A Neopluralist Perspective on Research on Organized Interests

• Author: David Lowery,Virginia Gray
• Published date: 01 March 2004
• Date: 01 March 2004
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591290405700114
• Subject Matter: Articles

In what is surely one of the most critically insightful—

and certainly among the most useful—recent works on

the politics of interest representation, Baumgartner and

Leech’s (1998) Basic Interests joins a long list of scholars in

decrying the state of research in the subfield (Cigler 1991;

1994; Crotty 1994; Berry 1994). Still, the nature of the crit-

icism has changed over time. Arnold’s (1982: 97) oft-cited

characterization of the field as “theory rich and data poor”

has been largely replaced by laments about the state of

theory in research on organized interests. This shift in target

is certainly justified by the steady accumulation of new

empirical findings over the last two decades as thoroughly

tallied and evaluated by Baumgartner and Leech. Beyond

recognizing this rich set of empirical findings, however, it

seems that there is hardly anyone willing to view the theo-

retical foundations underlying this literature in even a mod-

estly positive light. Petracca (1992: 348) concluded that,

“Neither is there a unifying theory nor even a set of theories

to guide interest group research.” Knoke (1986: 2) similarly

identified “a dire need of a compelling theory to force

greater coherence upon the enterprise.” Even more harshly,

Mitchell and Munger (1991: 513) judged political science

research on interest representation “analytically incoherent”

and advocated instead a shift to deductive economic models

in future work, a suggestion which has been only selectively

embraced by political scientists.1Baumgartner and Leech

(1998: 174) contributed to this growing body of criticism in

suggesting that our theoretical understanding of interest

representation is fraught with “avoidance and confusion.”

While seemingly never well endowed with theory and data,

we surely have an endless supply of pessimism.

Is this pervasive critical pessimism justified? In broad

strokes, we do not disagree with the assessments noted

above as evaluations of much of the literature published on

the politics of interest representation during the 1970s,

1980s, and even the early 1990s. This is especially true of

what is perhaps Baumgartner and Leech’s (1998: 177-80)

central criticism of research on interest representation—the

too frequent inattention to contextual forces influencing

mobilization and the use of influence tools. Indeed, they

suggest that developing a more complete theory of the pol-

itics of interest representation will require bringing such

contextual factors into the several theoretical models used

by scholars. Baumgartner and Leech (1998: 172-76) go fur-

ther to offer a strong recommendation for addressing their

criticism—greater reliance on larger scale studies that, by

their nature, must be attentive to variations in context. We

fully agree with both Baumgartner and Leech’s central criti-

cism of the literature and their central recommendation for

how it might be placed on a more progressive footing.

At the same time, however, three reasons suggest that it

may be time to extend Baumgartner and Leech’s review of the

literature even though it was completed but a few short years

ago. First, even though political science has yet to develop a

coherent theory of interest representation, there has been a

rich collaboration of new theory and data during the 1990s—

163

REVIEW ESSAY

A Neopluralist Perspective on

Research on Organized Interests

DAVID LOWERY and VIRGINIA GRAY, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

We modestly challenge Baumgartner and Leech’s (1998) very pessimistic assessment of the state of interest

group research by arguing that there has been a rich collaboration of theory and data during the 1990s, which

at least points toward a new and more coherent theoretical perspective on interest representation, and one

largely indigenous to political science. With some trepidation given its checkered history, we label this per-

spective as a neopluralist view. We explore this developing approach in three steps. We first provide a broad

outline of three distinct approaches to the study of interest representation, identifying how each has under-

stood the various stages on which organized interests have attracted the attention of scholars. We then iden-

tify six attributes of the emerging neopluralist approach that distinguish it from prior work on interest repre-

sentation. Finally, we consider the appropriateness of our proposed neopluralist label and what must be done

to further develop the neopluralist perspective.

NOTE: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meet-

ing of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April,

2000. This research is part of an ongoing collaborative project at

UNC-Chapel Hill and the University of Minnesota supported by

the National Science Foundation (Grant SBR9709439), for which

we are profoundly grateful.

Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 1 (March 2004): pp. 163-175

1This charge of analytic incoherence seems an odd one given Mitchell and

Munger’s (1991) description of the profound differences between what

they identify as the Chicago and Virginia schools of economic thought

on the role of interest groups. One suggests that organized interests are

always dominant while the other suggests that they are always the pawns

of legislators engaged in an extortion game.