Interest group competition and the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act

This article examines the competition among three main sets of interest gro ups during the struggle to resolve the Native land claims issue: the Native s, the development interests (oil companies and the state of Alaska) and co nservation interests (environmentalists and the Department of lnterior). We examine the history of the Native land claims struggle as it was waged in the courts and in Congress, paying particular attention to the behavior of the various interest groups as they competed against one another. We also c onduct an analysis of the voting behavior in the United States House of Rep resentatives, where roll call voting data is available for votes on amendme nts in which the conservation and development interests had clear objective s. From both the historical and econometric voting analysis, we found that environmentalists and the oil industry significantly affected the final for m of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.