Book project with Jesse M. Crosson and Geoffrey M. Lorenz.
Given their usual depiction as parochial and pragmatic policy-seekers, our findings in “Polarized Pluralism” regarding the polarization of modern-day interest groups are puzzling. Particularly in an era wherein predicting party control of government is especially difficult, why would policy-motivated interests seemingly align themselves with just one political party? In this book, we seek to answer this question. To do so, we draw on large-scale data collection of interest group position-taking over time and analyze these data using cutting-edge computational methods. Through a series of empirical exercises, we test a new theory of interest group partisanship, wherein we argue that the rise of insecure partisan majorities in Congress has led members of Congress to look for signals of allegiance to party, above and beyond the usual signals of alignment of (issue-specific) preferences.