Dynamic state interest group systems: a new look with new data

Abstract

Existing data sets on state interest group systems tend to be either cross-sectional (observations for only 1 year) or panel-style (observations of 2 years about a decade apart). In this paper, I describe a new data set based on raw counts of interest groups and organizations lobbying in the states collected by the National Institute for Money in State Politics, data which are observed annually from 2006 to 2015. After several years of careful coding, I present initial analyses of this state interest group data broken out by economic sector (based on National Center for Economic Statistics codes), support for business policies, differences between membership organizations and other organizational types, like corporations and governments. Furthermore, I also explore how the broad contours of these interest group communities shift and change over time, allowing me to see whether any type of organized interest is able to dominate their state interest group system.