Interest Group Power and Government Regulation: The Cases of the Mining and Insurance Industries During the Period of New Democratic Party Government in British Columbia, 1972-1975

Abstract

The question of the survival of organizations is an important aspect of organizational theory. What are the reasons that some organizations survive and others don't? It will be argued here that the survival of organizations is a function of their interaction with the political, social and economic environment under different conditions of knowledge and power. This argument will be made with reference to the insurance and mining industries in British Columbia during the period of New Democratic Party government, 1972-1975. The mining industry successfully opposed government regulation against its interests while the right of private insurance companies to underwrite their own automobile insurance policies was eliminated by the NDP government. The mining industry emerged triumphant in its confrontation with the NDP government since the latter's mineral policy proved to be largely ineffective. When the NDP came to power in 1972, it was clearly committed to a significant change in the structure of the province's resourcebased economy. It had three broad objectives regarding natural resources: the first was to effect a significant redistribution of the province's income through increased taxation of resource corporations; the second was the promotion of growth based on the diversification of the economy away from its reliance on the export of primary products; finally, the NDP's economic strategy envisioned a broad regulatory structure designed to protect the public interest against the detrimental effects of unrestrained resource development. The implementation of this approach in the mining industry was especially challenging since that sector was one which exported the natural resources in a relatively unprocessed form, and it