Organized Power and Networks within the Contemporary Democratic Party Coalition

• In Event: Political Parties and American Democracy Mini-Conference I: Left Parties in Advanced Capitalism

Abstract

The American parties’ electoral coalitions and policy priorities have indisputably changed over recent decades. Scholarship has focused on shifts in the class and geographic composition of each party’s voters, but parties are also coalitions of “intense policy demanders” (Bawn et al., 2012). How do recent changes in the parties’ electoral bases and policy stances relate to their networks of allied interest groups? The most detailed accounts currently available focus on interest groups critical to the contemporary Republican Party, which are implicated in its rapidly changing political orientation (Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez 2016; Hacker and Pierson 2020). In this paper we aim to quantify levels of policy and political influence of interest groups in the Democratic Party’s extended network, where recent changes have been more subtle but nonetheless substantial. To do so, we engage with three primary sources of data. First, we draw on data from MapLight, the IRS, Senate lobbying reports, and the FEC to examine the lobbying and electoral expenditures, financial resources, and membership and staff sizes of interest groups active in the Democratic Party. Second, we turn to an original dataset of organizations whose support congressional Democrats showcase in their press releases, which reveals which organizations Democrats want to be publicly affiliated with. These press releases, like the MapLight data, also allow us to identify networks of party-aligned interest groups that share legislative priorities. Finally, we augment these large-n sources with original interview evidence from advocacy group leaders actively involved in the Democratic Party’s recent policymaking. Together, these varied data shed light on the emerging structure of group influence on the Democratic Party at a moment of considerable coalitional and agenda change.

Authors

• Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University

• Paul Pierson, University of California, Berkeley

• Sam Zacher, Yale University