Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T12:46:41.123Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Structures of Interest Coalitions: Evidence from Environmental Litigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Andrew B. Whitford
Andrew B. Whitford*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
*
1Department of Political Science, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 66044–3177. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper addresses the intersection of coalition formation, judicial strategies, and regulatory politics. Coalitions are a low-cost means for assembling minority interests into more powerful blocs. However, in most cases in regulatory politics, judicial strategies are high cost efforts. I argue that coalitions among interests form one basis for judicial participation, but that participation manifests in an array of coalition “microstructures.” For any one event, the microstructure of the interest group coalition varies, but across events the coalitions take on general forms. The paper offers evidence for a variety of coalition microstructures in interest group participation as amici curiae (“friends of the court”) in cases before the United States Supreme Court. The evidence is drawn from the case of the Group of Ten, a stable, long-term coalition of environmental interest groups that operated from 1981 to 1991.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , April 2003 , pp. 45 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2003 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Author's note: I thank the following for their suggestions about this paper: Lee Epstein, Bill Lowry, Norman Schofield, and Ken Kollman. All errors that remain are my own.

References

Aranson, Peter and Ordeshook, Peter. 1985. “Public Interest, Private Interest, and Democratic Polity.” In The Democratic State, edited by Benjamin, Roger and Elkin, Stephen. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, pp. 87–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barker, Lucius J. 1967. “Third Parties in Litigation: A Systematic View of the Judicial Function.” Journal of Politics 29 (1): 41–69.Google Scholar
Baron, David P. 2000. Business and Its Environment. Third edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Bosso, Christopher J. 1991. “Adaptation and Change in the Environmental Movement.” In Interest Group Politics, edited by Cigler, Allen J. and Loomis, Burdett A. Third edition. Washington, DC: CQ Press, pp. 151–76.Google Scholar
Browne, William P. 1990. “Organized Interests and Their Issue Niches: A Search for Pluralism in a Policy Domain.” The Journal of Politics 52 (2): 477–509.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James. 1965. “The Theory of Clubs.” Economica 32 (125): 1–14.Google Scholar
Cahn, Robert and Dunlap, Louise C. 1985. An Environmental Agenda for the Future. Washington, DC: Island Press.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Greg and Wright, John. 1988. “Organized Interests and Agenda Setting in the U.S. Supreme Court.” American Political Science Review 82 (4): 1109–27.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Greg and Wright, John. 1990. “ Amici Curiae Before the Supreme Court: Who Participates, When, and How Much?” The Journal of Politics 52 (3): 782–806.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Daniel P., Esterling, Kevin M., Lazer, and David M.J. 1998. “The Strength of Weak Ties in Lobbying Networks: Evidence from Health-Care Politics in the United States.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 10 (4): 417–44.Google Scholar
Chatfield, Charles. 1969. “Pacifists and Their Publics: The Politics of a Peace Movement.” Midwest Journal of Political Science. 13 (2): 298–312.Google Scholar
Comp, T. Allen, Editor. 1989. Blueprint for the Environment. Salt Lake City, UT: Howe Brothers.Google Scholar
Cornes, Richard and Sandler, Todd. 1986. The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cortner, Richard C. 1968. “Strategies and Tactics of Litigants in Constitutional Cases.” Journal of Public Law 17 (2): 287–307.Google Scholar
Degenne, Alain and Forse, Michel. 1999. Introducing Social Networks. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Dunleavy, Patrick. 1991. Democracy, Bureaucracy, and Public Choice. New York: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee. 1993. “Interest Group Litigation During the Rehnquist Court Era.” The Journal of Law and Politics. 9 (4): 639–717.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, Segal, Jeffrey A., and Johnson, Timothy. 1996. “The Claim of Issue Creation on the U.S. Supreme Court.” American Political Science Review 90 (4): 845–52.Google Scholar
Fraley, Chris. 1998. “Algorithms for Model-Based Gaussian Hierarchical Clustering.” SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing 20 (1): 270–81.Google Scholar
Fraley, Chris and Raftery, Adrian E. 1999. “MCLUST: Software for Model-Based Cluster Analysis.” Journal of Classification 16 (2): 297–306.Google Scholar
Handler, Joel. 1978. Social Movements and the Legal System: A Theory of Law Reform and Social Change. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hansford, Thomas G. 2000. “Organized Interest Lobbying Strategies and the Decision to Participate at the U.S. Supreme Court as Amicus Curiae.” Paper presented at the Conference on the Scientific Study of Judicial Politics, Columbus, Ohio, 20–1 October 2000.Google Scholar
Harris, Richard and Milkis, Sidney. 1989. The Politics of Regulatory Change: A Tale of Two Agencies. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hays, Samuel. 1987. Beauty, Health and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heinz, John P., Laumann, Edward O., Nelson, Robert L., Salisbury, and Robert H. 1993. The Hollow Core: Private Interests in National Policy Making. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschman, A.O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Response to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hojnacki, Marie. 1997. “Interest Groups’ Decisions to Join Alliances or Work Alone.” American Journal of Political Science 41 (1): 61–87.Google Scholar
Ingram, Helen and Mann, Dean. 1989. “Interest Groups and Environmental Policy.” In Environmental Politics and Policy, edited by Lester, James. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 115–45.Google Scholar
Kluger, Richard. 1976. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Knoke, David and Kuklinski, James H. 1982. Network Analysis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Laumann, Edward and Knoke, David. 1987. The Organizational State: Social Choice in National Policy Domains. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Loomis, Burdett A. 1986. “Coalitions of Interests: Building Bridges in a Balkanized State.” In Interest Group Politics, edited by Cigler, Allen J. and Loomis, Burdett A. Second edition. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, pp. 258–74.Google Scholar
Lovrich, Nicholas and Pierce, John. 1986. “The Good Guys and Bad Guys in Natural Resource Politics: Context and Structure of Perceptions of Interests Among General and Attentive Publics.” Social Science Journal 23 (3): 307–26.Google Scholar
Melnick, R. Shep. 1983. Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Melnick, R. Shep. 1992. “Pollution Deadlines and the Coalition for Failure.” In Environmental Politics: Public Costs, Private Rewards, edited by Greve, Michael and Smith, Fred. New York: Praeger, pp. 89–103.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Robert Cameron. 1979. “National Environmental Lobbies and the Apparent Illogic of Collective Action.” In Collective Decision Making: Applications from Public Choice Theory, edited by Russell, Clifford. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press for Resources for the Future, pp. 87–123.Google Scholar
Moe, Terry. 1980. The Organization of Interests: Incentives and the Internal Dynamics of Political Interest Groups. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mosher, Lawrence. 1980. “Environmentalists Question Whether to Retreat or Stay on the Offensive.” National Journal 12 (50): 2116.Google Scholar
O'Connor, Karen and Epstein, Lee. 1983. “The Rise of Conservative Interest Group Litigation.” The Journal of Politics. 45 (2): 479–89.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Susan M. 1984. Clients and Lawyers: Securing the Rights of Disabled Persons. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Susan M. 1990. “Interest-Group Litigation in Federal District Court: Beyond the Political Disadvantage Theory.” The Journal of Politics 52 (3): 854–82.Google Scholar
Ordeshook, Peter C. 1992. A Political Theory Primer. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pauly, Mark V. 1967. “Clubs, Commonality and the Core: An integration of Game Theory and the Theory of Public Goods.” Economica 34 (135): 314–24.Google Scholar
Salisbury, Robert H., Heinz, John P., Laumann, Edward O., Nelson, and Robert L. 1987. “Who Works with Whom? Interest Group Alliances and Opposition.” American Political Science Review. 81 (4): 1217–34.Google Scholar
Sandler, Todd. 1992. Collective Action: Theory and Applications. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Schepple, Kim Lane and Walker, Jack L. Jr. 1991. “The Litigation Strategies of Interest Groups.” In Mobilizing Interest Groups in America, edited by Walker, Jack L. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 157–84.Google Scholar
Scott, John. 1991. Social Network Analysis: A Handbook. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Smith, V. Kerry. 1985. “A Theoretical Analysis of the ‘Green Lobby’.” American Political Science Review. 79 (1): 132–47.Google Scholar
Sorauf, Frank. 1976. The Wall of Separation: The Constitutional Politics of Church and State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Spriggs, James F. 1996. “The Supreme Court and Federal Administrative Agencies: A Resource-Based Theory and Analysis of Judicial Impact.” American Journal of Political Science 40 (4): 1122–51.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Wahlbeck, Paul J. 1997. “The Life of the Law: Judicial Politics and Legal Change.” The Journal of Politics. 59 (3): 778–802.Google Scholar
Walker, Jack L. 1983. “The Origin and Maintenance of Interest Groups in America.” American Political Science Review. 77 (2): 390–406.Google Scholar
Yandle, Bruce. 1989. The Political Limits for Environmental Regulation. New York: Quorum Books.Google Scholar