The Political Economy of the Conservative Legal Movement

• In Event: Organizational Politics and the American Political Economy

Abstract

Health policy in the U.S. is heavily influenced by two overlapping networks of political influence. Healthcare industry interest groups (e.g., pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, and large hospital networks) often dominate regulatory institutions within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversee the production of new drugs, create requirements for insurance plans, and distribute Medicaid and Medicare dollars. Though these interest groups occasionally conflict, they often share in very similar rent-seeking projects, attempts at bureaucratic capture, and healthcare deregulation. Additionally, well-funded conservative legal organizations–many of which are religious but all of which are funded by “dark money” groups–have undermined health regulations. While some of these groups’ work can be described as socially conservative (e.g., opposition to abortion and gender-affirming medical care) much of this litigation is aimed at the regulatory heart of HHS institutions and the federal bureaucracy.

Given these seemingly congruent deregulatory interests, why has litigation over the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation of the abortion medication, mifepristone, caused so much discord between groups like the Christian conservative legal organization, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry’s powerful lobbying group? In answering that question, this paper sketches a political economic perspective on the conservative legal movement’s interests and strategies, revisiting relevant literature on capitalist class political disorganization as well as newer perspectives from law and political economy (LPE) and American political economy (APE) studies. Taking litigation over the FDA as a case study, this paper demonstrates how converging and diverging political economic interests (rather than “social values” or “ideologies” or businessmen vs. libertarian ideologues) among wealthy industry donors and family foundations, sector-based and national industry interest groups, and conservative legal organizations can elucidate why and when conflicts among them erupt and what the mifepristone debacle means for the future of health law, bureaucracy, and the American political economy.

Author

• Joanna W. Wuest, Stony Brook University