy Scout-like picture of Washington lobbyists, depicting them as patient contributors to policy making. Rarely stepping over the limits of propriety, lobbyists had only a marginal impact at best’. Similarly, Virginia Gray and David Lowery (2000), Michael Hayes (1981) and Glenn Parker (1996), among others, suggest that Milbrath failed to show the full extent of lobbyists’ influence over public policy. This may be an example of judging the past not on its own terms but rather against modern norms.

It is absolutely true that much has changed since Milbrath’s book was published. The sheer scale of the lobbying industry now is different from 1963, when there were around 1000 lobbyists in Washington; today, over 10,000 registered lobbyists operate alongside thousands more who avoid registration. Technological innovations mean that lobbyists’ daily working lives and their means of communication are very much changed. The inexorably increasing cost of elections imposes more demanding fundraising requirements on politicians and fundraising pressures on lobbyists. Many more interest groups now have permanent offices and staff in Washington; there has been a dramatic rise in the number of single-issue interest groups; and lobbying has become an increasingly partisan activity. We now have laws which regulate the behaviour of lobbyists, universities offer courses in lobbying and advocacy, the revolving door swings ever faster and political parties are inexorably weakened as ideologically based interest groups become more dominant. As Gary Andres (2009: 4–5) notes, the Washington lobbying environment has changed dramatically in the last four decades: ‘disruptions in the political equilibrium of organized interests – such as the growth, fragmentation and activism of government, new technology, and political polarization – have caused change and evolution over the past several decades in the institution of advocacy’. At first glance, the lobbying industry of 2016 appears quite different from that of Milbrath’s day.

And yet beneath all that change, much remains the same or similar, even since 1963 (McGrath and Harris, 2008). Change in any field tends to be visible, measurable and worthy of attention, while underlying continuity goes relatively unremarked. Mark Petracca (1992: xix) suggests that ‘the essential structure of the interest group system is much as it was at the beginning of the “modern” system of interest representation back in 1946’. Milbrath’s lobbyists would easily recognise the tactics and activities pursued by today’s inhabitants of K Street: direct advocacy, coalitions, grassroots campaigns, congressional testimony, provision of expert policy and political information have all been the staple ingredients of lobbying for the last century or more. Messages may be sent from a lobbyist to a policymaker by email or from a lobbyist to grassroots members by Twitter, but the fundamentals of the lobbying process remain. Lobbying still relies on access and information rather than on the coarse exercise of pressure. Lobbyists still vie for access largely on the basis of the detailed policy expertise and political insight they can provide to officials. Even – perhaps, especially – within a changing environment, what Bertram Levine describes as the art of effective lobbying remains relatively constant: his analogy between a lobbyist and a fine chef is apt. As Levine (2009: 239) suggests, there are few rare ingredients available to a lobbyist, so what fundamentally matters is the ‘choice of those ingredients, preparation, blending, timing, pulling together presentation of the final product … [The master lobbyist] pays great attention to the essentials of his art form’.

Lobbying in 2016, just as in 1963, is existentially concerned with articulating the interests of people. As Milbrath (1963: 342) observed, ‘the influence of groups is derived from the fact that members of groups are citizens and the political system is designed to respond to the influence of their votes’. He went on to insist that ‘power at the polls is the greatest power in lobbying’ (Milbrath, 1963: 348). It still is. Most importantly, as we see below, Milbrath’s conceptualisation of lobbying as a communication process continues to explain the essence of lobbying. It is this idea above all else that defines Milbrath’s contribution to our understanding of the modern industry.

An Overview of The Washington Lobbyists

Two general points about this book are worth making as they can easily be overlooked yet are crucial to the book’s significance. First, The Washington Lobbyists is strikingly different from most scholarly texts in its sheer accessibility and readability. Milbrath includes substantial survey data in his book, but presents this clearly and simply. Most scholars replicating Milbrath’s work today would feel obliged to subject the data to sophisticated statistical manipulation, thereby rendering the findings comprehensible only to other scholars interested in such analysis. Milbrath was acutely aware of this dilemma, observing that ‘academicians may regret the exclusion of full reports of statistical tests and levels of significance in the interest of readability’ (Milbrath, 1963: vii). Given the severe criticism by Earl Quinney (1964: 512) that The Washington Lobbyists is ‘marred by unconvincing writing, a strained attempt at scientific sophistication [and] an abundance of cross-tabulation tables’, it is worth noting that Lester Milbrath was highly dexterous methodologically as is apparent in some of his other works (Cataldo et al., 1970; Milbrath, 1968; Milbrath and Klein, 1962).

Milbrath positively chose to present his research beyond the academy: not by over-simplifying the material but by refusing to over-complicate it. The Washington Lobbyists stands as a model for contemporary scholars who wish to communicate their work to the relevant professional community. Indeed, one study attests to the accessibility of Milbrath’s book. It found that lobbyists regarded political science scholarship as too theoretical to have practical applicability. However, when presented with a list of 11 books by academics, more of the lobbyists surveyed cited The Washington Lobbyists as being of some value than any of the other choices. The authors suggest that it is not coincidental that the four most regarded books

were not highly theoretical or technical. The intended audience for these works seemed broader than the academic political scientist. In fact, Milbrath’s book would seem to have a special appeal to our political actors which the others lack insofar as it purports to describe them. It is altogether possible that a number of respondents were actually interviewed by Professor Milbrath when he conducted his survey (Newman et al., 1975: 192).

Second, we can too easily forget that what Milbrath presents in The Washington Lobbyists was actually the ‘first large-scale systematic survey of interest groups based in Washington, DC’ (Alexander, 2002: 27). It was a tremendous methodological advance in the field and stimulated further surveys which have generally supported Milbrath’s original findings (Berry, 1977; Heinz et al., 1993; Hrebenar and Thomas, 1987, 1992, 1993a, 1993b; Nownes and DeAlejandro, 2009; Schlozman and Tierney, 1986; Walker, 1991; Zeigler and Baer, 1968, 1969). Discussing these later surveys, Frank Baumgartner and Beth Leech (1998: 148–149) note that ‘the vast bulk of findings from this set of surveys about lobbying activities have proven remarkably robust. This is in sharp contrast to the literature on lobbying based on narrow case studies’.

Moreover, we should keep in mind how impressive the scale of Milbrath’s research was. There were 614 registered lobbyists with Washington addresses in the first half of 1956; of these, Milbrath obtained full results from 101 and partial results from another 13. His respondents, thus, represented 18.6% of his study population. To put this into context, 10,462 lobbyists were registered with the Secretary of the US Senate on 28 October 2016 – so, for a researcher today to match Milbrath’s penetration of the industry, she would need to survey 1946 lobbyists. The interviews Milbrath conducted yielded huge amounts of both quantitative and qualitative data, and his book reports much more of this material than is the case in most other academic surveys of lobbyists. On a personal note, having been a lobbyist in the UK myself before entering academia, I well recall the impact which The Washington Lobbyists had at my first reading. On these pages, across the distances of time and geography, I encountered the unmistakably authentic voices of my predecessors, talking about elements of their work which were recognisable features of my work. Milbrath’s academic analysis chimed clearly with my own practical experience. For me, the most notable omission in many scholarly monographs about lobbying is the lobbyist: academics commonly seek to explain lobbying behaviour without actually speaking to any lobbyists. It is this gap between reality and theory, and the lack of understanding of the role of the individual lobbyist, as I perceive it, which few academics handle so assuredly as Lester Milbrath (McGrath, 2009).

Milbrath on Communication, Information and Influence

Milbrath’s conceptualisation of lobbying as a communication process is unquestionably his single most important contribution to the development of lobbying theory. He begins by laying out the basis for his thinking:

First, lobbying relates only to governmental decision-making … Second, all lobbying is motivated by a desire to influence governmental decisions … Third, lobbying implies the presence of an intermediary or representative as a communication link between citizens and governmental decision-makers … Fourth, all lobbying involves communication (Milbrath, 1963: 7–8).

This then leads to a concrete formulation:

Broadly defined, then, lobbying is the stimulation and transmission of a communication, by someone other than a citizen acting on his own behalf, directed to a governmental decision-maker with the hope of influencing his decision. Though this definition does not identify persons called ‘lobbyists’, it does spell out the essence of the lobbying process (Milbrath, 1963: 8).

This insight was entirely novel, fundamentally shifting our understanding of lobbying and interest groups. Kurt Wise (2007: 359) describes this as ‘the first scholarly attempt to define [lobbying]’, and many authors continue to draw on it (Baines and Viney, 2010; Koeppl, 2001; McGrath, 2005, 2007). David Austen-Smith and John Wright (1994: 26), for instance, acknowledge that Milbrath’s communication model has been ‘one of the dominant approaches to understanding lobbying’. A decade after The Washington Lobbyists appeared, James Wilson (1973: 316) observed that ‘It is now well understood that what an organizational representative does in furthering his group’s interests before government has more to do with his management of a communications system than with his exercise of influence’.

Milbrath (1960a) had introduced the idea of the communicative nature of lobbying and offered an empirical basis for this in an earlier journal article, but in the book he set out more thoroughly the theoretical foundation. He visualised the relationships between political actors as a network of communications, with messages flowing through the system in many directions. Some messages are exchanged directly and personally between a lobbyist and a policymaker (Bacheller, 1977; Patterson, 1970), while others are transmitted somewhat circuitously; some are explicit, while others are more subtle. All lobbying messages, though, are potentially influential:

A decision by any given official at any given moment will be consonant with his perception of his political world … The only way to influence a decision, then, is to influence the perceptions of official decision-makers. Communication is the only means of influencing or changing a perception; the lobbying process, therefore, is totally a communication process (Milbrath, 1963: 184–185).

In other words, lobbying is not only about communication; rather, it is concerned with persuasive communication. No material provided by a lobbyist can be regarded as solely factual as it is part of their overriding narrative designed to influence public policy. Even the provision of straightforward information can be assumed to boost the lobbyist’s credibility and thus help increase her opportunity to persuade at a later date. In Jeffrey Berry’s words (1977: 11), ‘A communication itself does not have to be overtly persuasive in nature; it can be technical information or a research report. It is the inferred intent of the communicator that is crucial to the definition’. It is therefore unfortunate that some nations’ lobbying regulation – such as Ireland – exempt from disclosure lobbying communications which are said to be merely factual or technical in nature.

At its most basic, communication theory relates to the transmission and reception of messages, sent through a variety of channels and subject to distortion or noise; when a message is sent and received, there will generally be provision for a feedback loop. Applied to lobbying, the lobbyist can be seen as the sender of a message and the targeted policymaker as that message’s recipient. The message itself is the position being supported by the lobbyist. Communication channels can be kept open or closed as the policymaker wishes, simply by granting or denying access to the lobbyist. And noise occurs in lobbying as a result of the constant cacophony generated by other lobbyists trying to access the same policymaker. Here, lobbying clearly shares some of the attributes of other forms of commercial, persuasive, communication, such as advertising and marketing. Milbrath (1963: 189) works through these factors to assert that ‘It is the lobbyist’s job to create messages and choose means of transmission which are most likely to insure clear and favorable reception of the message by the intended receiver’.

This basic framework leads to one of Milbrath’s (1963: 217) best-known findings – that lobbyists will naturally focus their efforts on policymakers who are likely to agree with them in an effort to reinforce their existing views: ‘Most lobbyists do not bother to communicate with those they know are opposed; this is both painful and thought to be a waste of time’. Messages sent by a lobbyist along a channel which has been closed by a policymaker withdrawing access will have no effect, and those which are distorted by a recipient’s existing predispositions may even be counterproductive; thus, the lobbyist will generally seek to communicate with those policymakers most likely to be receptive to the message (Hojnacki and Kimball, 1999; Holyoke, 2011; Potters and Sloof, 1996). A policymaker’s predispositions are described by Milbrath (1960a: 34) as constituting a ‘perceptual screen’ which can block out messages he or she is not willing to hear. Milbrath’s view stood as the conventional wisdom until the 1980s, since when it has become more contested (Ainsworth, 1993; Kollman, 1997; Schlozman and Tierney, 1986; Smith, 1984). Austen-Smith and Wright (1994, 1996), in particular, developed the notion of counteractive lobbying, according to which lobbyists will seek to change a legislator’s policy preference in certain circumstances.

This debate is an important one as it has considerable implications for the actual or perceived influence of lobbyists and interest groups over policy decisions. Milbrath’s survey findings led him to the conviction that lobbying was an essentially positive force which exerted relatively little influence (Presthus, 1974; Zeigler, 1969). Others profoundly disagree in principle, asserting that corporate lobbying is malign, damaging the integrity of the democratic process. What cannot be questioned, however, are the facts that by asking lobbyists how they rated the effectiveness of various activities, and by also conducting 38 interviews with Members of Congress and their staff, Milbrath was again an early innovator. As James Guth puts it (2001: 43), ‘A great advance occurred when political scientists decided to interview both lobbyists and legislators to assess the influence of the former’.

At the heart of Milbrath’s communication process is the idea that what a lobbyist essentially brings to policymaking is information. It is to Milbrath (and to Bauer et al., 1963) that we owe the conception, by now commonplace, of lobbyists as suppliers of information to policymakers. This view has been widely taken up by scholars and even by those who believe it to be only a partial truth. Again Milbrath concludes that lobbying is fundamentally benign, with the lobbyist serving the policymaker’s needs, almost acting as an extension of the policymaker’s staff (Galnoor, 1975; Hall and Deardorff, 2006; Loomis, 2002; Naurin, 2007). For the lobbyists Milbrath surveyed, access/contacts were less important than policy/political expertise – in other words, what they knew mattered more than who they knew (Heinz et al., 1993; Parker, 2008).

Milbrath was additionally interested in other types of information. He saw that lobbyists devoted significant attention to maintaining contacts and sharing information with other lobbyists. It is through such connections that a lobbyist can gain early indications of the strategy and tactics being pursued by their colleagues/competitors. As Milbrath (1963: 207) said, ‘Only by being well informed about each other’s activities can each organization function adequately in pursuit of its own interests’. Indeed, Milbrath (1963: 41) materially improved our understanding of lobbying through the distinction he drew between tactics and strategy (Alexander, 2002; Berry, 1977; Binderkrantz and Kroyer, 2012).

In addition to information flow from lobbyist to policymaker, and among lobbyists, Milbrath was also conscious of communication within an interest group such as from a lobbyist to a mass membership. Scott Ainsworth (2002) suggests that Milbrath (1963: 39) may have been the first scholar to use the phrase ‘farming the membership’, by which he means an interest group’s internal communication with its grassroots members. Such efforts by lobbyists help to ensure that rank-and-file members are involved in the group’s issue agenda, gain a sense of personal responsibility for the group’s effectiveness, are motivated to donate funds and tend to support the group’s leadership – especially when, as is common, the publications sent to members emphasise or exaggerate the threats faced by the group from its powerful opponents (Browne, 1977, 1990; Greenwald, 1977; Sabatier et al., 1987). As Milbrath (1963: 52) observes, ‘many lobbyists find opponents useful; without opposition, the lobbyists might be unemployed’.

Milbrath’s ‘Hidden Gems’

It has been said, correctly, that ‘The pioneering work of Lester Milbrath provided the foundation for a bountiful research agenda that scholars have since undertaken’ (Alexander, 2002: 27). Much of the work citing Milbrath’s book tends to concentrate on its overarching themes of communication, information and influence or on Milbrath’s survey findings. Milbrath still offers considerable insight not yet fully mined. Here, I suggest a number of areas which could potentially be fruitful:

Political marketing

While lobbying scholars generally recognise the value of Milbrath’s conceptualisation of lobbying as communication, his theoretical foundations for this have not yet penetrated into the political marketing literature to anything like the extent they should have. The vast majority of political marketing literature to date is bounded entirely by discussion of party strategies and voters’ behaviour during elections. A review of the political marketing literature by Margaret Scammell (1999), for instance, makes no direct mention of interest groups. Very little research has been undertaken to date on how (political) marketing theory can explain lobbyists’ policy-influencing activities (Harris and McGrath, 2012). Much is still to be done, using Milbrath’s thinking as a basis for drawing out the academic and professional connections between lobbying and marketing, for connecting the literature on interest groups and political marketing.

Storytelling

Milbrath recognises that the effective lobbyist must be skilled at shaping the priorities of policymakers through the persuasive presentation of information (Larocca, 2004). Agenda setting may be where a lobbyist is most influential in the policymaking process (King et al., 2005). One way in which lobbyists can achieve this is through the use of ‘storytelling’, the articulation of an (emotionally charged) narrative aimed at encouraging policymakers to support a particular position. One of the items Milbrath and Klein (1962: 60) tested 88 lobbyists for was their agreement with the statement: ‘I tend to dramatize a story I am telling’. In a similar vein, an experienced Irish lobbyist advises that an essential step in a successful lobbying campaign is to ‘dramatise the issue’ (Tierney, 2002: 14). While we have the beginnings of a literature in this area (Hansford and Smalley, 2004; Heugens, 2002; Kiel and Nownes, 1994; Polletta, 2006; Terry, 2001), much work remains to be done in the production of a typology of lobbying stories, how they can be crafted and communicated, and their effectiveness.

The individual lobbyist as the unit of analysis

Lobbying has been the subject of popular discourse for the last 200 years and of sustained academic attention for the last century. Lobbyists, though, as individual actors in the political arena, rather than simply as those people who operate interest groups, have received much less attention. The first scholar to recognise the importance of the lobbyist’s personal profile was Lester Milbrath. He raises this issue in The Washington Lobbyists, observing that ‘No scholar has systematically studied the Washington lobbyist as an individual before’ (Milbrath, 1963: 17). Political science may have moved from relatively descriptive assertions about group behaviour towards more empirical and systematic analysis of group mobilisation and influence, but the study of lobbying remains firmly rooted in the group as the primary unit of investigation. Indeed, Schiff et al. (2015: 225) go so far as to assert that ‘lobbyists per se have now largely vanished as interesting actors in studies of interest representation’.

I do not wish to suggest that nothing has previously been written about lobbyists as individuals, for that is manifestly not the case. There are many biographies of and autobiographies by lobbyists, all of which naturally offer some insight into them as people. Participant observation techniques have been very successfully used with respect to lobbyists (Benoit, 2007; Birnbaum, 1992; Kersh, 2002; McFarland, 1984; McHale, 2004; Schlesinger et al., 2001). And we do gain useful insights into lobbyists in the developing principal–agent literature (Lowery and Marchetti, 2012; Schiff et al., 2015; Stephenson and Jackson, 2010). However, it is true that the academic literature on lobbyists is less extensive and much less systematic than that on lobbying. In consequence, we know more about Milbrath’s lobbyists as people than we do about today’s Washington lobbyists: What, for instance, is the current age profile of DC lobbyists? What is their educational background? Or their gender profile? Or the pattern of their professional careers? What do they regard as the most and least appealing features of their work? In this regard, Graham Wootton (1985: 192) could bemoan that ‘There is no Milbrath for the early eighties as there was for the late fifties’. Lamentably, this is also true today.

Lobbyists’ personalities

In The Washington Lobbyists, Milbrath (1963: 97–108) considers the personal characteristics of lobbyists and finds both that their history of political involvement is important in their decision to become a lobbyist and that their personality then affects ‘the style with which a lobbyist goes about his job’ (Milbrath, 1963: 108). This relationship between personality and political participation recurs in other of his writings (Milbrath, 1956, 1960b; Ruedin, 2007). Of the 101 lobbyists he interviewed for his book, 89 additionally completed a 100-item personality test (Prewitt, 1965). Among the traits which The Washington Lobbyists analysed were dominance, self-control, sociability, intellectual efficiency, self-acceptance, esteem and tolerance of frustration. Milbrath and Klein (1962: 63) conclude that ‘Lobbyists are not very typical of the general population’, and Milbrath (1958, 1962) examines personality traits as explanatory factors in lobbyists’ partisan identification and activism (Kolasa, 1971) – but we are still lacking a coherent and systematic literature in this area.

Conclusion

In The Washington Lobbyists, Lester Milbrath sets out a classic statement of the pluralist rationale for interest articulation. He sees in the clash of ideas between interest groups a collective dynamism: ‘nearly every vigorous push in one direction stimulates an opponent or coalition of opponents to push in the opposite direction. This natural self-balancing factor comes into play so often that it almost amounts to a law’ (Milbrath, 1963: 345). Indeed, John Wright (2007: 17) – who notes that Milbrath was the first to observe this tendency and who finds much evidence from other studies to support the general claim – uses ‘Milbrath’s tendency’ as the basis for a reformulation which he regards as (probably) ‘the one thing we should know about interest groups’ (Wright, 2007: 18). While Milbrath acknowledges concerns that this lobbying ‘balance of power’ is skewed in favour of those groups which are relatively well resourced, nonetheless he insists on its fundamental truth, seeing the sheer scale and diversity of the interest group population as indicative of a responsive and informed policymaking process. Even though he knows that lobbying can be an inefficient and burdensome system, Milbrath absolutely insists on its ultimate virtue: ‘There is no substitute for one service – the clash of viewpoints. The creative function this serves in alerting decision-makers to all possible alternatives outweighs all the waste and frustration involved in lobbying’ (Milbrath, 1963: 313).

The Washington Lobbyists has been praised by one group of authors who asserted that it ‘remains the locus classicus within the field … The most comprehensive analysis’ (Nelson et al., 1987: 143), and Anthony Nownes (2006: 25) views the book as ‘a pioneering study’. A truly stunning achievement, this book is indispensable in understanding how lobbying operates and the benefits it brings to policymaking. It remains increasingly valuable to scholars and practitioners alike over half a century since its publication precisely because Milbrath shows us more vividly than any other author how and why the fundamental art of lobbying is relatively constant even within radically different lobbying environments. In The Washington Lobbyists, Lester Milbrath sets out a number of key contributions which lobbying makes to the political system. Lobbying, he affirms, provides information to policymakers; moreover, the pluralistic articulation of competing interests helps to ensure that as wide a range as possible of policy alternatives are brought to policymakers’ attention. He suggests that lobbying communications mean that Congress is not overly dependent on the executive for policy information. Furthermore, interest groups perform both ‘integrative’ and ‘disjunctive’ functions (Milbrath, 1963: 357): integrative in the sense that an interest group (or a coalition of groups) aggregates the policy desires of their members, avoiding the cacophony which would result from each individual lobbying on the same issue, and disjunctive because interest groups are better able than political parties to represent multiple, narrow, interests. To conclude with Milbrath’s (1963: 358) closing words, ‘If we had no lobby groups and lobbyists we would probably have to invent them to improve the functioning of the system’.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This article has been much improved by the comments of PSR editor Mark Wenman and two anonymous reviewers.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Conor McGrath is Lecturer in Public Relations at Ulster University. He serves as Deputy Editor of the Journal of Public Affairs and as Practice Editor of Interest Groups and Advocacy. He is a former President of the Political Studies Association of Ireland, Chair of the Northern Ireland Government Affairs Group and Chair of the Education Sub-Council at the Public Relations Institute of Ireland. His research interests include lobbying regulation, the historical evolution and development of lobbying in the UK and US, professionalisation of the lobbying industry, media coverage of Northern Irish politics and fictional portrayals of lobbying and lobbyists.

References

Ainsworth

(1993) Regulating Lobbyists and Interest Group Influence. Journal of Politics 55 (1): 41–56.

Ainsworth

(2002) Analyzing Interest Groups: Group Influence on People and Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Alexander

(2002) Rolling the Dice with State Initiatives: Interest Group Involvement in Ballot Campaigns. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Andres

(2009) Lobbying Reconsidered: Under the Influence. New York: Pearson Longman.

Austen-Smith

Wright

(1994) Counteractive Lobbying. American Journal of Political Science 38 (1): 25–44.

Austen-Smith

Wright

(1996) Theory and Evidence for Counteractive Lobbying. American Journal of Political Science 40 (2): 543–564.

Bacheller

(1977) Lobbyists and the Legislative Process: The Impact of Environmental Constraints. American Political Science Review 71 (1): 252–263.

Baines

Viney

(2010) The Unloved Relationship? Dynamic Capabilities and Political-Market Strategy: A Research Agenda. Journal of Public Affairs 10 (4): 258–264.

Bauer

de Sola Pool

Dexter

(1963) American Business and Public Policy. New York: Atherton Press.

10.

Baumgartner

Leech

(1998) Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and in Political Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

11.

Benoit

(2007) The Best-Kept Secret: Women Corporate Lobbyists, Policy, & Power in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

12.

Berry

(1977) Lobbying for the People: The Political Behavior of Public Interest Groups. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

13.

Binderkrantz

Kroyer

(2012) Customizing Strategy: Policy Goals and Interest Group Strategies. Interest Groups & Advocacy 1 (1): 115–138.

14.

Birnbaum

(1992) The Lobbyists: How Influence Peddlers Get Their Way in Washington. New York: Times Books.

15.

Browne

(1977) Organizational Maintenance: The Internal Operation of Interest Groups. Public Administration Review 37 (1): 48–57.

16.

Browne

(1990) Organized Interests and Their Issue Niches: A Search for Pluralism in a Policy Domain. Journal of Politics 52 (2): 477–509.

17.

Cataldo

Johnson

Kellestedt

. (1970) Card Sorting as a Technique for Survey Interviewing. Public Opinion Quarterly 34 (2): 202–215.

18.

Eulau

(1964) Lobbyists: The Wasted Profession. Public Opinion Quarterly 28 (1): 27–38.

19.

Galnoor

(1975) Government Secrecy: Exchanges, Intermediaries, and Middlemen. Public Administration Review 35 (1): 32–42.

20.

Gray

Lowery

(2000) The Population Ecology of Interest Representation: Lobbying Communities in the American States. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

21.

Greenwald

(1977) Group Power: Lobbying & Public Policy. New York: Praeger.

22.

Guth

(2001) Reflections on the Status of Research on Clergy in Politics. In: Crawford

SES

Olson

(eds) Christian Clergy in American Politics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp.30–43.

23.

Hall

Deardorff

(2006) Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy. American Political Science Review 100 (1): 69–84.

24.

Hansford

Smalley

(2004) Engaging a Community: Storytelling to Communicate with Publics. Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Public Relations Research Symposium, Bled, Slovenia, 3 July.

25.

Harris

McGrath

(2012) Lobbying and Political Marketing: A Neglected Perspective and Research Agenda. Journal of Political Marketing 11 (1–2): 75–94.

26.

Hayes

(1981) Lobbyists and Legislators: A Theory of Political Markets. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

27.

Heinz

Laumann

Nelson

. (1993) The Hollow Core: Private Interests in National Policy Making. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

28.

Heugens

PPMAR

(2002) Managing Public Affairs through Storytelling. Journal of Public Affairs 2 (2): 57–70.

29.

Hojnacki

Kimball

(1999) The Who and How of Organizations’ Lobbying Strategies in Committee. Journal of Politics 61 (4): 999–1024.

30.

Holyoke

(2011) Competitive Interests: Competition and Compromise in American Interest Group Politics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

31.

Hrebenar

Thomas

(eds) (1987) Interest Group Politics in the American West. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.

32.

Hrebenar

Thomas

(eds) (1992) Interest Group Politics in the Southern States. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

33.

Hrebenar

Thomas

(eds) (1993a) Interest Group Politics in the Midwest. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press.

34.

Hrebenar

Thomas

(eds) (1993b) Interest Group Politics in the Northeast. College Park, PA: Penn State University Press.

35.

Kersh

(2002) Corporate Lobbyists as Political Actors: A View from the Field. In: Cigler

Loomis

(eds) Interest Group Politics, 6th edn. Washington, DC: CQ Press, pp.225–248.

36.

Kiel

Nownes

(1994) Political Language, Causal Stories, and Pesticide Regulation. American Review of Politics 15 (4): 491–506.

37.

King

Cornwall

Dahlin

(2005) Winning Woman Suffrage One Step at a Time: Social Movements and the Logic of the Legislative Process. Social Forces 83 (3): 1211–1234.

38.

Koeppl

(2001) The Acceptance, Relevance and Dominance of Lobbying the EU Commission – A First-Time Survey of the EU Commision’s Civil Servants. Journal of Public Affairs 1 (1): 69–80.

39.

Kolasa

(1971) Lobbying in the Nonpartisan Environment: The Case of Nebraska. The Western Political Quarterly 24 (1): 65–78.

40.

Kollman

(1997) Inviting Friends to Lobby: Interest Groups, Ideological Bias, and Congressional Committees. American Journal of Political Science 41 (2): 519–544.

41.

Larocca

(2004) Strategic Diversion in Political Communication. Journal of Politics 66 (2): 469–491.

42.

Levine

(2009) The Art of Lobbying: Building Trust and Selling Policy. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

43.

Loomis

(2002) Interests, Lobbying, and the U.S. Congress: Past as Prologue. In: Cigler

Loomis

(eds) Interest Group Politics, 6th edn. Washington, DC: CQ Press, pp.185–201.

44.

Loomis

Cigler

(2012) Introduction: The Changing Nature of Interest Group Politics. In: Cigler

Loomis

(eds) Interest Group Politics, 8th edn. Washington, DC: CQ Press, pp.1–34.

45.

Lowery

Marchetti

(2012) You Don’t Know Jack: Principals, Agents, and Lobbying. Interest Groups & Advocacy 1 (2): 139–170.

46.

McFarland

(1984) Common Cause: Lobbying in the Public Interest. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.

47.

McGrath

(2005) Lobbying in Washington, London, and Brussels: The Persuasive Communication of Political Issues. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.

48.

McGrath

(2007) Framing Lobbying Messages: Defining and Communicating Political Issues Persuasively. Journal of Public Affairs 7 (3): 269–280.

49.

McGrath

(2009) Oral History and Political Elites: Interviewing (and Transcribing) Lobbyists. In: Kurkowska-Budzan

Zamorski

(eds) Oral History: The Challenges of Dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.47–60.

50.

McGrath

Harris

(2008) The Creation of the U.S. Lobbying Industry. In: Johnson

(ed.) Handbook of Political Management. New York: Routledge, pp.407–419.

51.

McHale

(2004) Communicating for Change: Strategies of Social and Political Advocates. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

52.

Milbrath

(1956) The Motivations and Characteristics of Political Contributors: North Carolina General Election 1952. PhD Dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

53.

Milbrath

(1958) The Political Party Activity of Washington Lobbyists. Journal of Politics 20 (2): 339–352.

54.

Milbrath

(1960a) Lobbying as a Communication Process. Public Opinion Quarterly 24 (1): 32–53.

55.

Milbrath

(1960b) Predispositions towards Political Contention. Political Research Quarterly 13 (1): 5–18.

56.

Milbrath

(1962) Latent Origins of Liberalism-Conservatism and Party Identification: A Research Note. Journal of Politics 24 (4): 679–688.

57.

Milbrath

(1963) The Washington Lobbyists. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.

58.

Milbrath

(1965) Political Participation: How and Why do People Get Involved in Politics? Chicago, IL. Rand McNally.

59.

Milbrath

(1968) The Nature of Political Beliefs and the Relationship of the Individual to the Government. American Behavioral Scientist 12 (2): 28–36.

60.

Milbrath

(1979) Policy Relevant Quality of Life Research. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 444 (1): 32–45.

61.

Milbrath

(1984) Environmentalists: Vanguard for a New Society. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

62.

Milbrath

(1986) Environmental Beliefs and Values. In: Herman

(ed.) Political Psychology: Contemporary Issues and Problems. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, pp.97–138.

63.

Milbrath

(1989) Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

64.

Milbrath

(1996) Learning to Think Environmentally: While There is Still Time. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

65.

Milbrath

Goel

(1977) Political Participation: How and Why do People Get Involved in Politics? 2nd edn. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.

66.

Milbrath

Klein

(1962) Personality Correlates of Political Participation. Acta Sociologica 6 (1): 53–66.

67.

Naurin

(2007) Deliberation Behind Closed Doors: Transparency and Lobbying in the European Union. Colchester: ECPR Press.

68.

Nelson

Heinz

Laumann

. (1987) Private Representation in Washington: Surveying the Structure of Influence. Law and Social Inquiry 12 (1): 141–200.

69.

Newman

Baer

Patterson

(1975) Political Scientists: What Do They Know about Politics? American Politics Quarterly 3 (2): 189–200.

70.

Nownes

(2006) Total Lobbying: What Lobbyists Want (and How They Try to Get It). New York: Cambridge University Press.

71.

Nownes

DeAlejandro

(2009) Lobbying in the New Millennium: Evidence of Continuity and Change in Three States. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 9 (4): 429–455.

72.

Parker

(1996) Congress and the Rent-Seeking Society. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

73.

Parker

(2008) Capitol Investments: The Marketability of Political Skills. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

74.

Patterson

(1970) The Professional Staffs of Congressional Committees. Administrative Science Quarterly 15 (1): 22–38.

75.

Petracca

(1992) Introduction. In: Petracca

(ed.) The Politics of Interests: Interest Groups Transformed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp.xvii–xxv.

76.

Polletta

(2006) It Was Like A Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

77.

Potters

Sloof

(1996) Interest Groups: A Survey of Empirical Models That Try to Assess Their Influence. European Journal of Political Economy 12 (3): 403–442.

78.

Presthus

(1974) Interest Group Lobbying: Canada and the United States. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 413 (1): 44–57.

79.

Prewitt

(1965) Political Socialization and Leadership Selection. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 361 (1): 96–111.

80.

Quinney

(1964) The Washington Lobbyists by Lester W. Milbrath (Book review). Social Forces 42 (4): 512.

81.

Rosenthal

(2001) The Third House: Lobbyists and Lobbying in the States, 2nd edn. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

82.

Ruedin

(2007) Testing Milbrath’s 1965 Framework of Political Participation: Institutions and Social Capital. Contemporary Issues and Ideas in Social Sciences 3 (3): 1–46.

83.

Sabatier

Hunter

McLaughlin

(1987) The Devil Shift: Perceptions and Misperceptions of Opponents. Political Research Quarterly 40 (3): 449–476.

84.

Salisbury

Johnson

Heinz

. (1989) Who You Know versus What You Know: The Uses of Government Experience for Washington Lobbyists. American Journal of Political Science 33 (1): 175–195.

85.

Scammell

(1999) Political Marketing: Lessons for Political Science. Political Studies 47 (4): 718–739.

86.

Schiff

Seufer

Whitesell

. (2015) Agency Problems and Interest Representation: An Empirical Analysis of the Costs of Lobbying. Interest Groups & Advocacy 4 (3): 225–248.

87.

Schlesinger

Miller

Dinan

(2001) Open Scotland? Journalists, Spin Doctors and Lobbyists. Edinburgh: Polygon.

88.

Schlozman

Tierney

(1986) Organized Interests and American Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.

89.

Smith

(1984) Advocacy, Interpretation and Influence in the U.S. Congress. American Political Science Review 78 (1): 44–63.

90.

Stephenson

Jackson

(2010) Lobbyists as Imperfect Agents: Implications for Public Policy in a Pluralist System. Harvard Journal on Legislation 47 (1): 1–20.

91.

Terry

(2001) Lobbyists and Their Stories: Classic PR Practitioner Role Models as Functions of Burkean Human Motivations. Journal of Public Relations Research 13 (3): 235–263.

92.

Tichenor

Harris

(2005) The Development of Interest Group Politics in America: Beyond the Conceits of Modern Times. Annual Review of Political Science 8 (1): 251–270.

93.

Tierney

(2002) I Am My Rights. Dublin: Public Relations Institute of Ireland.

94.

Walker

(1991) Mobilizing Interest Groups in America. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

95.

Wilson

(1973) Political Organizations. New York: Basic Books.

96.

Wise

(2007) Lobbying and Relationship Management: The K Street Connection. Journal of Public Relations Research 19 (4): 357–376.

97.

Wootton

(1985) Interest Groups: Policy and Politics in America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

98.

Wright

(2007) The One Thing You Need to Know about Interest Groups. Paper Presented at a Conference in Honor of Richard G. Niemi, University of Rochester. Available at: https://www.rochester.edu/college/psc/conferences/niemi2007/pdf/wright.pdf (accessed 8 March 2017).

99.

Zeigler

(1969) The Effects of Lobbying: A Comparative Assessment. The Western Political Quarterly 22 (1): 122–140.

100.

Zeigler

Baer

(1968) The Recruitment of Lobbyists and Legislators. Midwest Journal of Political Science 12 (4): 493–513.

101.

Zeigler

Baer

(1969) Lobbying: Interaction and Influence in American State Legislatures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.