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The interlock structure of the policy-planning network and the right turn in U.S. state policy

Politics and Public Policy

ISBN: 978-1-84855-178-7, eISBN: 978-1-84855-179-4

Publication date: 1 October 2008

Abstract

This chapter examines interlocks among the governing boards of 12 leading policy-planning organizations and changes in the structure of this network between 1973 and 2000. Methods of multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering are used to construct topographical maps of the pattern of interlocks among policy-planning groups and their change over time. In contrast to the findings on corporate interlocking directorates, the study shows that board interlocks among policy-planning organizations are substantively meaningful and relatively stable at the dyadic level, although several changes in the topology of the network are also found. In all three decades, big-business “moderate-conservatives” like the Business Council and the Business Roundtable occupied the most central locations in the network. In the 1970s these organizations were linked with the “corporate liberals” to form the core cluster of the policy network. In the 1980s and 1990s the corporate liberals became relatively isolated from the core and their places were taken by several conservative groups. There was also a sharp rise in the cohesion of the network in the late 1970s and 1980s – a period that is widely seen as one of conservative political mobilization and heightened political unity among business elites. These changes in the structure of the policy network are consistent with and help to account for the rightward shift in U.S. state policy during this period.

Citation

Burris, V. (2008), "The interlock structure of the policy-planning network and the right turn in U.S. state policy", Prechel, H. (Ed.) Politics and Public Policy (Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 17), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0895-9935(08)17002-4

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited