Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Explaining Variation in State Lobbying of the Federal Government

州政府作为强大的利益组织具有巨大的潜力。为什么一些州投入资源在首都建立有组织的代表权，而其他州却没有？华盛顿代表权有效吗？这个博士论文研究项目将私人利益的交换理论改写为公共利益的交换理论。该项目解释了为什么一些州动员了华盛顿的游说办公室，而另一些州则没有。它通过考虑可能影响动员的环境因素来扩展先前的工作。这项研究经验性地检验了利益集团的交换理论，并涵盖了整个利益组织群体。这项研究还检验了政治和经济影响在利益组织建立中的相对重要性。最后，该项目有助于将各州理解为成熟的政治参与者。该项目开发了一个事件历史模型，解释了哪些因素影响了华盛顿游说办事处的创建，并使用回归分析来确定华盛顿办事处对单个州的联邦资金的影响。它使用深入的采访来彻底探索某些因素为什么重要以及如何重要。

State governments have great potential as powerful interest organizations. Why have some states invested the resources to establish organized representation in the nation's capital when others have not? Is Washington representation effective?This Doctoral Dissertation Research project adapts exchange theory of private interests to an exchange theory of public interests. The project offers an explanation of why some states mobilize Washington lobbying offices and others do not. It expands prior work by considering environmental factors that might affect mobilization.The study empirically tests an exchange theory of interest groups and covers an entire population of interest organizations. The research also tests the relative importance of political and economic influences in the establishment of interest organizations. Finally, the project aids the understanding of states as sophisticated political actors.The project develops an event history model explaining what factors influence the creation of Washington lobbying offices, and uses regression analysis to determine the impact of Washington offices on federal funding to individual states. It uses in-depth interviews to explore thoroughly why and how certain factors matter.