Testing the Effects of Professional Grassroots Lobbying Campaigns on Civic and Political Engagement

该奖项根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助。美国公民的公民和政治参与是如何被付费游说公众的努力所改变的？迄今为止，还没有研究系统地考察过专业的公众游说是如何改变公众参与的。本项目将通过研究专业基层游说公司（pglf）的活动来帮助克服这一限制。pglf是收费的组织，利用通信技术资助公众参与企业、贸易协会、利益集团、政党和政府机构感兴趣的问题。这些组织有助于降低参与的感知成本，例如，为目标活动家提供现成的信息，可以很容易地发送给一个人。地方、州和/或联邦级别的代表。通过对N=233个pglf的系统调查（每个pglf都被问及8年来最近的10次活动，允许对2330个公司活动进行分析）、后续访谈以及将调查结果与州级公民和政治数据联系起来的分析，拟议研究的智力价值在于极大地扩展了我们对付费、专业动员公众的影响的理解。该研究提出了三个主要的研究问题：(1)pglf的运动是否通过补贴那些在政治体系中已经被过多代表的人的参与而加剧了参与不平等？(2)这些运动是否加剧了政治两极分化并减少了公民？社会资本?(3)这些运动在影响公众参与并最终影响立法决策方面的效果如何？这项研究有三个更广泛的影响。首先，这项研究将有助于为公共生活日益私有化的理论提供严谨的社会科学数据。其次，它将使用创新的面板模型，结合外部数据源，分析抽样的pglf的独特调查反应。最后，研究结果将通过了解专业动员如何增加或减轻参与性不平等以及公司的政治权力，为政策提供巨大的信息潜力。机构客户。

SES-0851153Edward T. WalkerUniversity of VermontThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5).How has the civic and political participation of American citizens been changed by the growth of paid efforts to lobby the public? No study to date has examined systematically how professional lobbying of the public is changing participation. This project will help to overcome this limitation by studying the activities of Professional Grassroots Lobbying Firms (PGLFs), which are organizations that, for a fee, use communications technologies to subsidize public participation on issues of interest to businesses, trade associations, interest groups, political parties, and government agencies. These organizations help to lower the perceived costs of participation by, for example, providing targeted activists with a ready-made message that could be easily sent to one?s local, state, and/or federal-level representatives. Through a systematic survey of N=233 PGLFs (each asked about ten recent campaigns over eight years, allowing for analyses of 2,330 firm-campaigns), follow-up interviews, and analyses that tie the survey results to state-level civic and political data, the intellectual merit of the proposed study is to greatly expand our understanding of the effects of paid, professional mobilization of the public. The study asks three major research questions: (1) Do the campaigns of PGLFs exacerbate participatory inequalities by subsidizing the participation of those that are already overrepresented in the political system? (2) Do these campaigns further political polarization and reduce citizens? social capital? (3) How effective are these campaigns in shaping public participation and, ultimately, legislative decision-making? There are three broader impacts of the study. First, this research will help to bring rigorous social scientific data to bear on the theory that public life is becoming increasingly privatized. Second, it will analyze the unique survey responses from sampled PGLFs, in conjunction with external data sources, using innovative panel models. Finally, the results of the research will hold great potential for informing policy through understanding how professional mobilization either augments or mitigates participatory inequalities as well as the political power of the firms? institutional clients.