Access, Record, and Competition as Influences on Interest Group Contributions to Congressional Campaigns

Interviews with representatives of business and labor interest groups led to hypotheses concerning the relative emphasis placed on securing (or maintaining) access to decision makers, candidates' records, and levels of competition in decisions to make monetary contributions to congressional campaigns. These hypotheses were tested with campaign finance data, resulting in identification of differential strategies followed by business and labor respectively. New hypotheses were derived from efforts to generalize findings to groups similarly advantaged or disadvantaged by political and social processes.