[eBook] [PDF] For Farmed Out 1st Edition By Clare Brock

[eBook] [PDF] For Farmed Out 1st Edition By Clare Brock

In Farmed Out, Clare R. Brock uses U.S. agricultural policy as a vehicle to explain how the rapidly polarizing political environment has altered the role of interest groups in Washington. Drawing on over two decades of lobbying behavior data in the agricultural sector, Brock argues that polarization has given interest groups greater influence over policy content, particularly among their ideological and partisan allies. Brock’s findings suggest that lobbyists increasingly work on an extended time horizon, often with cross-cutting coalitions, in order to pursue policy outcomes that once might have been easy asks. As a result, lobbying influence appears to increasingly be skewed toward those interest groups who have the capacity to maintain a long-term presence on the Hill–in other words, affluent and relatively wealthy groups whose concerns might not reflect the preferences of most Americans. Farmed Out makes an important and original contribution to our understanding of how interest groups now operate within a context of heightened polarization, lengthened time horizons, and declining institutional capacity.