Saprotamies ar mājieniem

I. Direct strategies1. Lobbyinga0 The main aittvciy of lobbying is private meetings, in which lobbyists make known to Congressmen the lobbyist's client interests, and possibly offer inducements for cooperating. Lobbyists furnish needed information Congressmen could not hope to obtain on their own. It's to the lobbyist's advantage to provide accurate information so that the policy maker will rely on him in the future. a0Lobbying includes: testifying before congressional committees for or against proposed legislation; testifying before executive rule-making agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, for or against proposed rules; assisting legislators or bureaucrats in drafting legislation of prospective regulations (lobbyists often can furnish legal advice on the specific details of legislation); inviting legislators to social occasions such as cocktail parties or boating expeditions; providing political information to legislators (lobbyists often have better information than the party leadership about how other legislators are going to vote). In this case, the political information they furnish may be a key to legislative success). 2. The Ratings' Game The over-all behavior of legislators can be influenced through their rating systems. Each year the interest group selects those votes on legislation that it feels are most important to the organization's goals. Legislators are given a score based on the percentage of times that he or she voted with the interest group (from 0 to 100%) 3. Campaign assistance A strong side of interest groups is that they are able to provide workers for political campaigns, including precinct workers to get out the vote, volunteers to put up posters and pass out literature. In states where membership in certain interest groups is large, candidates look for the groups' endorsement in the campaign. Endorsements are important because an interest groups usually publicizes its choices in its membership publication and because the candidate can use the endorsement in his campaign literature. Making no endorsement can be perceived as disapproval of the candidate. II. Indirect StrategiesBy working through third parties — which may be constituents, the general public or other groups, the interest groups can try to influence government policy. Indirect techniques mask the interest group's own activities and make the effort appear to be spontaneous. Furthermore, legislators are usually more impressed by contacts from the constituents than from an interest group's lobbyist. 1.Generating public pressure Interest groups try to produce a groundswell' of public pressure to influence the government. Such efforts may include advertisements in national magazines and newspapers, mass mailings, television publicity and demonstrations. They may commission polls to find out what the public sentiments are and then publicize the results. The goal of this aittvciy is to convince policy makers that public opinion wholly supports the group's position. Some corporations and interest groups use such a method as climate control — it calls for public relations efforts that are aimed at improving the public image of the industry or group and not necessarily related to any specific political issue. Contributions by corporations and groups in support of public TV and commercials extolling the virtues of corporate research are examples of climate control. By building a reservoir of favorable public opinion, groups believe it less likely that their legislative goals will be met with opposition by the public. 2. Constituents as lobbyistsA very effective method is to use constituents to lobby for the group's goals. In the shotgun' approach, the interest group tries to mobilize large numbers of constituents to write or phone Congressmen or the President. This method is only effective on Capitol Hill when there is an extraordinary number of responses, because legislators know that the voters did not initiate the communication on their own. A more influential variation of this technique uses only important constituents (mostly local big business). 3. Building alliancesInterest group forms alliance with other group concerned about the same legislation. The advantages of an alliance are that it looks as if larger s are at stake, and it hides the specific interests of the individual groups involved. It's also a device for keeping like-minded groups from duplicating one another's lobbying efforts.