Text

theses

Many scholars believe that James Madison was one of the earliest proponents of political pluralism. In Federalist No. 10 Madison argued that an extended republic would minimize the danger of majority factions by allowing various interests to compete and compromise with each other. Nearly a century later, with the proliferation of minority factions-- interest groups-- Madison’s ideas enjoyed a renaissance among scholars. Some, like Arthur Bentley, took pressure group theory even further, arguing that there was no such thing as a national interest, that whatever policy emerges from the interplay of interests, by its nature, exemplifies the relative weight of these interests in society. Yet others saw the growing number of special interests as a threat to the common good. Madison insisted that minority factions not possibly threaten the national interest—they would simply be outvoted by way of the “republican principle.” More recently, a new group of scholars, neo-pluralists, have described an American system similar to Madison. This paper argues that while the neo-pluralists, and Madison, provide a model of government that accurately captures much of the American system, they fail to take note of one key way that interest groups can exploit the American political system. When the national interest is at stake, rational interest group leaders recognize the prospects that a given bill will become a law, and adjust their strategies accordingly. They work to soften or undermine the bill instead, leaving an incoherent policy in the aftermath. To test this theory, this paper uses a detailed case study of the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act. A detailed analysis of the activity of the National Rifle Association shows that the group, as one spokesperson noted, “saw the writing on the wall” and weakened the bill in key ways. Notably, the efforts of the NRA, both during the crafting of the bill, and in the years that followed, crippled law enforcement’s ability to regulate the secondary gun market. Hence the one thing that gun-control and gun-rights activists can agree on—keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals-- is not possible due to the influence of minority factions.

ETD_7012

M.A.

Includes bibliographical references

by Stuart Wexler

doi:10.7282/T3MG7RR4

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.