Lobbying and Issue-Definition

这项研究是对早期国家科学基金会奖开始的研究的延伸和延续。在该项目中，调查人员制定了一种方法，对公共政策问题的随机样本进行采访，并评估游说者和其他政策倡导者试图影响政策进程时的战略和资源。除了物质资源的标准变量外，研究人员还关注了论据和证据的使用。在目前的项目中，调查人员完成了100个随机选择的联邦政府政策辩论案例的记录。这些分析允许系统地比较在政府问题的广泛样本上的宣传工作。研究人员比较了这些问题的维度结构、相关人员的游说和倡导努力、政府官员本身与政府外的倡导者的程度、金钱和物质资源对联盟形成和政策结果的影响、高度可见和不太可见的政策决策之间的差异、倡导者通过使用论点、有针对性的游说努力、还有其他方法。此外，他们还与研究项目相结合，创建了一个大型网站，为其他研究人员和学生提供服务。对于每一个案件，他们不仅从公开和保密来源收集了一系列信息，而且他们收集的所有公共信息，包括立法版本、公开证词、相关人员的新闻稿、新闻报道和游说支出报告，都在每期的综合网站上公布。这使其他研究人员能够访问一组组织良好的原材料，以进行各种后续分析，并为美国政府、国会和公共政策的教学课程提供主要的原始材料。本研究的理论重点是基于修辞学、异端美学的思想，以及复杂多维问题的决策相关问题。掌握异端美学艺术的政策倡导者只需将注意力集中在问题的新维度上，或以其他方式改变政策选择的背景，就能影响政策结果。然而，这些努力受到许多制约，包括持不同意见的政策倡导者的战略努力、制度因素和公共倡导的其他稳定来源。研究人员对政策问题和稳定性的战略重新定义进行了相当详细的探讨，确定了具体的假设，并展示了如何对这些假设进行系统测试。这个项目将允许许多其他学者使用数据集并进行后续调查，以大大提高我们对该主题的理解。

This research involves an extension and continuation of research begun with an earlier National Science Foundation award. In that project the investigators laid out a methodology for conducting interviews on a random sample of public policy issues and assessing the strategies and resources of lobbyists and other policy advocates as they attempt to influence the policy process. The researchers focused on the use of arguments and evidence in addition to the more standard variables of material resources. In the current project, the investigators complete documentation of 100 randomly selected cases of federal government policy debates. The analyses allow for the systematic comparison of advocacy efforts on a broad sample of issues in government. The researchers compare the dimensional structures of those issues, the lobbying and advocacy efforts of those involved, the degree to which government officials themselves are advocates along with those outside government, the impact of money and material resources on coalition formation and policy outcomes, the differences between highly visible and less-visible policy decisions, and the ability of advocates to affect policy outcomes through the use of arguments, targeted lobbying efforts, and other means. Further, they integrate with the research project the creation of a massive web site to serve other researchers and students. For each of the cases, not only do they collect a range of information from public and confidential sources but all of the public information they collect, including versions of legislation, public testimony, press releases by those involved, press coverage, and lobby spending reports, is released in a comprehensive web site for each issue. This allows other researchers access to a well-organized set of raw materials for all manner of subsequent analyses, as well as providing primary source material suitable for teaching courses on U.S. government, Congress, and public policy.The theoretic focus of this research is based on the ideas of rhetoric, heresthetics, and the related questions of decision-making for complex multidimensional issues. Policy advocates mastering the arts of heresthetics would be able to affect policy outcomes simply by focusing attention on new dimensions of issues or by otherwise altering the context in which policy choices are made. However, there are many constraints on these efforts, including the strategic efforts of policy advocates who disagree, institutional factors and other sources of stability in public advocacy. The researchers explore these questions of strategic redefinition of policy issues and stability in considerable detail, identifying specific hypotheses and showing how these can be systematically tested.This is a project that will allow numerous other scholars to use the dataset and do subsequent investigations to enhance substantially our understanding of the topic.