BEFORE THE ROLL CALL - INTEREST GROUP LOBBYING AND PUBLIC-POLICY OUTCOMES IN-HOUSE COMMITTEES

This research examines the relationship between interest group activit ies and the public policy decisions of congressional committees. Unlik e the conventional approach, which estimates the relationship between interest group resources and legislators' roll-call votes, the techniq ue used here treats as the dependent variable interest group success a t gelling what they want from committees on their individual policy pr eferences. This approach has the unusual advantage of allowing systema tic investigation of decisions made behind the scenes which never come to a formal vote. It also facilitates estimation of the relationship between policy outcomes and lobbying directed at committee staff as we ll as members, and allows evaluation of the effect of contextual varia bles, especially conflict. A model of interest group success on dozens of provisions of two complex bills was estimated. Although conflict a mong groups dampened interest group success, lobbying committee staff was associated with group success. However, even under the decision-ma king condition expected to be most favorable to interest groups, virtu ally complete public invisibility interest groups did not always get t heir way with congressional committees.