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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
This article analyzes the internal communications between interest group leaders and their memberships. The case is Bill C-22, which increased patent protection for Pharmaceuticals in Canada. The object was to test for differences between “material” groups seeking benefits for their members and “purposive” groups pursuing policies which will benefit others. Significant differences were found in the kinds of appeals made by group leaders. This implies that it can be realistic and useful to distinguish between types of group according to their purposes and the motivations of their members. The findings also provide some insight into the language of policy debates and allow some speculation about the perennial question of why people adhere to large public-interest groups.
Cet article étudie la communication qui s'opère entre les leaders des groupes d'intérêt et leurs membres. Le cas à l'étude est celui du projet de loi c-22, lequel visait à prolonger les brevets des spécialistes pharmaceutiques au Canada. L'objectif de l'étude était de vérifier s'il y a des différences entre les groupes « matérielistes » (material), qui agissent au profit de leurs membres, et des groupes « volontaires »(purposive) qui visent à ce que la communauté en général bénéficie de leur action. De fait, des différences significatives ont été trouvées entre les communications émises par les leaders des deux types de groupes d'intérêt. Il est done utile de distinguer les groupes en fonction de leurs objectifs et des motifs de leurs membres. Ces données projettent également un éclairage sur les débats touchant les politiques publiques et suggèrent des hypothèses sur les raisons pour lesquelles les gens adhèrent aux groupes qui prétendent à l'avancement de l'intérêt général.
1 Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action (2nd ed.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar
2 For example, Goetze, David and Galderisi, Peter, “Explaining Collective Action with Rational Models,” Public Choice 62 (1989), 25–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frohlich, Norman, Oppenheimer, Joe A. and Young, Oran R., Political Leadership and Collective Goods (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Rotherberg, Lawrence S., “Putting the Puzzle Together: Why People Join Public Interest Groups,” Public Choice 60 (1989), 241–257CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, Jack L., “The Origin and Maintenance of Interest Groups in America,” American Political Science Review 77 (1983), 390–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pross, A. Paul, Group Politics and Public Policy (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Coleman, William D., Business and Politics: A Study of Collective Action (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. For a useful overview, see Moe, Terry M., The Organization of Interests (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).Google Scholar
3 Pross, Group Politics, 128. His typology does not distinguish between kinds of group according to their purpose and their members' motivations, but according to their degree of institutionalization. See also his chapter 8, where motivations and group resources are treated in a way consistent with this general emphasis on organizational capacity.
4 Walker, “Origin and Maintenance of Interest Groups,” 397.
5 Wilson, James Q., Political Organizations (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 3, and Clark, Peter B. and Wilson, James Q., “Incentive Systems: A Theory of Organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly 6 (1961), 129–166CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wilson denies these distinctions are generally useful as a taxonomy because pure types are probably rare and members' motives are mixed (51). Yet he uses the categories himself to label groups; moreover, around any single issue, groups necessarily fall into material versus non-material categories, according to their members' objective interests.
6 Background to the issue is found in Lang, Ronald W., The Politics of Drugs (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1974)Google Scholar; Canada, Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Pharmaceutical Industry, Report (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1984)Google Scholar; Iacobacci, Mario, “Pressure Groups and the Federal Government: The Case of Pharmaceutical Lobbies Regarding Compulsory Licensing,” Parliamentary Intern's paper, Library of Parliament, Ottawa, 05 1985Google Scholar; Sawatsky, John and Cashore, Harvey, “Inside Dope,” This Magazine 20 (08–09 1986), 4–12Google Scholar; Forsyth, Shirley M., “Some Propositions About Interest-Group Behaviour: Incentive Systems, Confrontation and Co-operation,” unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1988, chap. 2Google Scholar; Atkinson, Michael M. and Coleman, William D., The State, Business, and Industrial Change in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 122–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Campbell, Robert M. and Pal, Leslie A., The Real Worlds of Canadian Politics (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1989), 53–106.Google Scholar
7 Organizations also had to be active on the issue and amenable to providing access to internal documents. The organizations were selected prior to commencing the content analysis. (The size categorization follows Olson, The Logic.)
Obviously, members of CDMA, PMAC and the CHA all had a substantial material interest in the compulsory-licensing issue, one which would outweigh the costs of normal participation in the policy process; in the cases of CDMA and PMAC the stakes justified large expenditures and their taking up “point positions” in the coalitions of groups arrayed on either side. The NAPO membership had no such interest. Nor did the NPSCF. While a few members of the CCC may have had a large interest in higher or (more rarely) in lower drug prices, this would be expressed through specialized associations (Coleman, Business and Politics, esp. 81–99). Although its members might have a substantial material stake in some particular policy, such as corporate tax rates, the CCC, like other purposive groups, generally must appeal to members' views of where the public interest lies—in property rights and free competition, for example. For an analysis along these lines of the Confederation of British Industry, see Marsh, David, “On Joining Interest Groups: An Empirical Consideration of the Work of Mancur Olson Jr.,” British Journal of Political Science 6(1976), 257–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Quotations were coded only when they were less than three lines long, and group names were coded only when used by the organization's executives. The coding was done by one individual. This was an entirely mechanical operation of counting the appearance of words, so the duplication and blinding essential in interpretive content analysis were not required.
9 Canadian Chamber of Commerce, “Quick—Pass the Patent Act Amendments,” Impact 10, 1 (Winter 1987), 25.
10 PMAC, “Acting President's Holiday Message,” Bulletin, 152, 86, December 18, 1986, 1 (ellipses in original).
11 When NAPO referred to the beneficiaries as the “disadavantaged” or the “poor,” this was considered a material object term, as these are references to its membership; when other groups did so, it was taken as purposive. The same procedure was followed with references by the NPSCF to the “old” and the “elderly.”
12 Yule's Q is a simple, robust measure of the strength of a bivariate relationship: it ranges from 0 to ± 1.
13 For a review of these and other factors, see Dunleavy, Patrick, “Group Identities and Individual Influence: Reconstructing the Theory of Interest Groups,” British Journal of Political Science 18 (1988), 21–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Moe, Organized Interests, chaps. 1–4.
14 Chamberlin, John, “Provision of Collective Goods as a Function of Group Size,” American Political Science Review 68 (1974), 707–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 Oliver, Pamela E. and Marwell, Gerald, “The Paradox of Group Size in Collective Action: A Theory of the Critical Mass. II,” American Sociological Review 53 (1988), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Olson, The Logic, 65.
17 Offe, C., “Two Logics of Collective Action,” 170–220, in his Disorganized Capitalism, edited by Keane, John (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 183.Google Scholar
18 Crenson, Matthew A., “The Private Stake in Public Goods: Overcoming the Illogic of Collective Action,” Policy Sciences 20 (1987), 259–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Ibid., 272.
20 Hirschman, Albert O., Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. Here Hirschman parallels Press's argument (183–94) that in the modern world an individual seeking to improve the public condition is “coerced” institutionally into doing so through the medium of organized groups.
21 Ibid., 86. This is similar to Moe's view that an individual may “derive a sense of satisfaction from the very act of contributing, when he sees this as an act of support for the goals in which he believes” (Organization of Interests, 118 [emphasis in original]). It is also similar to Olson's treatment of “moral attitudes” (The Logic, n. 17, p. 61). To call these benefits selective incentives, however, as both do, is to preserve the model at the expense of stretching the sense of the term to unrecognizable dimensions.