Book Description

Are lobbying activities by so-called stealth coalitions different than that of more transparent organizations? Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, organizations must file forms with the Senate Office of Public Records when a hired lobbyist or member of an organization makes direct contact with a member of the U.S. Congress. The interest group politics subfield of political science often studies not only the increased size in the aggregate of mobilized interests, but also to what degree organizations in Washington D.C. represent a plurality of interests. By comparing the distribution of various types of organizations to the overall interest group environment, political scientists have found that occupational and business interests dominate over all other interests (Schlozman and Tierney 1986). Reviewing disclosure forms, the Center for Responsive Politics identified roughly 35,000 unique organizations. Based on a possible forty-two different organization subtypes, I coded roughly 5,000 of these organizations using a new coding scheme that is much more detailed and explanatory than schemes used in previous literature (Baumgartner and Leech 2001). Using the organization type variable, I statistically analyze the overall interest group environment to uncover patterns of group mobilization. The time-series nature of the data set allows me to create trend lines that explain the temporal dynamics of the lobbying universe, which previous studies lack. However, like many analyses, a particular limit to the study is in the availability of data. Through what are called stealth coalitions, lobbyists undermine disclosure requirements by inventing false organizations that mask the nature and political interests of their client. A descriptive analysis of stealth coalitions follows.