Two models of interest group behavior are outlined and discussed.

The cooptation model

finds organized interest groups establishing informal contacts with city officials and
achieving political favors through these informal channels. The petition model finds
interest groups confronting public officials in the public arena securing favors from city
government by threatening to use their resources to build oppositional coalitions. Our
goal was to see if structural conditions in a community make one or the other strategy
more successful. Our findings suggest that cooptation is more common in cities with less

complex economic and social structures, but petition is more common in cities with more
complex structures. Furthermore, in cities with weaker city governments cooptation is
more common, while petition is more common with strong city governments. Finally, we
found an interaction effect that cooptation occurs in complex systems but only if city
government is weak.

INTEREST GROUP
POLITICS FROM A
COMPARATIVE
PERSPECTIVE
JOSEPH GALASKIEWICZ
Department of Sociology
University of Minnesota

Pluralists view the urban political process mainly as a struggle among

different interest groups which seek to shape public policy in their favor.
This article extends pluralist thought by studying different strategies
that interest groups use and by showing that these vary systematically
across community contexts. We argue here that the success of a given

strategy is a function of the social and economic structure of the

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to give special thanks to Terry Clark, Paul
Schumaker, and Russell Getterfor letting me use their datafor this article. Terry
Clark also provided useful comments on various drafts. Ronald Burt, James
Lincoln, Robert Shapiro, Theodore Anderson, Lorna Ferguson, Ralph Cherry,
and two anonymous reviewers have commented on the text aswell. Funds for
data analysis were provided by the University of Minnesota Computer Center.

259
260

community and the size and form of city government. In the first part of
the paper we describe two ways that interest groups influence city
officials: through cooptation, or the use of informal networks, and
through petition. The second part outlines a methodology that allows
researchers to measure quantitatively which strategy is prevalent in a
given city. The third part develops the theoretical rationale for one or
the other strategy’s prevalence, given different social and economic
conditions in the city and different forms of city government. Finally, we
examine data on 51 / U.S. cities taken from the Permanent Community
Sample of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to see if the
hypotheses derived in part three are supported.

TWO MODELS OF INTEREST GROUP BEHAVIOR

From the literature on interest group politics, we can identify two

distinct strategies that interest groups utilize to influence municipal
public officials. Cooptation as a strategy of influence emphasizes the
importance of informal contacts between interest groups and city
officials and the use of these contacts to foster the political ends of the
interest groups. This pattern of influence is very attractive to interest
groups. First, it ensures that public officials hear information that is
favorable to their position. Second, informal contacts greatly reduce
uncertainty for the interest group. And third, with direct access to
officials, interest groups have less need to expend resources to establish
coalitions. After an initial investment in establishing the informal tie,
minimal resources are needed to maintain it. At the same time, interest
groups have no pressing need to strike bargains with other interest
groups, since they already have direct access to decision makers.
Petition assumes greater social distance between interest groups and
political decision makers. Here, interest groups interact with public
officials only in the public arena. To be successful, the interest group
must mobilize public opinion and secure the backing of other interest
groups. Banfield ( 1961: 270 f.), in his analysis of interest group politics in
Chicago, described how organizations would send emissaries to dif-
ferent sectors of the community and to political officials to solicit their
support. The political leader, for his part, would be slow to pass
judgment on the issue. He would wait for opposing interests to emerge,
formulate their positions, and present their arguments. He would wait
to see what was at stake politically. If the interest group was able to
 261

Figure 1: Cooptation and Intimidation as Two Models of Interest Group Influence

Behaviors

mobilize a constituency and couch its proposal so that it would be

acceptable to the public at large, the political leader supported it. If

opposition arose, or the proposal was not met with enthusiasm, the
political leader dismissed it. Obviously this pattern of influence is more
advantageous to the political official than to the interest groups.
The diagrams in Figure 1 are one way to show the differences between
the two strategies. Panel A describes the cooptation process. Interest
groups with more resources (such as greater size, more experience in
community political affairs, and a higher status membership) tend to
have more frequent personal contacts with city officials (paths 2, 3, and
4), and the more frequent the contacts the more successful groups are in
262

influencing city council decisions (path 1). In contrast, panel B describes

the petition process. Interest groups are successful only because they
have control over more political resources (paths 5, 6, and 7); access to
officials makes little or no difference. Obviously in either case the
&dquo;winners&dquo; are those who control more resources. In the first case the
effect of resources on success is indirect, mediated by how much access
interest groups have to officials, while in the second case the effect of
resources is direct.

INDICATORS AND SAMPLE

The basic data are taken from the Permanent Community Sample
(PCS) of NORC, a national sample of 51 American cities surveyed
periodically since 1967 (Clark, 1971). The PCS is constructed to be
representative of the places of residence of the American population. It
consists of data from U.S. Census materials as well as numerous
surveys. The principal data about interest group activity in this article
are taken from a mail survey of all mayors and council members in the
PCS cities. The survey was conducted in 1976 by Paul Schumaker and
Russell Getter of the University of Kansas. Slightly over 50% of those
sampled responded; at least three city officials responded in each city.
Respondents were given a list of 39 types of &dquo;groups which are
frequently active in municipal governmental affairs.&dquo; They were asked
to select &dquo;the five types of groups or organizations which, in [their
judgment], are most active in city government.&dquo;2 Then, for each of the
five groups mentioned, they were asked questions from which we have
created indicators for the present study.
Three resource measures, admittedly simple, are based on answers to
questions concerning the experience of the group in governmental
affairs (EXPER), the size of the interest group’s membership (SIZE),
and the social status of its membership (STATUS).3 Contacts between
the groups and elected officials were measured with responses to two
items. The first asked: &dquo;How often does the group contact you to express
its preferences or provide information regarding city politics?&dquo; and
&dquo;How often do you contact each of the groups in order to learn of its
policy positions or obtain information useful to you in making public
policy?&dquo; (ACCESS).4 Finally, success in influencing city government
decisions was measured by &dquo;How often has the city government
responded favorably to the requests or policy preferences of each of the
groups which you have listed?&dquo; There were five possible responses
 263

ranging from &dquo;almost never&dquo; to &dquo;almost all of the time&dquo; (SUCCESS).

On the average, there were 6.2 respondents per city (ranging from 3 to
13), and these respondents reported on 11.0 groups per city (ranging
from 5 to 18). Responses about the same group were averaged across
respondents within that city. Reliability coefficients for these variables
are available upon request.
We will argue that the degree to which interest group behavior in a
city approximates either cooptation or petition can be determined by
examining the direction and strength of (1) zero-order correlations
between organizational resource, access, and success variables (corre-
sponding to paths 1, 2, 3, and 4 in Figure 1), and (2) the partial
correlations between resource and success variables (corresponding to
paths 5, 6, and 7).5 For example, in Atlanta we found that more
resourceful interest groups had direct access to city officials and, in turn,
were more successful in community affairs. The zero-order Pearson
correlation between the experience of groups in political affairs
(EXPER) and having access to officials (ACCESS) was .377 and the
correlation between having access (ACCESS) and being successful
(SUCCESS) was .680. The partial correlations between STATUS and
SUCCESS and between SIZE and SUCCESS controlling for ACCESS
were -.176 and -.137 respectively. In contrast, we found in Minneapolis
that more successful groups simply had more resources. The partial
correlations between SIZE and SUCCESS and between STATUS and
SUCCESS were .237 and .355; the correlation between ACCESS and
SUCCESS was -.013; and, interestingly, the correlations between
EXPER and ACCESS, between SIZE and ACCESS, and between
STATUS and ACCESS were -.620, -.304, and -.562, respectively. In
other words, interest groups in Atlanta that had informal linkages to
city officials were more successful, while groups in Minneapolis, that
were larger and more upper middle-class were more successful regard-
less of their access to city officials. In Minneapolis, less experienced,
smaller, and working-class groups had access to city officials, but it did
them little good. By our criteria, cooptation was operative in Atlanta
and petition in Minneapolis.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STRUCTURE

AND INTEREST GROUP BEHAVIOR

We suspect that whether cooptation or petition is more prevalent first

depends upon structural conditions in the city. We hypothesize that
264

where the social and economic structure is less complex, cooptation will
be the basic pattern of influence. In more complex city systems, we
expect that petition will be more common.
In cities which are less economically diversified and have a more
homogeneous population, interest groups are less likely to be diverse
and numerous (Clark, 1971; Gilbert, 1968; Aiken, 1970), and one or two
interests usually come to dominate community affairs. In the ecologists’
terminology, the system is centralized; resources and/or employment
are concentrated in relatively few units (Lincoln, 1976: 3). Whether the
dominant actor has been an industry (Pellegrin and Coates, 1956;
Clelland and Form, 1964; Mott, 1970), a university (Galaskiewicz,
1979), or a clique of businessmen (Hunter, 1953; Miller, 1958),
researchers have found informal ties between associates of the dominant
actor and political figures. We contend that city officials have had to
establish close working relationships with dominants, because they
monopolize private sector resources upon which officials depend.6
By contrast, in more economically diversified and culturally hetero-
geneous cities, authorities face a much more diverse population of
interest groups. Because different social classes, ethnic groups, and
industries are represented, there are constantly shifting coalitions as
issues change. No one interest group is dominant. This, though, makes it
difficult for any one interest group or set of groups to gain personal
access to officials. Even if some groups do gain access, authorities can-
and are wise to-remain indifferent to their pleas. There is too much
uncertainty in a heterogeneous environment, and it is better to assume a
passive role, waiting to see what sorts of compromises come out of the
haggling among competing interests (see Banfield, 1961; Lowi, 1964).
Ideally, the official can choose among alternative solutions and take the
one which is most to his advantage politically.
In light of these arguments and our methodological discussion above,
we would anticipate the following correlations in our data. In cities with
a simpler class structure, more specialized industrial activity, and fewer
ethnic groups, there should be fewer active interest groups. Further-
more, we expect in these cities that interest groups with greater resources
should have more frequent contacts with city officials, and that groups
with more frequent interpersonal contacts should have greater success
in dealing with city government. In contrast, in cities with many
different social classes and ethnic groups and several different large
industries, there should be a larger number of active interest groups.
Furthermore, the correlation between being resourceful and having
 265

access to city officials should not be significant, nor should there be a

correlation between having access and being successful in city politics.
However, we expect that the partial correlations between each resource
variable and our measure of success will be positive.

GOVERNMENTAL STRUCTURE AND

INTEREST GROUP STRATEGIES

We also expect that the structure of city government affects the

strategies which interest groups use. We hypothesize that in cities with
larger (per capita) city budgets and in cities with mayor-council
government, petition will be more prevalent than cooptation. In cities
with smaller city budgets and were there is reform government,
cooptation will be more prevalent.77
There has been a considerable amount of research on municipal
expenditures. As Liebert (1974) points out, many studies have used this
variable as a dependent variable representing community outputs
(Lineberry and Fowler, 1967; Clark, 1971). We prefer to regard
municipal expenditures as an indicator of the scale and scope of city
government (Turk, 1973; Lincoln, 1976) and the power of city officials
(Liebert, 1974). City officials themselves become a powerful interest
group when they oversee a large public bureaucracy. Not only do they
employ large numbers of people, but there are many in the city who are
functionally dependent upon them for services. Under these circum-
stances, the public official can resist the overtures of different interest
groups or at least deal with them on even terms.
Even more attention has been given to the differences between reform
and nonreform governments.8 Reform cities are administered by a small
core of experts, while nonreform city governments are typically
controlled by a federation of politicians elected by neighborhood
constitutencies (Clark, 1971; Aiken, 1970; Turk, 1977; Lineberry and
Fowler, 1967). We would argue that because reform politicians do not
have a political organization to shield them, they are more vulnerable to
outside influence. Banfield and Wilson (1963) argue that reform
politicians secure their support by dealing out public goods and by
selling themselves personally as &dquo;experts&dquo; to different city-wide (as
opposed to neighborhood) constituencies. As Smith (1979: 150) points
out, reform governments were originally instituted to weaken the
control of the mayor and council and place government more in the
266

control of citizen &dquo;watchdog&dquo; committees. The effect of this is to &dquo;open

up&dquo; the political process and make the reform politician much more
susceptible to the influence efforts of different interest groups (see Lowi,
1964: 220; Dye and Garcia, 1978).
This is not to argue that strong city governments and political parties
ignore interest groups altogether. Turk (1973) argues that, in fact, they
purposely engage interest groups in the hope of acting as a linking
mechanism between power centers in the community. This contact,
however, does not lead to the cooptation of the political officials. On the
contrary, as a &dquo;community coordinator,&dquo; city government and the
political party act as a forum in which competing interests work out
compromises among themselves while the public official seeks to couch
the compromises in terms of societal values. The result of this process is
that the interest groups, rather than the public officials, are coopted.
Interest groups may have access, but decisions do not necessarily go in
their favor. The outputs are public goods that satisfy the demands which
the city, as a social system, faces (see also Turk, 1977).
In light of this discussion we might expect to find the following zero-
order and partial correlations in our data. In cities with small city
bureaucracies or reform governments there should be a positive
correlation between having resources and having access to city officials,
and a positive correlation between having access and being successful in
the city council. On the other hand, in cities with large city bureaucracies
and nonreform governments there should be no empirical relationships
between a group’s having resources and having access to city officials,
nor should there be an empirical relationship between having more
contact with city officials and being more successful with the city
council. However, group resources should have a direct effect on group
success.

ANALYSIS

There areseveral hypotheses to be tested. Our strategy will be, first, to

test if the zero-order and partial correlations among the interest group-
level variables are affected by the level of economic diversification and
cultural heterogeneity in our sample of 51 cities. Next we will examine
the zero-order and partial correlations among the group level variables
in cities with different governmental expenditures and forms of
government. Finally, we will test for interaction effects among our
structural, government, and group-level variables.
 267

COMMUNITY STRUCTURE AND INTEREST GROUP BEHAVIOR

We will use two measures of economic diversification. The first

measures the degree of employment concentration across five industries
(EMPLOYCN).9 The second measures the degree of population
concentration across seven income groups (INCMCN).1~ The greater
the value of these variables, the greater the concentration and the
simpler the economic structure of the community. Our measure of
cultural homogeneity is simply the percentage of the population (1970)
that is native-born (NATBORN). All three variables were dichotomized
at their median.
To beginwith, we might see if there are more active interest groups in
more structurally complex communities. The only significant (p .071)
=

difference is between communities with a more/ less diversified indus-

trial base. In communities which are more diversified, informants
mentioned 11.7 groups, on the average, as active in civic affairs; in less
diversified communities, respondents reported, on the average, only
10.1 groups. Income distribution and percentage foreign-born were
unrelated to the number of groups active in local affairs.
Panel A in Table 1 presents a simple one-way analysis of variance
with the entry in the cells being the average Pearson correlation between
two interest-group-level variables. Let us examine the correlation
between ACCESS and SUCCESS first. If we look only at the direction
of the relationship, we see that, as hypothesized, in cities with high
income concentration, high employment concentration, or a more
homogeneous population, interest groups which have greater access to
officials tend to be more successful in city council. In cities with a more
complex class structure or employment base or with a more hetero-
genous population, interest group access to officials has a much weaker
relationship to success. However, only the correlation between EM-
PLOYCN and ACCESS-SUCCESS is statistically significant (p = .02).
Turning to the correlations between SIZE and ACCESS, EXPER
and ACCESS, and STATUS and ACCESS, we see that none of the
correlations is significant at even the liberal .10-level. We had hypothe-
sized that larger, more experienced, and higher status groups would
have better access to city officials in less complex systems. In contrast,
we found that in both simple and complex systems, larger groups tend to
have more access to officials than smaller groups; less experienced
groups tend to have better access than older groups; and lower
socioeconomic status groups have better access than higher status
groups.
268
269
270

Looking at the partial correlations between SIZE and SUCCESS,

EXPER and SUCCESS, and STATUS and SUCCESS, we again find
little support for our hypotheses. In fact, only the correlation between
the experience of a group and its success seems to be affected by
community structure. As hypothesized, more experienced groups tend
to be more successful than less experienced groups in cities with a more
diversified income (p = .02) and economic (p = .07) structure. Interest-
ingly, however, across communities, larger groups, more experienced
groups, and higher status groups tend to get their way regardless of their
informal access to city officials.

GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE AND INTEREST GROUP BEHAVIOR

We argued that city officials who have a strong institutional base are
less likely to be coopted by special interests. To see if this is true, we
operationalized measures of city government strength. Our first mea-
sure is a simple index of reform government (REFORMGV). The index
used in this article has been used in a number of studies (Clark, 1971;
Turk, 1977) and is based on the number of &dquo;reform&dquo; institutions found
in a city.ll This variable was dichotomized at its median. Another
measure of city government strength is simply the city’s per capita

general expenditures for 1976 (EXPEN).12 This variable was also

dichotomized at its median.
Looking at Table 1, Panel B, we confirm our hypothesis that in
reform cities there is a postive correlation between having access to
officials and being successful, while in nonreform cities there is virtually
no correlation between access and success (p = .01). Furthermore, there

is a positive correlation between access and success in cities where

government spending is less, and no correlation between access and
success where city government spending is greater (p = .02).

Looking at the correlations between our resource and access

variables for different types of city government, there are no significant
differences. In both reform and nonreform cities and where city budgets
are large and small, we again find that groups which are larger, less

experienced, and representative of lower socioeconomic status groups

have more access to city officials.
Finally, might assess if organizational resources are differentially
we

correlated with success given different types of city governments.

Looking again at Table 1, we find little support for this.

 271

INTERACTION BETWEEN COMMUNITY STRUCTURE,

GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE, AND PATTERNS OF INFLUENCE

We now would like to test for an interaction effect between our

measures of structural complexity, strength of city government, and
influence patterns.13 We are particularly interested in the patterns of
influence in structurally complex social systems. We argued above that
city officials in complex social systems would find it disadvantageous to
allow personal networks with different interest groups to influence their
decision-making. However, we suspect that only city officials who have
strong city bureaucracies or political parties behind them can remain
indifferent to the overtures of various interest groups.
As a first step, we did a simple five-way analysis of variance (without
interaction effects) which included our measures of employment con-
centration, income concentration, percent native born, the index of
reform government, and municipal government expenditures as the
independent variables and the correlation between ACCESS and
SUCCESS as the dependent variable. The results in Table 2 Panel A
show that the correlation between ACCESS and SUCCESS is indepen-
dently related to the level of municipal expenditures (p = .040), type of
government (p = .103) and income concentration (p = .031 ). These results
suggest that city government structure may be more important than
community structure in explaining whether groups with more access are
more successful in city affairs.
Table 2 panel B presents all main effects and statistically significant
(p < .10) two- and three-way interaction effects. Now we see that only
the index of reform government has a statistically significant effect on
ACCESS-SUCCESS. The significant two-way interactions are between
percent native born (NATBORN) and the index of reform government
(REFORMGV) and between income concentration (INCMCN) and
employment concentration (EMPLOYCN). The only three-variable
interaction is between income concentration, employment concentra-
tion, and the index of reform government.
The interaction effects between our community structure and city
government variables can be better understood by looking at Table 3.
Since we are especially interested in assessing the impact of city
government structure on influence patterns in complex systems, we
present the average correlations between ACCESS and SUCCESS for
cities that have a complex social class structure, a diversified employ-
272
 273

TABLE 3
Test for Selected Interaction Effects with City-Level
Characteristics as Independent Variables and the Correlation
Between ACCESS and SUCCESS as the Dependent Variable

ment base, and a high proportion of foreign-born. It turns out that

where there is a reform government the correlation between ACCESS
and SUCCESS is positive, while in the case of a nonreform government
the correlation is near zero. Furthermore, where city governments are
smaller, there is a positive correlation between ACCESS and SUC-
CESS, but, where city governments are larger, the correlation is weak or
positive. This supports the proposition that city officials need institu-
tional support (for example, a large bureaucracy or a political party) to
enable them to resist cooptation by interest groups in the community.
274

SUMMARY

The purpose of this article is fourfold: to identify different strategies

that interest groups use to influence public officials; to develop a
methodology whereby researchers could identify strategies that interest
groups use in a particular city; to develop some theoretical statements
which would explain why one or the other strategy might be more
appropriate for a given city; and to subject a set of hypotheses derived
from these statements to empirical analysis.
We hypothesized that cooptation would be more common in cities
with less complex economic and social structures. In support of this
hypothesis we found that in cities with a lower percentage of foreign-
born, a simpler class structure, and simpler industrial base, the
correlation between a group’s having personal access to officials and
being successful with city councils was greater than in cities with more
foreign-born, many social classes, and a more diversified industrial
base. We did not, however, find that more resourceful groups had
greater access to officials in less complex systems as compared to more
complex systems. On the contrary, in both types of communities larger,
less experienced, and lower socioeconomic status groups had greater
access.
We also hypothesized that the correlation between resources and
success would be greater in more structurally complex communities. We
did find that the experience of a group affects its chances of success more
in complex systems than in simpler systems, but no other support for
this hypothesis was found.
Further, we argued that the relative strength of city government
would affect the way interest groups influence city council. In support of
this hypothesis we found that the correlation between group access and
success was stronger in cities with smaller administrative budgets

and/ or reform governments.

This led us to examine the interaction effects between our measures of
community structure, government structure, and influence patterns. We
found that in highly complex systems with strong city administrations
the correlation between having access to city officials and being
successful in city council affairs was close to zero; while in highly
complex systems with weak city administrations the correlation be-
tween having access to officials and being successful was positive.
Not all of our results supported our hypotheses. For example, we
found that larger, less experienced, and lower socioeconomic status
 275

groups had better access to city officials, regardless of the community or

governmental structure. We had expected that our group resource
variables would be correlated with group access only where access
would be correlated with success (that is, in less structurally differen-
tiated communities or where city governments were weaker). Further-
more, we expected that group size, experience, and status of member-
ship would have been correlated with success (controlling for access)
where there would be no correlation between personal access and
success (that is, in more structurally differentiated communities or
where city governments were stronger). We found instead that larger,
more experienced, and higher status groups tended to be more

successful, regardless of community structure or strength of city

government.

DISCUSSION

Given the limitations of the data, we are encouraged by our findings.

The process by which interest groups influence city officials varies
systematically across cities and is affected by community and city
government structure. These findings are interesting in and of them-
selves ; however, they do have further implications.
For one thing, researchers who study influence networks in case
communities should be careful not to generalize from their findings.
Studies by Perrucci and Pilisuk ( 1970), Laumann and Pappi ( 1976), and
Galaskiewicz (1979) describe how networks among organizations and
elites affect the outcome of different community issues. Yet all of the
communities these researchers have studied have been small, white, and
mostly middle class. In addition, they all have had weak political
administrations. That informal networks were important in forming
decision-making coalitions in these communities is consistent with our
findings. However, our findings also suggest that where city govern-
ments are large and powerful and cities are structurally complex,
interpersonal influence networks may be much less effective. We suggest
that, under these conditions, interest groups will rely on petition rather
than cooptation to get their way in community affairs.
We might also add another chapter to the literature on reform
government. From Banfield and Wilson (1963) we learn that the reform
movement was supported by businessmen who often found themselves
at a disadvantage in a machine city. The machine provided a buffer
276

between the politician and different interest groups in the city; it made
him immune to outside influence. This is precisely what reform
government was supposed to change, and our data suggest that it did
just that. However, in reform cities it does not appear that businessmen
have reaped the benefits, as Gordon (1968) and Karnig (1975) argue.
High status groups do not have better access to officials than low status
groups. Reform as well as nonreform politicians seem more interested in
maintaining contact with groups which can mobilize mass constitu-
encies (see also Northrup and Dutton, 1978: 708). Interestingly enough,
the effect of reform government seems to have been to help translate the
access which lower status groups have always had with government
officials into meaningful political clout.

NOTES

1. The 39 types of organizations were: public employee associations (in general),

teachers’ associations, policemen’s associations, firemen’s associations, sanitation work-
ers’ associations, social workers’ associations, public employee unions (in general),
teachers’ unions, policemen’s unions, firemen’s unions, sanitation workers’ unions,
political organizations (in general), local republican party, local democratic party, church
organizations (in general), businessmen’s organizations (in general), retail merchants’
associations, chamber of commerce, downtown businessmen’s associations, bankers,
industrialists, professional associations (in general), bar associations, medical associa-
tions, clients of city services (in general), welfare recipients, users of low-income housing,
users of public health services, parents of school children, civic and charity groups (in

general), League of Women Voters, community service organizations, neighborhood

groups (in general), civil rights organizations (in general), environmentalists (in general),
unions in the private sector (in general), taxpayers’ associations (in general), ethnic or
racial organizations (in general), and community action organizations (in general).
2. One could argue that the sample of organizations for each city is already biased by
our obtaining data only on those groups which are active in municipal governmental

affairs. This is a potential problem. Ideally, we would have data on all 39 organizational
types in each city.
3. The wording of the question for the status of group members was: "What would
you say is the social class to which most members of each of the five groups you have listed
belong? 1. Lower class. 2. Lower-middle class. 3. Middle class. 4. Upper-middle class. 5.
Upper class." For experience in political affairs: "Approximately how long has each group
been active in the governmental affairs of your community?" Five responses ranged from
"less than one year" to "more than ten years." Finally, for group size: "Approximately how
many citizens in your city would you estimate are active members in the organizations of
each group you have listed?" Five response categories ranged from "25 or less" to "more
than 1000."
 277

4. To obtain a single measure of "ACCESS" between an interest group and city

officials, we averaged the responses for these two questions. In effect, this strategy
symmetrized the relationships and, in some cases, lost some very interesting assymetric
relationships between private interest groups and public actors. However, the overall
Pearson correlation between "how often do the groups contact you to express their
preferences" and "how often do you contact each of the groups" was .499 (p < .001;
n= 1045).
5. Across all cities, the means and standard deviations for the Pearson correlations
corresponding to paths 1, 2, 3, and 4 are:.177 (SD .424), -.210 (SD .347), .200 (SD
= = =

.410), and -.130 (SD .384), respectively. The means and standard deviations for the
=

partial correlations corresponding to paths 5, 6, and 7 are: .147 (SD =.397), .191 (SD =

.414), and.192 (SD .336).

=

6. A number of studies, however, have shown that dominant interests in a

community often do not bother with local politics at all. For example, Schulze (1958)
found that the executives of the largest firms in Cibola had virtually no interest in local
politics. This was due to the fact that these firms were absentee-owned, and most of the
executives were "cosmopolitans." Furthermore, French (1970) argues that if dominant
actors are indifferent to local politics, the political arena actually becomes more open,
pluralistic, and competitive.
7. It is important to note that there is not always a perfect inverse relation between
city expenditures and reform government, as suggested by Lineberry and Fowler (1967).
For example, Clark (1971) found that his measure of reform government had a strong
positive effect on city expenditures, Turk (1977) found that a city’s scale of municipal
expenditures had only a slightly negative relation to reform government, and Liebert
(1974) found that governmental type plays no consistent intervening role between
population characteristics and expenditure rates.
8. Our conception of a "reform government" is similar to that found in the literature
(see Clark, 1971; Northrup and Dutton, 1978; Dye and Garcia, 1978; Lineberry and
Fowler, 1967). It includes a professional city manager, nonpartisan elections, and at-large
electoral constituencies.
9. The measure of employment concentration was constructed in the following
manner. First, we identified five industries in the City and County Data Book (U.S. Bureau
of Census, 1972); sales, education, manufacturing, business services, and construction,
and standardized the proportions of the city’s working population employed in each. The
population mean and standard deviation for these industries was based on scores for the
51 cities and the 12 largest cities in the United States. Next, for each city we took the
absolute values for the z scores and added them up. Since a high score for a city indicates a
high level of employment concentration, the higher the score, the less economically
diversified the city.
10. A measure of income concentration was constructed the same way that we
constructed our measure of employment concentration. The only modifications were that
seven income groups were used (under $3000 to over $25,000) and here we studied the
distribution of families. Again, the higher the value, the greater the concentration of
peoples in a particular category and the less diversified the city.
11. The measure for reform government was taken directly from Clark (1971: 300). To
refresh the reader’s memory: "The Index of Governmental Reformism was constructed
from three governmental characteristics traditionally associated in the United States with
278

’reform’ government: the professional city manager, nonpartisan elections, at-large

electoral constituencies. Communities with varying combinations of these characteristics
were scored as follows: 3 = manager government, nonpartisan elections, at-large electoral

constituencies; 2 = any two of these characteristics; 1=any one of these characteristics; and
0 = none of these characteristics." For our analyses, data were used from the International
City Management Association’s Municipal Year Book (1974).
12. As an alternative to general expenditures per capita, we used an indicator of
governmental diversification devised by Terry Clark, Lorna Ferguson, and Robert
Shapiro. In many ways it is similar to measures used by Leibert (1976), Turk (1977), and
Lincoln (1976). After identifying 5 noncommon functions (education, welfare, health,
hospital, and housing), they broke these down into 52 subfunctions. For each of these 52
subfunctions they then wanted to derive an average expenditure for each, based on all U.S.
cities with over 50,000 people. Before computing the mean for a category, however, they
reduced the N (for that category) by discarding the cities which did not provide funds for
that subfunction as well as the cities which were in the bottom 10% of those remaining.
They next wanted to arrive at a summary score for each of the 51 cities which would indi-
cate the extent to which cities perform these 52 subfunctions. They assigned a value of zero
to a particular subfunction for a city if the city either expended no money or was in the
original bottom 10% of the population in expenditures for that subfunction. If a city did
spend a significant amount of money on a subfunction it received the population mean
value for that subfunction. A summary score was then derived by summing across all 52
subfunctions.
Interestingly enough, this measure was correlated .822 with general expenditures per
capita. Because this correlation was quite high, we felt more confident in using general
expenditures as our indicator of governmental scale.
13. We did not present the correlations among the independent variables because of
space constraints. A quick check showed that no correlation between our independent
variables was greater than .317 nor less than -.314.

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Joseph Galaskiewicz is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of

Minnesota-Twin Cities. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1976.
Professor Galaskiewicz has recently published a research monograph on com-
munity interorganizational networks, Exchange Networks and Community Poli-
tics (Sage), and has authored several articles on that topic as well. He is currently
studying corporate philanthropy among Minneapolis-St. Paul business firms and
its effect on local nonprofit organizations.