Collaborative Research on the Population Ecology of State Interest Communities

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The Population Ecology of State Interest Communities study explores both why interest communities are structured the way they are and how that structure affects the political behavior of interest organizations. The study disentangles how interest groups arise, how they are maintained and how they fail. Using the population ecology framework, which includes models of niches, foraging and evolutionary survival, this project generates a four year census of interest groups in a sample of states, surveys a subsample of those interest group leaders and builds a life table of interest groups in different policy domains. Multivariate statistical techniques are used to analyze the extensive data collection. This project sheds light on why some interest groups succeed and why others fail, offering an explanation very different from that which is common to the political science discipline.