SOC 8311 Basic Social Statistics

1
Historical Development of the National Policy
Domains Studies Comparing Policy Networks
Methods David Knoke University of
Minnesota COMPON Conference January 25-28, 2007
2
Collective Action Systems
Collective action systems such as legislatures,
courts, regulatory agencies make public policy
decisions about numerous proposed laws and
regulations. Organized interest groups hold
varying pro- and con- preferences across multiple
policy decisions. Coalitions lobby public
officials to choose outcomes favorable to
coalitional interests. Decision makers may also
hold policy preferences, and may change their
votes on some events to gain support for
preferred decisions.
Models of socially embedded policymaking explore
how network ties shape collective decisions
through information exchanges, political
resource, persuasion, vote-trading (log-rolling),
and other dynamic processes.
Je weniger die Leute davon wissen, wie Würste
und Gesetze gemacht werden, desto besser schlafen
sie. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-98)
The less people know about how
sausages and laws are made, the better they'll
sleep.
3
Community Power Structure Beginnings
Edward O. Laumann Franz Urban Pappis New
Directions in the Study of Community Elites
(1973, 1976) demonstrated how multiple networks
connecting the elites of a small German city
facilitated and constrained their collective
capacity to affect community policies.
Replications in two middle-size Illinois cities
revealed that organizations occupying central
network positions were more influential in
community affairs, more likely to mobilize for
action in political controversies, and better
able to achieve their preferred outcomes in
public policy disputes (Laumann, Marsden and
Galaskiewicz 1977 Galaskiewicz 1979).
? Laumann and Marsden (1979) simplified large
networks into collective actors, structural
positions that are jointly occupied by several
organizations with close communication ties and
holding identical preferences for a policy event
outcome. ? Marsden and Laumann (1977) showed
that James Colemans mathematical model of
collective action could explain the outcomes of
five policy controversies in the Towertown
data. Others (Stokman, Koenig) have extended
this model. ? See Knoke (1998) for a brief
history of U.S. policy network research.
4
National Policy Domains Networks
Policy network analysts seek to explain the
formation of state-interest organization
networks, their persistence and change over time,
and the consequences of network structures for
public policy-making outcomes. Developers
included British (Rhodes, Marsh), German (Pappi,
Schneider, Mayntz), and American (Laumann, Knoke)
political scientists sociologists
A policy network is described by its actors,
their linkages and its boundary. It includes a
relatively stable set of mainly public and
private corporate actors. The linkages between
the actors serve as channels for communication
and for the exchange of information, expertise,
trust and other policy resources. The boundary
of a given policy network is not in the first
place determined by formal institutions but
results from a process of mutual recognition
dependent on functional relevance and structural
embeddedness. (Kenis and Schneider 1991)
POLICY DOMAIN A set of interest group
organizations, legislative institutions, and
governmental executive agencies that engage in
setting agendas, formulating policies, gaining
access, advocating positions, organizing
collective influence actions, and selecting among
proposals to solve delimited substantive policy
problems, such as national defense, education,
agriculture, or welfare.
(Laumann and Knoke. 1987. The Organizational
State)
5
The Organizational State
The Organizational State (1987) conceptualized a
national policy domains power structures as
multiplex networks among formal organizations,
not elite persons. These connections enable
opposing coalitions to mobilize political
resources in collective fights for influence over
specific public policy decisions.
Power structure is revealed in patterns of
multiplex networks of information, resource,
reputational, and political support among
organizations with partially overlapping and
opposing policy interests. Action set is a
subset of policy domain orgs that share common
policy preferences, pool political resources, and
pressure governmental decisionmakers to choose a
policy outcome favorable to their interests.
After a policy decision, the opposing action sets
typically break apart as new events give rise to
other constellations of interest orgs.
6
Lobbying Coalitions
When its interests are at stake in a
Congressional bill or regulatory ruling, a
political org can lobby alone or in coalition

• Most political orgs work in coalitions a
  division of labor
• Coalitions are short-lived affairs for specific
  narrow goals
• EX impose or lift restrictions on Persian rug
  imports
• Partners in next coalition change with the
  specific issues
• Politics makes strange bedfellows EX Patriot
  Act
• Orgs that lobby together succeed more often than
  soloists
• Broad cleavages emerge within some policy
  domains
• EX Business vs Unions in labor policy domain

7
Who Wins Policy Fights?

• We know much less about the systematic influence
  of political action on the outcomes of public
  policy fights
• No single political organization or enduring
  coalition prevails on every issue event of
  importance to it incrementalism prevails
• What implications for Ruling Class, Elite,
  Pluralist models?
• Biggest PAC contributors campaign workers may
  enjoy greater access, easier victories on
  uncontested policy pork proposals
• But why Big Tobaccos setbacks? Union failure to
  block NAFTA?
• Roll-call analyses of Congressional votes find
  small lobbying effects relative to other factors
• Lobbying impacts greatest in particular policy
  events, depending on strength of oppositions
  resources political arguments
• Elected officials also pay attention to
  unorganized voter opinions
• Shockingly, some even hold ideological
  principles hobby-horses!

8
Dialectical Influences
Marsh Smiths dialectical model depicts policy
outcomes as feeding back to change actors and
network structures
Policy outcomes may affect networks by 1.
Changing network membership or the balance of
resources within it 2. Altering social contexts
to weaken particular interests in relation to a
given network 3. Causing agents, who learn by
experience, to pursue alternative policy
influence strategies actions
9
Comparing Policy Networks Methods
The theoretical principles and the empirical data
collection and analysis methods developed in The
Organizational State were adapted and applied in
a study of national labor policy domains in the
U.S., Germany, and Japan, Comparing Policy
Networks (Knoke, Pappi, Broadbent Tsujinaka
1996). They could be used by the COMPON project

• Identify organization population from
  public-source activities
• Compile sets of issues dated events from
  public records
• Construct identical national questionnaires by
  cross-translation
• Interview key informant from each org attribute
  network data
• Complete networks require 90 response
  rates
• Network methods to analyze, compare national
  policy domains

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12
Communication Distances in the Core
1.5                                 0.0          
                    -1.5
 
NLRB
HD
ACLU
NEA
SD
SR
UAW
ABC
AARP
CHAM
NAM
BRT
DOL
HR
AFL-CIO
TEAM
OSHA
ASCM
NGA
WHO
-1.5
0.0
1.5
SOURCE Knoke. 2001. Changing Organizations.
Westview.
13
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Political Cleavages on Policy Events
Memberships in action sets for 3 U.S. labor
policy domain events revealed overlapping
patterns of organizational interests in
influencing these policy decisions. The labor
and business coalitions comprise a core set of
advocates (AFL vs. Chamber of Commerce) plus
event-specific interest organizations,
particularly nonlabor allies of unions.
SOURCE p. 354 in Knoke. 2001. Changing
Organizations.
15
Implications for Future NPD Studies

• The results from the three national labor policy
  domain analyses may be boldly, perhaps
  imprudently, extrapolated to modern
  organizational states in general
• Concepts of core policy actors, policy interests,
  political exchange relations, and collective
  actions are essential to analyzing national
  policy domain social structures and processes.
• Common patterns of domain social organization
  occur among advanced capitalist, industrial
  democracies for example, the centrality of
  action sets and exchange processes in collective
  decision making.
• Historical, cultural, and institutional factors
  generate important variations in structures
  across national policy domains.
• Combining both informal institutions (power
  structures) and formal governmental institutions
  (constitutions) is necessary to explain
  variations across the national policy domains in
  forms of the modern organizational state.

(Knoke. 1998158-159)
16
References
Galaskiewicz, Joseph 1979. Exchange Networks and
Community Politics. Beverly Hills, CA
Sage. Kenis, Patrick and Volker Schneider. 1991.
Policy Networks and Policy Analysis
Scrutinizing a New Analytical Toolbox. Pp. 25-62
in Policy Networks Empirical Evidence and
Theoretical Considerations, edited by Bernd Marin
and Renate Mayntz. Boulder/Frankfurt
Campus/Westview Press. Knoke, David. 1998. The
Organizational State Origins and Prospects.
Research in Political Sociology 8147-163. Knoke,
David. 2001. Changing Organizations Business
Networks in the New Political Economy. Boulder,
CO Westview Press. Knoke, David, Franz Urban
Pappi, Jeffrey Broadbent and Yutaka Tsujinaka.
1996. Comparing Policy Networks Labor Politics
in the U.S., Germany, and Japan. New York
Cambridge University Press. Laumann, Edward O.
and David Knoke. 1987. The Organizational State
Social Choice in National Policy Domains.
Madison, WI University of Wisconsin
Press. Laumann, Edward O., Peter V. Marsden, and
Joseph Galaskiewicz. 1977. Community Influence
Structures Replication and Extension of a
Network Approach. American Journal of Sociology
31169-78. Laumann, Edward O. and Franz Urban
Pappi. 1976. Networks of Collective Action A
Perspective on Community Influence Systems. New
York Academic Press. Marsh, David and M. Smith.
2000. Understanding Policy Networks Towards a
Dialectical Approach. Political Studies
48(4)4-21.