Information Resources in Political Advocacy

It has long been acknowledged in the interest group literature and beyond that a group’s resources are important antecedents of their influence over public policy. Yet, much of the empirical literature to date has focused on tangible resources such as money and staff, while intangible resources such as information remain understudied. This is surprising in a neocorporatist context where groups are professionalizing and organizations such as think tanks are proliferating. Coupled with the decreasing importance of membership resources, these factors have likely made information an increasingly important currency for influence-seeking groups.

To advance the study of information resources in political advocacy, this dissertation takes the resource exchange model as its point of departure. It is argued that policy makers’ demand for organized groups’ information is not uniform and politicization and executive control are theorized as two constraints on this demand. Against this backdrop, it is further argued that coalitions between groups are likely to emerge when some groups face an attenuated demand for their information while others do not.

The empirical results show that politicization and executive control do affect policy makers’ demand for groups’ information. However, no evidence of coalitional behavior between excluded and included groups is found. These findings underline the importance of information as a resource in organized groups’ political advocacy efforts, and they stress the pertinence of theorizing about non-uniformity in the demand for information. The dissertation also demonstrates several innovative ways to study the impact of information advocacy empirically using text-as-data.