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A generation ago, scholars saw interest groups as the single most important element in the American political system. Today, political scientists are more likely to see groups as a marginal influence compared to institutions such as Congress, the presidency, and the judiciary. Frank Baumgartner and Beth Leech show that scholars have veered from one extreme to another not because of changes in the political system, but because of changes in political science. They review hundreds of books and articles about interest groups from the 1940s to today; examine the methodological and conceptual probl

AbstractSpain's newspapers are characterised by strong partisan identities. We demonstrate that the two leading newspapers nonetheless show powerful similarities in the topics of their coverage over time. The media system is strongly related to the policy process and it shows similar levels of skew (attention focuses on just a few topics) and friction (attention lurches rapidly from topic to topic) as others have shown for policy processes more generally. Further, media attention is significantly related to parliamentary activities. Oral questions in parliament track closely with media attention over time. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories (over 95,000 stories) inEl PaísandEl Mundo, Spain's largest daily newspapers, and all 7,446 oral questions from 1996 to 2009. The paper shows that explanations of friction and skew in governmental activities should incorporate media dynamics as well. Political leaders are clearly sensitive to media salience.

In this introduction to the Policy Study Journal's special issue on punctuated equilibrium, we provide an overview of the approach, how it evolved, some of the major critiques directed at it, and some of the major developments it has spawned. We argue that the most important aspect of a theory or framework is not whether it is right or wrong, but the extent to which it is fruitful; that is, the extent to which it stimulated further research. Finally, we review the articles in this issue and put them in context.

Using data from more than 19,000 reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, we analyze the distribution of lobbying on a random sample of 137 issues & find a tremendous skewness. The median issue involved only 15 interest groups, whereas 8 of the issues involved more than 300 interest groups. The top 5% of the issues accounted for more than 45% of the lobbying, whereas the bottom 50% of the issues accounted for less than 3% of the total. This distribution makes generalizations about interest group conflict difficult & helps explain why many scholars have disagreed about the abilities of lobbyists to get what they want. We also confirm & expand upon previous findings regarding the tremendous predominance of business firms in the Washington lobbying population. 6 Tables, 3 Figures, 1 Appendix, 21 References. Adapted from the source document.