Chapter 12: Political Middlemen--
Parties, Interest Groups, and Lobbyists

Chapter Objectives

By the time you have read this chapter you should understand:

1. Why limitations on the power of individual rulers also apply to electorates, which also suffer from additional disadvantages resulting from their size and inclusiveness.

2. Why parties and interest groups-"political middlemen"-are essential if the electorate is to wield real control over government decisions.

3. How there is a "market for votes" that resembles an economic market but is more egalitarian in its distribution of the basic resource.

4. How parties, interest groups, and other political entrepreneurs resemble industrial captains who bring together the factors of production in response to perceived demand for a good or service.

5. Why the ascendancy of pseudo-laws over laws has encouraged the development of interest groups.

6. Why efforts to repress the expression of interests are perverse.

7. Why there is no connection between the kind of goals pursued by an interest group and the advisability of its recommendations.

8. How interest groups resemble collective bargaining agents in some respects, and why the analogy is a limited one.

9. The implications of the fact that government employees have personal interests that conflict with those of the general public, and that lobbyists are not employed only by private organizations.

10. Why the American two-party system appears better suited to maximizing public control over government than the multiparty systems of western Europe or the one-party systems of eastern Europe.

Key Terms

agenda-setting function
market for votes
political entrepreneurs
interest aggregation
"minor" party
short ballot
interest articulation
monopoly

Republicans are people who, if you were drowning 50 feet from shore, would throw you a 25-foot rope and tell you to swim the other 25 feet because it would be good for your character. Democrats would throw you a 100-foot rope and then walk away looking for other good deeds to do. *

STRUCTURING PUBLIC CHOICES

In politics, as in art and science, choices may overload our circuits. Artists make choices manageable by imposing artificial limitations on themselves or by accepting more or less the customary limits within which their contemporaries work. The conventional musical octave, for example, is divided into 12 "half tones." This limits composers' options far more than equally possible scales with 24 quarter tones. No law requires composers to use the conventional scale. But most western composers have found the conventional scale provides exactly the right degree of restriction to give greater meaning to the choices they make in pursuing their art.

Artificial limits have no inherent place in science, but here too progress is inhibited when there are too many alternatives. Perhaps the reason most scientists have worked within the confines of a paradigm (see Chapter 1) is because in this system assumptions are treated as if they were facts. Thus, a scientist working in a field in which there are not yet enough facts established to narrow his possible conclusions down to a manageable range can push forward anyway.

Collective Activities

Political choices are complicated by their collective nature. Art and science are collective activities in the sense that large numbers of individuals participate and build on each other's accomplishments. But they are very individualistic compared with politics. The essence of politics is the effort to occupy or retain key positions in a governmental organization, or to influence the actions of the people who do. Politics is thus inherently collective. Difficulties faced by any individual in making choices are compounded when a society makes choices. An association, organization, or society faces unique problems in functioning efficiently. Possibilities for misunderstanding and general confusion are legion. The public, the most inclusive group possible, cannot make any choices at all. Including every man, woman, and child subject to the jurisdiction of a given government--yesterday, today, and tomorrow--the public is huge, dispersed in time as well as space, and unorganizable. Government, an organization vastly smaller than the public, can and does make choices on behalf of the public. For shorthand purposes we can refer to decisions by government-as-trustee II as "public choices," in the sense that they are made for the public. In a democracy like the United States they are also made or influenced by the adult portion of the public currently alive--the electorate.

How the Collective Body, the Public, Can Act. An electorate, however, is a very unwieldy body for making decisions, as we saw in discussing referendums. If a single individual were in charge of selecting and appointing a new president of the U.S., for example, the task might be manageable even if 10 or more candidates were being seriously considered. For the electorate to sort out this many candidates would be impossible. The amount of discussion and weighing of conflicting considerations, the dependency on an inherently undependable mass media for insight into candidate personalities, and the large number of options would frustrate effective exercise of power by the electorate. A procedure might be established whereby one of the candidates would become president as a result of the voting in one or more elections. But public leverage over the actions of the resulting government would be minimal. For control purposes, one might just as well draw the name of the winner out of a hat.

Effective organizations must be arranged so that decisions made by each individual or group within them are manageable. We have examined some of the techniques used in administrative bureaucracies (Chapter 6) and in Congress (Chapter 7) to make decisions manageable. Specialization allows individual bureaucrats or congressmen to gain experience and expertise. Specialization also allows the directing of information needed to make given decisions to the individuals responsible for making them rather than being generally disseminated and lost in the din. Hierarchy is another technique used to make decisions manageable. Hierarchy provides a means of coordinating the work of specialists and of settling jurisdictional disputes. It allows a vertical form of specialization, in which some people concentrate on doing and others on inspiring, supervising, and coordinating the work of others. [Footnote 1] To make the decisions of managers manageable, one can limit the "span of control," the number of people whose work is supervised by one person.

Structure of an Electorate. Unfortunately, specialization and hierarchy are not techniques that can be used by an electorate seeking to exercise effective control over government actions. An electorate cannot be structured hierarchically: it is a single entity, occupying much the same place as an absolute monarch in a hereditary political system. Like the hereditary monarch, voters individually acquire their status not for any personal qualities they may have, but merely for being born to the right parents (citizenship) and living long enough to come of age. Like the absolute monarch, the electorate collectively wields undisputable supreme power in the political system, if it has its wits about it and knows what it is doing. Like the monarch, the electorate may be a figurehead, manipulated by its ministers. Individual members of the electorate may attain strategic positions and exercise great power, but they do so as individuals and not as members of the electorate. The electorate is inherently a unit, and as such must act as a unit. And any hierarchical arrangements within the electorate would violate the "one man, one vote" value, the equality principle which is such an important part of the democratic ethos.

The electorate, which includes everybody, cannot possibly be made up of political specialists. Nor can the voters all be experts on any of the many technical issues about which government must make decisions. The government organization, on the other hand, inherently consists of experts organized hierarchically. Even top elected officials, although they must be generalists compared to those whose work they direct, may be considered experts in governing. We thus find an amorphous and unexpert electorate confronting a structured organization of specialists. That organization can cope with complexities that completely baffle the electorate. The difficulty of the task facing even an astute electorate cannot be understated.

Structure of the Government around the Electorate. There are some ways that government can be organized to make the electorate's job less impossible. The "short ballot" movement in the early twentieth century was a reaction to the Jacksonian view that "the more numerous the elective offices, the more democratic the system." [Footnote 2] Rather than confusing the electorate by making it vote for dozens of top government officers, each voter under the short ballot votes for only a couple of officials. At the federal level in the U.S., for example, the voter selects candidates for president and vice president (as a package deal), for the House of Representatives and for the U.S. Senate. All other federal officials are appointed and--except for judges and regulatory board members-- removed by the president and/or the congress. Voters thus do not have to keep track of incumbents and challengers in a large number of offices, but can express general dissatisfaction with nonelected officials by holding elected representatives accountable.

The electorate also can specialize in the sense that it concentrates on making a few key decisions about who shall occupy top offices. Details of governing must be and are left to those staffing the government machinery, but those holding top positions are elevated above the machine by the voters. Top officials thus are not necessarily career bureaucrats in the civil service and reflecting values cultivated in the civil service. They are people claiming to reflect the values of the general public. Democracy thus contrasts with a monopolistic oligarchy such as the U.S.S.R. where top rulers get to their positions by rising within the Communist Party or the soviet government organizations. Of course in the U.S.S.R. the top leaders claim to represent the general public and welfare, just as they do in the U.S. But they do not allow the validity of that claim to be tested in competitive elections, and the possibility that the claim is just self-serving humbug cannot be ignored.

The Role of Political Entrepreneurs in a Democracy

Political democracy strongly resembles an economic market. The economic entrepreneur makes money by bringing together the "factors" of production-land, labor, and capital by the usual formulation, natural resources and labor in our simplified terms. People capable of performing certain work do not just get together automatically to cooperate in common production. Goods that could be sold if they were produced do not just get produced as a matter of course. Demand does not create supply; entrepreneurs create supply based upon their perception of a demand.

The Individual Seeking to Guide Collective Action. So it is with the "market" for votes. The political entrepreneur tries to put together an individual candidacy, an issue, or a whole package deal that will give more people more of what they want than existing leaders have managed to do. This entrepreneur's appeal may be to the electorate as a whole (the presidency's constituency), to geographical portions of that electorate (House and Senate constituencies), to legislatures, or to governmental agencies and boards. Under modern conditions he may also attempt to get a court to do what it is impossible or too costly to get some other body to do. Footnote 3

Although the market for votes is not completely egalitarian, it is far more so than economic markets. The economic value of an individual's labor varies greatly depending on skill, location, timing, demand for what he can do, and how many other individuals are willing and able to perform the same work. But the logic of democracy appears to require that votes be counted equally. In politics, unlike production, each participant thus has an equal amount of the basic resource-votes. Footnote 4

Inequality in political influence results, not from the distribution of the basic resource, but from differences in the ability to persuade other people how to cast their votes. Not all people have, or can have, equal access to the mass media. Nor are all arguments which do get through to voters equally persuasive. One of the greatest occupational hazards for the politician or aspiring politician is overexposure. When voters get to know you better, they may like you less! Finally, unequal impact on government can occur because not all voters are equally able to wield their equal votes to maximize the results. Here, there is no difference from economics. Even if everybody had identical money income, all would not enjoy the same standard of living. Some would spend their money more judiciously than others. "A fool and his money are soon parted." Likewise with votes.

The Leaders of Political Parties. For the most part, then, members of the electorate specialize in evaluating the overall performance and style of a few elected incumbents. Voters rely on these incumbents, on their foremost challengers, and on a few other well-located people to provide leadership and to formulate alternatives for them to choose between. Top leaders or strategically placed would-be leaders thus not only make key day- to-day government decisions, but also largely determine what issues will be talked about in public discourse. Their ability to determine what will be talked about is not unlimited for it is subject to the "market for ideas." Ideas will be brought up, issues will be posed, to the extent that this appears to be politically profitable.

The Functions of Political Parties as Entrepreneurs

These leadership functions are institutionalized to some extent in political parties. As Ward Elliott puts it:

American democracy works only by virtue of countless decision-making agencies which do not drag the public into the decision-making process, even though the decisions may be of great public consequence, because the public is incapable of doing the hard work of deliberation that most decisions require. Instead, the agencies act under their own concept of proper policy and their own self-interest, subject to a periodic registration of a general public preference at general elections. Most people accept this limitation on the democratic process in regard to the behavior of elected representatives, whom they expect to make decisions of public consequence without a formal expression of public feeling on each decision. They are much less aware, however, of the importance of decisions made prior to elections by small groups of political entrepreneurs in permitting the electorate to make an intelligent choice between alternatives carefully contrived to build and preserve consensus, preserve the system, and provide the basis for action on items of major public concern while avoiding it on items of minor public concern. Footnote 5

While Elliott perhaps rather idealizes parties, there can be little doubt that, as he maintains, "They protect democracy from a fatal overdose of little issues, thereby permitting it to act on the big issues."

How Many Parties? As we will see, from the standpoint of effective democracy we need not assume the more parties the better. Again, we find a good analogy with economic markets. The number of entrepreneurs or "firms" actually existing at a given time is not as important as the legal situation facing potential competitors. If there is only a single firm in a given business, it is a "monopoly" only in a very weak sense of the term if anybody else able to do the work and to pay "start up" costs is legally free to do so. Fear of potential new entrants may incline the existing firm to refrain from abusing its position almost as much as an actual competitor could do. A true monopoly exists only where government threatens sanctions against anybody attempting to enter the field and compete with an existing firm. Only in this situation can the existing firm act without danger of losing part of its business to another.

What Kinds of Parties? The number of political parties is therefore not as important as the conditions in which they exist and act. Nor is there any way to compel people to start an additional party, or to force competition. The perverse economic analysis reflected in the so-called antitrust laws has, fortunately, no political counterpart in America or elsewhere. When government refrains from giving any firm, or party, a legal monopoly or part of a monopoly, then that is the most that government can do to facilitate competition. And in politics, as in economics, we should not assume that only competition is good. In politics, it is also good if interests can be "aggregated" or put together to form majorities capable of governing with substantial community support.

Consensus and Competition. People must be free to argue about what government should be doing. But the main task of government is to govern, and in a democracy this requires development of a certain amount of consensus. Since it is not possible for everyone to get everything they want, judicious compromises are a central requirement of viable democratic government. People who cannot get everything they want do well to strive for what they want most by trading off what they are less concerned about. "Compromise" is thus not a dirty word in politics, but merely a recognition of the limits imposed on us by the human predicament in general and by coexistence in particular.

Few subjects generate more heat than political parties' internal arrangements and sources of funding. In the context of the present analysis, however, parties are both compatible with and necessary for democracy even when they are not internally democratic and depend exclusively upon private donors for their finances.

"A Political Party is a Voluntary Association." [Footnote 6] Furthermore, it is a private one. It therefore does not matter whether the party is "governed" (a dangerous metaphor!) democratically or not. All preferring to do so are free to leave the association and free to start another if anybody is disposed to join with them-and to organize it as they please. Nor is anybody compelled to vote for any party or its members.

Complaints about lack of internal party democracy are therefore misdirected. In a competitive (free) system parties, or some of them, will become internally democratic if enough voters feel that this is important. If no party is internally democratic the fault (if it is a fault) therefore lies with public opinion rather than with the parties. The latter are merely entrepreneurs and conveyor belts linking public opinion somewhat tenuously with public policy.

The real problem in the U.S.S.R. is not internal undemocracy in the Party but the governmentally enforced monopoly enjoyed by that Party. Roy Medvedev, a Soviet dissident, has argued that "if there is no genuine democracy in the party, there cannot be democracy in society at large." [Footnote 7] But a party organized exactly like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would be completely compatible with a democratic political system as long as other parties, organized in their own way, were allowed to compete for the favor of the voters. One or more expressly "undemocratic" parties might even increase voters' leverage, since such a party might find it easier to stand for something. But we need not be surprised that an undemocratic party could enhance democracy. We have only to remember (1) the constraints imposed by the iron law of oligarchy; (2) the limited role that can be played by the electorate; and (3) the entrepreneurial function in politics.

Party Finances and Corruption. The campaign finance uproar was touched off by the large-scale bribery of government officials discovered during the Watergate investigations. The bribes frequently took the form of private donations to individual and party campaign funds.

As we pointed out earlier, the roots of corruption lie in arbitrary methods of regulating the economy. Whenever government purchases goods or services at prices higher than the market-clearing level, or hires people at above-market wages, or gives away valuable privileges, it will have to decide who will receive the favors. There is no way to guarantee that officials wielding discretionary power will be unwilling to receive a bribe. Increased official salaries will not suffice, since there is no such thing as "enough" money. Laws against bribery will not do it, either; confidentiality is an implicit part of every bribe, and assets can be covertly transferred in many ways.

Since Watergate, Common Cause and other well-meaning groups have urged public financing of election campaigns plus restrictions--preferably a complete ban--on private contributions. Robert Nozick, writing in a different context, noted the perverseness of this general approach to attacking corruption:

To strengthen the state and extend the range of its functions as a way of preventing it from being used by some portion of the population makes it a more valuable prize and a more alluring target for corrupting by anyone able to offer an office holder something desirable; it is . . . a poor strategy. Footnote 8

Government subsidies of campaigns simply add more hand-outs, which undoubtedly will invite more skullduggery and bribery. When incumbents write the rules, they cannot be expected to stack the public financing deck against themselves. Financial gerrymanders will be added to distracting gerrymanders. And prohibitions or restrictions on private donations violate the requirements of the rule of law because they are not general rules. They do not apply to donations from government-as- contractor.

Importance of Parties. Freedom to organize and operate political parties is important because the ultimate power residing in the electorate cannot be exercised frequently or in detail. Ultimate power is still ultimate and important. Its very existence may produce conditions within which it need not be brandished very often. Choices presented by the major political parties may often appear to be between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They are both in the public opinion ballpark and the obviously unacceptable options have not even made it into the finals. Without freedom for political entrepreneurs, however, there is no way that significant public leverage can be wielded over government.

The Distinction between Parties and Interest Groups

Political parties and interest groups are entrepreneurial, seeking needs and trying to capitalize on them. Parties, however, tend to see things from the wholesale point of view and try to aggregate or combine interests into packages that can command majority support if not enthusiasm. Interest groups have more of a retail perspective, and each is responsible for articulating or expressing a very few particular interests that its members have in common.

American Political Parties. Under the American electoral system victory requires wide appeal. But the appeal need not be "deep" or heartfelt. When the largest single group of voters feels a candidate is better than all the others, that person wins. When there are two main parties, supporters of one candidate may have many policy differences among themselves. Since they are free to form a new one reflecting their own views more fully, why do a party's motley supporters continue their uneasy association with each other? Why are "strange bedfellows" so common in American politics?

The presidential election of 1912 exemplifies the side effects of deserting a major

  Table 12-2.  Presidential Third-Party Candidates in the 
                 Twentieth Century.

                            Percent of         Electoral
   Party              Year  Popular Vote       Votes
_________________________________________________________  
  American Independent1968         13.5          46
  Progressive         1948          2.4           0
  States' Rights      1948          2.4          39
  Progressive         1924         17.1          13
  Socialist           1912          6.0           0
  Progressive         1912         27.4          88

party and seeking a less compromised version of one's goals. President Theodore Roosevelt, Republican, had engineered the election of William Howard Taft as his successor in 1908. But Roosevelt broke with President Taft during the latter's administration and opposed his renomination in 1912. Taft, however, secured renomination by the Republican convention. Roosevelt's many supporters then broke ranks, formed their own Progressive (or Bull Moose) Party, and nominated the former president. The 1912 race was therefore a three-sided rather than a two-sided affair. The results were as follows:

  Candidate                       Popular vote   Electoral vote
  _____________________________________________________________
  Woodrow Wilson (Democrat)       6,286,214      435
  Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive)4,126,020       88
  William H. Taft (Republican)    3,483,922        8

The popular vote for the two "Republican" candidates combined was 7,609,942. If only one Republican had run he might well have won. Because of the split in Republican ranks, however, the Democrat had the popular vote plurality. Wilson's electoral vote was even more impressive, an absolute majority as required by the Constitution. Ironically, then, the side effect of efforts by the Republican factions to get more was to elect a Democrat, which most Republicans presumably wanted not at all. American politics therefore places very strong pressure on entrepreneurs to make compromises before elections in order to put together a winning coalition. Since everybody wins a little and loses a little when compromises are made, it is little wonder that enthusiasm for a party's platform or candidate may be hard to find. But when the enthusiasm of some can be evoked only by measures that completely turn off other voters whose support is necessary in order to win, enthusiasm becomes a luxury few serious politicians can afford. Perhaps the two presidential candidates in recent times who commanded the most enthusiasm from their supporters were the Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, and the Democrat George McGovern in 1972. Predictably, both went down to resounding defeat.

Political party leaders tend to act as if their principal interest is in winning elections for their members. Their interest in policies and principles, although it may be strong, is distinctly subordinate to pragmatic considerations of electoral success. To a great extent, the leaders of a major party which wishes to remain so must be "opportunists," constantly seeking ways to take advantage of public sentiments or elements that have been overlooked or suppressed by the other party. Erstwhile major parties that fail to do this will be replaced by a new party, as the English Liberal Party was replaced by the Labour Party in the early twentieth century.

The American system has not been literally a two-party one, but can be accurately described as a two plus party system. Needless to say, the rules of survival for major parties do not automatically govern minor parties, of which we have had many. The function of minor parties has not been to win elections. In a system of single member districts such parties have almost no chance of capturing any offices at all. Freed from pressure to compromise and confuse their position in order to maximize voter appeal, candidates of minor parties can opt for intellectually clear and consistent positions. Since they have no immediate prospects for success to trade off, such candidates can "invest" with a vengeance. They can give undivided attention to trying to educate the public to see things differently, hoping that a long range shift in public sentiments will produce circumstances in the future in which their party and principles can win a majority.

Such hopes are usually forlorn. In a healthy two plus party system good, attractive ideas may sometimes be put forth by a minor party. But as soon as public sentiment begins to shift, one or both of the major parties will take up the new idea and incorporate it into their own platforms. Such thefts reduce the relative attractiveness of the minor party, for the new idea is no longer uniquely its own. The minor parties may therefore be extremely influential over the long haul. They may play a role far larger proportionately, than the number of votes they ever receive or offices they win. And they are always waiting on the sidelines to serve as the possible nucleus of a new major party if one of the old ones falters. In many respects, however, the minor parties in the U.S. resemble interest groups more than they do the major parties.

Interest Groups. Interest groups seek, not to win elections in which their members are candidates, but to get favorable government treatment on specific policy issues. Such groups may pursue the particular interests of their members, or they may advocate policies that their members sincerely believe are necessary for the general welfare.

Examples of particular interest groups would include the AFL- CIO, the National Association of manufacturers, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and the American Medical Association. But no interest is monolithic; big business may have strong divisions between importers and nonimporters when it comes to tariff issues, for example. The interests of some unions may conflict sharply with those of others. Interests can exist and be articulated at many levels of generality: those of a region (big or small), of a firm, of an industry made up of many firms, of a group of industries, of industries in general.

Public oriented or unselfish interest groups include those working for civil service reform, an end to (or reestablishment of) capital punishment, and other goals that affect their members only indirectly, as members of the public. Those opposing capital punishment are not usually people fearing that fate for themselves. Examples of public interest groups today include the American Civil Liberties Union, Common Cause, and the John Birch Society.

Needless to say, the kinds of goals pursued by an interest group tell us little about the actual advisability of its recommendations. As we have noted before, the purpose of an action is one thing, and its consequences for others (or function) is another. In pursuing their own material interests, for example, a particular interest group may take steps that benefit nearly everybody. Lumber interests in the state of Oregon, for example, found out about a bill in the state legislature that would have required that a certain chemical imported into Oregon be of a given high degree of purity. The purpose of the bill was to protect the public health, since the chemical was used in products intended for human consumption. What the bill's sponsors did not know was that carloads of the same chemical were used in processing wood. The higher cost of the pure chemical could have run much of the state's leading industry out of business. When the additional facts were presented to the legislature, the bill was quickly amended to apply only to imports of the chemical destined for human consumption. Thus the public health objectives of the original bill were attained, but without the undesired economic side effects that the unamended bill would have produced.

It is also possible for proposals put forward in all sincerity by public interest groups to produce disastrous results. The Prohibition experiment, for example, backfired badly. We have noted the futility of trying to reduce corruption by campaign finance reform. Likewise liberal efforts to help the poor by minimum wage laws. And the total amount of inhumane behavior in the society may be increased, not decreased, by eliminating capital punishment.

An interest group may support a party or particular candidates in an election, hoping for favorable treatment if they win the office. But interest groups give higher priority to seeking favorable treatment from whoever currently occupies government offices. This is done either by direct contacts with these officials ("lobbying") or by trying to shape public opinion so officials will find it expedient to do what the group wants. Since they must try to work with anybody actually winning the election, interest groups may find it unwise to identify themselves too closely with either major political party.

In addition, full commitment to one party can severely reduce a group's leverage over both parties. The party that the group is unequivocally "for" may find that concessions to interest groups that could swing either way make more sense and deliver more extra votes. The other party may see no use in trying to appease an interest group unequivocally in the enemy's camp.

PSEUDO-LAWS AND THE FLOURISHING OF INTEREST GROUPS

Agenda Setting

Political entrepreneurs bring issues to public attention or to the attention of representatives of the public. In so doing these entrepreneurs hope to achieve their own values (or interests) either by placing themselves or their allies in powerful and prestigious offices or by getting favorable government treatment.

The agenda setting function is thus not democratic, but essentially entrepreneurial. Items are proposed for public discussion based on considerations of what will be acceptable. Nobody wants public discussion of those items on which their own case is weak. Everybody wants discussion of ideas when their position is likely to be popular. Everybody is legally free to join with others to try to bring an idea or a proposal or a candidate to public attention and decision. But, as we have noted before, getting the public's attention is not easy. A great deal of the outrageous behavior--kidnappings, hijackings, "demonstrations"--that we read or see in the news are desperate efforts to capture public attention. Saul Alinsky, the great radical tactician, emphasized the attention- getting function in his proposal to have his followers tie up all the toilet facilities at O'Hare Airport in Chicago:

The consequences of this kind of action would be catastrophic in many ways. People would be desperate for a place to relieve themselves. One can see children yelling at their parents, "Mommy, I've got to go," and desperate mothers surrendering, "All right--well, do it. Do it right here." O'Hare would soon become a shambles. The whole scene would become unbelievable and the laughter and ridicule would be nationwide. It would probably get a front page story in the London Times. Footnote 9

How to prevent tactics such as these from placing frivolous items on the public agenda without destroying freedom of the press is a dilemma of democracy. How to assure that meritorious proposals get on the agenda without forcing their initiators to resort to this kind of thing is perhaps an even greater dilemma.

The Escalation of Interest Groups

Interest groups and their representatives-lobbyists-are important parts of democracy. Even the founding fathers, who were very suspicious of factions, accepted a constitutional amendment guaranteeing "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." (First Amendment) Madison, writing in the Federalist, took a very jaundiced view of factions, but strongly opposed efforts to suppress them:

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction. The one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction. The one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests. It could never be more truly said, that of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment, without which it instantly expires. But it would not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. The second expedient is as impracticable, as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. Footnote 10

Ironically, the methods adopted by the founding fathers to control the effects of factions may have encouraged the growth of political parties, which the founders were also very doubtful about. Government still required coordination. The,parties provided an informal, unofficial mechanism for arranging cooperation between the various parts of government. They also took over some functions originally intended to be handled by government bodies, including the nomination of presidential candidates.

In spite of the heroic measures taken by the founders to keep interest groups within certain limits, the groups have proliferated and flourished. Under modern conditions combined with the current approaches to economic regulation, it is hard to see how it could be otherwise. The more detailed the laws, the more government needs to know about all kinds of specialized activities. As the example of the Oregon chemical purity law indicates, interest groups are an important source of such knowledge. The more government relies on the arbitrary regulations we have called pseudolaws, the more reason specific interests have to cultivate those who govern and seek the valuable favors at their disposal.

Government Action and Interest Groups

When government restricts itself to dealing with people in general by enacting a few rules of action, most people may be able to afford to limit their political involvement to occasional voting. Entrepreneurs seeking to organize interest groups would find little demand for their services. The more government decisions apply specifically to your affairs, the more dangers and opportunities there are for interest groups to beware of, fend off, or try to capitalize on. When government makes a lot of decisions strictly at retail, rather than deducing them from general rules, we can no longer afford to rely on interests we share with the rest of the population to protect us from oppression. It becomes, instead, everyman for himself, and heaven help the unorganized.

Interest groups thus function rather like collective bargaining agents in labor relations. Rather than have each individual press his case before government personally, and perhaps feeling quite inadequate in dealing directly with a wealthy and powerful organization, interest groups send a professional lobbyist to do it for him.

Interest groups are unlike labor unions in that none can claim--as a matter of fact or of law--to be the sole bargaining agent for any individual. Every person has many interests--as a worker, as a consumer of this and that, as a stockholder (directly or indirectly, via insurance or pension funds) in corporations, as a church member, and so forth. Any one interest group probably pushes only one of the many interests, which often conflict with one another. A given individual's interests as a consumer of apples may conflict with his interests as a worker. As a consumer he would like the price of apples to be low. As a truck driver he would like his salary to be high, and transportation costs are part of the costs of apples as well as all other consumer goods. Except when his conflicting interests balance, each individual would presumably benefit from subordinating ones he has less of a stake in to ones where he has more to gain or lose. The interest groups speaking for him in each of these capacities, however, will presumably push their side of the case come hell or high water, even though the particular individual's true welfare lies in not pursuing his less important interests when they conflict with more important ones.

As in collective bargaining, then, not all of the people on whose behalf an interest group operates are really benefited by the endeavor. It follows naturally that not all of these people appreciate what is being done for them by some interest groups. A person who values clean air more than less expensive automobiles or electricity, for example, may detest the auto and utility industry lobbyists who press for reduced antipollution standards in order to keep the costs of their products lower. In their lobbying, these people are expressing some of the interests of their employers' consumers, and their efforts are financed--like all other operating costs of corporations-- by the payments made by these customers. The fact that some of the customers would rather subordinate their interests in lower costs to their interests in a cleaner environment does not prevent them from being assessed, in effect, to support the activities of the lobbyists representing these interests. There is a strong analogy here to the union or agency shop contract. All employees of a given firm are required to pay dues or the equivalent to a union or lose their job, whether they feel their real and fundamental interests are being promoted by the union or not. However the union or agency shop is not inevitable and does not always exist, whereas the disliked uses to which money paid for goods and services can be put appear to be inherent.

We may strongly regret having to pay union or agency shop fees or money used to further interests in which we are not interested when we buy goods. But our association with employer or producer is still a voluntary one. As we noted in Part I, regret is simply a sign that a price has been paid, not proof that any sanctions are involved in our associations.

Importance of Expression of Interests. In spite of Madison's advice, there have been many efforts to prevent interest groups from functioning effectively. It has become popular to try to "prohibit" or at least register lobbyists. Disclosure laws try to force lobbyists to reveal how much they have spent entertaining public officers. Such laws apparently assume that entertainment constitutes an effective bribe, and that if a law requires disclosure of bribes they will not be given. The validity of these assumptions is dubious. But laws against bribery are hard to attack and hard to vote against. Campaign finance pseudo-laws limiting private donations rest on the same premise as lobbying disclosure requirements: that by outlawing one or two straightforward methods of transferring assets, one can hold down bribery. Both probably conflict with constitutional rights to petition government and to speak freely. Neither can possibly prevent purchasing power from being conferred indirectly--but efficiently--on government officials who do valuable favors for particular economic interests.

Sometimes it is implied that small campaign donations from individuals are a legitimate method of expressing interests but that large donations from organizations are not. This distinction is largely demagogic. It posits a false dichotomy between virtuous, public-spirited individuals, and selfish, perverse aggregations of individuals: moral man and immoral corporations.

Bigness in a voluntary association is a sign that large numbers of people have found it to be in their interest. Therefore to the extent that corporate money is not merely being squandered, it is a wholesale expression of some interests of a large number of people. Real though the interests these people have in common may be, the transaction costs of getting them and their campaign donations together except via the existing corporate structure may be prohibitive. This is not to assert that "what is good for General Motors is good for the United States," merely that the "interest" of General Motors is a composite of some interests of the workers, shareholders, customers, suppliers, and creditors whose transactions comprise G.M. The interests of any and all of these people can certainly conflict with the general welfare, and hence so can those of their association. It makes no sense, however, to portray the wholesale expression of their interests as bad but their retail expression as good. Such a portrayal is about on a par with Senator George McGovern's economics when he proposed to reduce the burden of taxes on individuals and sock it to the corporations to recoup the lost revenues. Footnote 11

LOBBYING BY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

"Lobbying" and "interest groups" suggest private associations seeking government favors. Many interest groups are indeed private. However not all interest groups are private. Some government employees have substantial interests in common. Many lobbyists are on the public payroll.

The Pentagon is interested in keeping up, or increasing, appropriations for military defense. Different branches of the armed services are interested in getting a greater share of the defense dollar. Raging battles among the navy, army, and air force over which gets to develop a new missile system have occurred, bringing out not only the lobbyists for each service but also those of their respective private industry allies hoping to profit from defense contracts. The military services go to great lengths to cultivate good relations with "Capitol Hill." Congressmen get free transportation on military aircraft, military base accommodations on trips, and lucrative commissions as officers in the military reserves.

Government operated universities are well-represented in every state capital as well as in Washington, D.C. Competition is brisk for research and development money, scholarship aid, and general operating funds. State university lobbyists cooperate to fend off proposals to cut total government aid directed to higher education or to divert more of that money to private colleges. State and city governments have representatives under foot everywhere in Washington seeking various kinds of matching funds, subsidies, and favorable legislation.

As more and more government employees have joined labor unions, the public has become more aware of the interests these people have in common and of their potential conflict with the general welfare. Civil servants are taxpayers too. Like other taxpayers, they have an interest in lower taxes, "everything else being equal." But for government employees everything else is not equal: all of their salaries come from government, but only part of their income goes to taxes. These people therefore have a strong net interest in having higher salaries even when this requires that their taxes be raised. In the extreme case where salaries would double and taxes too, they would still come out ahead: If salary increases from $12,000 to $24,000 and income tax from $2,000 to $4,000, a civil servant has a lot of additional money left- -after paying the increased tax. But civil servants have still another advantage. Covered by a separate pension system, federal employees pay no social security taxes. To the extent that they can get the social security tax raised and the income tax lowered correspondingly, they come out ahead. Perhaps this single consideration, combined with the fact that federal employees number around five million (civil plus military), explains otherwise inexplicable recent tendencies to increase the regressive social security tax and decrease the progressive federal income tax.

Self-interest vs. Public Interest

Lobbying by government agencies and public employees is not a very edifying spectacle. It is hard to reconcile this obviously self-interested behavior with the noble devotion to the general welfare attributed to or prescribed for government employees. But the fact that government agencies and their workers have a vested interest in generating new "business" should surprise no one. People are only human! And the consequences of such lobbying are by no means all harmful to the public interest.

Like private lobbyists, those for government agencies are a rich source of information for Congress and other government bodies whose cooperation they are seeking. While representatives of a given agency can hardly be expected to present Congress with information that reflects badly on their employer, lobbyists for other agencies have a strong interest in digging up dirt on organizations with which their own is competing for the appropriations dollar. Interagency rivalry and lobbying thus may provide information which Congress ought to have but otherwise might never get.

It is hard to argue that private sector competition to produce goods and services is good but that competition to provide government services is bad. True, there can be only one supreme government at a time in a well-governed country. But within that government are many relatively separate organizations. Competition between these for the privilege of serving the public is both possible and, presumably, desirable. Nor are the motives inspiring government workers and agencies to lobby for themselves entirely selfish. Many government employees sincerely feel that their agency does important work, and correctly feel that they could do a better job with more money.

Still, government agency lobbying does give most people pause. Use of government (i.e., taxpayer) money to lobby government appears to be perverse, a compounding of a financial felony. However, as with all lobbying, we must distinguish purpose from function in order to keep our perspective. A person's reasons for doing something are one matter. His impact on the welfare of others is an entirely different thing. Actions inspired by noble motives may produce disastrous consequences. Actions taken for completely self-interested reasons may benefit everybody. Serendipating--doing the right thing for the wrong reasons--is an important part of democratic politics, and presumably will continue to be.

When public policies are proposed we must therefore consider them on their merits. We cannot take a short cut by evaluating the nobility of the reasons that inclined someone to propose them. Our conclusions would have no sure correlation with the probable impact of the policy.

THE FUTURE OF THE PARTY SYSTEM

Although frowned upon by the founders, political parties emerged during the presidency of George Washington. The Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams was soon packed off into oblivion by the Democratic Republicans, ancestor of the present Democratic Party. After a brief period of "good feelings" following the eclipse of the Federalists, and the bitterly contested election of 1824 in which none of the candidates ran as a member of a party, renewed partisanship broke out. First the National Republicans, then the Whigs, and finally the Republicans acted as the major challenger to the Democratic Party, as followers of Thomas Jefferson's ideas began to call themselves.

Since the Civil War, the United States has maintained a relatively stable two-plus party system. Both of the main parties have existed continuously since the 1860s, and neither has ever hung on to the White House for more than twenty years in a row. Congress, however, has been another matter. Since 1931 the Republican party has controlled Congress for a grand old total of only four years! During the same period Republicans occupied the White House for sixteen years (Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford). However, the Democrats had gone through a similar period of congressional weakness during the 40 years prior to 1930, so obituaries for the Republican Party may be premature.

When we compare American political parties with those in western Europe, it becomes obvious that the two-plus party system here has not been coincidental. In continental Europe, unlike Great Britain and the U.S., multiparty systems have been the norm. No one would argue that the major American parties have come and remained together because their active members see eye to eye. Motives for splitting off and forming a smaller but more "pure" party have been as strong in America as in Europe. It follows that there is something different about American (and English) conditions, something that discourages fragmentation of existing parties and resists growth of the minor parties, which everyone is free to form.

Perhaps different cultures might account for the contrast between the Anglo-American and the European party systems. The fact that American and British elections are held in single- member districts, however, is generally thought to account for most of this difference.

In the U.S., the candidate winning more votes than any other person wins even if he gains only a plurality of all votes. A person who votes for a third party therefore produces anomalous results from his own point of view. Imagine that there are three candidates for an office:

   Jones    One of two probable front runners   Your second choice
   Smith    Other of two probable front runners Your third choice
   Baker    Not a front runner                  Your first choice

Whoever gets the most votes wins. What is the consequence of your casting a vote for Baker, your first choice? He probably has no chance of winning. If you had not voted for him you would have voted for Jones, your second choice, and added one vote to his total. By voting for Baker, you are denying your vote to Jones, thus increasing the probability that Smith will win. But Smith is your very last choice for the job. If you are voting to get the best results from your action, you will therefore be strongly tempted to vote for your second choice, one of the two front runners, rather than casting an implicit vote in favor of the person you like the least.

American circumstances place great pressure on candidates to make compromises and alliances before the election. By making deals with enough of the other potential candidates, one may put together the needed plurality or even an absolute majority.

Other potential candidates may be willing to deal with a person who is closest to their own orientation, realizing that if they fail to hang together they will surely all lose to somebody they find even less congenial. American candidates thus carry with them a strong odor of compromise that may not be as apparent in European elections.

But we need not assume that all compromise is bad. Nobody, even a Crusoe, can have everything he wants. Some of his wants are incompatible with other things he also wants. Even for the solitary individual, therefore, compromises are a necessary part of life and of rational action designed, not to get everything one wants, but to maximize satisfaction. When we coexist with others, opportunities for conflict multiply. Before we can say that a compromise is bad, we must know what it is that has been compromised. All political systems must stimulate compromises. But the American two-plus party system may encourage political compromises at times when voter leverage over the conduct of government is maximized. In a multiparty system, necessary compromises between the usual multiplicity of factions are made immediately after general elections. Each of a number of parties may participate in a ruling coalition put together on terms that are only made final when leaders know exactly how strong a hand voters have dealt them. Immediately after one election is--by definition--the longest possible time before the next election. Voter memories are short. Compromises are therefore made when party leaders can most afford to ignore the electoral side effects of the deals they make.

In a two-party system compromise between factions must be made right before general elections, in order to hold each party together and avoid handing an easy victory to the opposition. The specter of Woodrow Wilson's plurality triumph over Taft and Theodore Roosevelt is still a real one! But compromises right before a general election must be made with attention to probable voter reactions to them. Hence these compromises are more likely to meet with public approval than the ones made in a multiparty system.

It is perhaps a natural carry over from thought patterns appropriate in physics to assume that previous elections have more influence on the actions of government than future ones. In physics, only past events can have a bearing on present developments. In politics, however, we are dealing with human beings who are attempting to shape the future and who act on the basis of their anticipations of that future. Past elections influence the present by determining who will and will not hold office for the time being. But the actions of those who do hold office are more likely to be influenced by future elections than by past ones. Gratitude for past support is apt to be rather unreliable in politics, where gratitude indeed seems to have little place except in the sense of "a lively sense of future favors." And the future favors from an electorate always come in the next election.

One party is not enough for a functioning democracy. Although one party may be able to hold together and dominate government with voter consent for some decades, it is bound to split sooner or later if it is not faced with the threat of another major party. A stable one-party system cannot be democratic, for it ultimately must rest on the governmental stifling of potential competitors, and that is incompatible with democracy. Over the long haul, then, a democracy must have two or more parties contesting elections, focusing the choices so voters can participate meaningfully in controlling and limiting their government, acting as political middlemen. But if there are three or more roughly equivalent parties, majorities needed to govern must be put together in post-election coalitions, at a time when voters' influence election is at a minimum. A strong argument can therefore be made that the optimum conditions for democracy are found in a system where there are two major parties, with plenty of minor parties to popularize new ideas and to provide the possible nucleus of a new major party if one of the existing ones finally falls.

SUMMARY

Since "the people" cannot govern, actual government decisions are made by small numbers of key individuals. In democracies these leaders are circumscribed by periodic elections in which their right to continue governing is challenged by small groups of would-be rulers. The electorate exercises power over government by choosing between the leading contenders. Candidates bid for support in the market of votes. However if too many options were available, the electorate's task would be unmanageable. Political parties in the U.S. function to narrow the electorate's choices to a range in which the suffrage can be used effectively. The structure of our electoral system forces realistic candidates to make compromises necessary to put together a majority, as in any viable democracy, but it forces them to do this just before elections, a period when anticipated reactions of voters are taken most seriously.

While parties and major candidates try to figure out ways of accommodating or aggregating many partially conflicting interests, smaller groups specialize in articulating or expressing particular interests. These interest groups and lobbyists--their employees--are a legitimate part of democracy, and efforts to suppress them are misguided. But there can be too much of a good thing, and we probably would have less interest-group activity if government relied more on general rules of action and less on pseudo-laws and on arbitrary conferring of valuable rights on the favored few.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why is the internal democracy of political parties a separate matter from the democracy of a country's political system?

2. In what respects, according to this chapter, is "government by the people" a hopelessly inadequate description of democracy?

3. Explain what an "entrepreneur" is, and compare the purposes and functions of economic and political entrepreneurs.

4. How adequate or useful do you find the jocular description of American political parties given by S. 1. Hayakawa at the beginning of this chapter?

5. What characteristics of the U.S. political and social systems were reflected in the following news story?

Cindy Darrah . . . was plucked, nude and shivering, from the Detroit River Monday. The City Council candidate had attempted to float across the river on a door from a demolished house. She was wearing only her hand-printed campaign stickers-and they washed off. . . . Earlier in her campaign, she swam to Windsor and on another occasion she floated from Windsor to Detroit in an inner tube. This time, police sent her to Detroit General Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Miss Darrah . . . said Monday, "If I did everything normal, I would have no chance of getting elected." (Detroit Free Press, September 13, 1977)

6. Explain why under the American system, major shifts in government policy are often led by "outsiders" like George Wallace and Howard Jarvis (proponent of California's "Proposition 13" in 1978). If there is a public demand for these new ideas, why is it not mobilized by a more established leader?

7. Explain how the Electoral College, the single-member districts for congressmen, and the consequences of voting for a third party candidate help to preserve the two-plus party system in the U.S.

8. Explain why proposals made by particular interest groups are not always bad and those made by public interest groups are not always good.

9. If a new party were to replace one of the existing major parties in the U.S.,
a. Which party should it replace? Why?
b. How should it be organized, what principles should it adopt, and what policies should it favor? Why?

10. Are you disturbed to think about the fact that government agencies engage in lobbying? Why or why not? How could things be arranged to eliminate such lobbying? Would this be a good idea?

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Footnotes

* S.I. Hayakawa, Time, June 14, 1976, p. 8.

1. See David Ewing, The Managerial Mind, New York: Free Press, 1964.

2. J. C. Plano and M. Greenberg, The American Political Dictionary, New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1967, p. 118.

3. Clement E. Vose, "Litigation as a Form of Pressure Group Activity," 319 The Annals of the American Academy of political and Social Science 20-31 (September 1958).

4. But see the apparently serious proposal for weighted voting in Nevil Shute's novel, In The Wet, New York: Morrow, 1953.

5. Elliott, p. 208.

6. Bell v. Hill, 123 Tex. 531, 534 (1934).

7. Roy A. Medvedev, On Socialist Democracy, New York: Knopf, 1975, p. 108.

8. Nozick, p. 272.

9. Saul Alinsky, Rules For Radicals, New York: Vintage, 1972, p. 143.

10. Federalist No. 10.

11. "It is sometimes said that indirect taxes are the fairest taxes: You pay in the measure in which you buy. But this is not so. Indirect taxes are the most unfair of all taxes, because they are harder for the poor to pay than they are for the rich. The rich man's income is ten times or maybe a hundred times as large as the peasant's or the worker's. But does the rich man require a hundred times as much sugar? Or ten times as much liquor or matches or kerosene? Of course not! ... And this means that the rich man will pay a smaller part of his income than the poor man." Lenin, in Stefan T. Possony (ed.), The Lenin Reader. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1966, p. 94.