Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 137–150
From protests to litigation to YouTube: A longitudinal case
study of strategic lobby tactic choice for the Buffalo
Field Campaign
Elizabeth A. Shanahan a,∗ , Mark K. McBeth b ,
Linda E. Tigert b , Paul L. Hathaway c
a
Department of Political Science, Montana State University, P.O. Box 172240 Bozeman, MT 59717-2240, USA
b
Department of Political Science, Idaho State University, Campus Box 8073, Pocatello, ID, 83209, USA
c
Department of Political Science and Public Administration, 700 Pelham Rd. North, Jacksonville, AL 36265, USA
Received 18 February 2009; received in revised form 27 July 2009; accepted 8 October 2009
Abstract
Interest group scholars have long explored under what circumstances interest groups choose lobby
tactics to influence policy. While most studies focus on well-funded national interest groups, this study
uses a newly formed interest group, Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC), in order to qualitatively analyze
changes in lobby tactic choice from its inception and empirically assess these changes with traditional
measures of lobby choice. Additionally, this study employs an innovative methodology by proposing
a new typology of lobby strategy and using the interest group’s political narratives as the data source.
Thus, the research questions addressed in this study are: (1) does the BFC evolve over a ten year period in
terms of lobby typologies and if so, how?; (2) qualitatively, what are these lobby activities?; and (3) how
does choice of lobby typology relate to age of the group, issue saliency, financial resources, and external
political context? The results indicate that BFC has gone through three distinct lobbying stages since
its inception from indirect-unconventional to direct-conventional to indirect-conventional. Significantly
correlated with these stages are age, financial resources, and governing coalition; interestingly, there
are no statistically significant associations between lobby tactic choice and issue salience or external
political context measured in the number of bison deaths. The implications of the findings for the study
of other interest groups are explored.
Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association.
∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 406 994 5167; fax: +1 406 994 6692.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (E.A. Shanahan), [email protected] (M.K. McBeth),
[email protected] (L.E. Tigert), [email protected] (P.L. Hathaway).
0362-3319/$ – see front matter Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association.
doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2009.10.002
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Research questions surrounding the efficacy of interest groups in the policy process have
driven much of the interest group literature in the last few decades. In addressing these broad
questions, the theoretical orientation has evolved (e.g., Baumgartner & Leech, 1998; Lowery
& Brasher, 2004), from the pluralist view in the 1950s to a transactional standpoint in the 1960s
to neopluralist and postpluralist perspectives in the 1990s. While the theoretical frameworks
across this literature have adjusted over time, the methods and data sources utilized to build
descriptive and explanatory models have not. Quantitative analyses of interest groups tend to
focus on national interest groups involved with federal issues (Baumgartner & Leech, 1998;
Lowery & Brasher, 2004) and access data through elite interviews of interest group member
leaders (Heaney, 2004; Schlozman & Tierney, 1986; Walker, 1991), surveys (Victor, 2007) and
objective measures of membership size, Congressional testimony appearances, and resources
(Lowery, Gray, Wolak, Goodwin, & Kilburn, 2005).
Further, the intent of interest groups – to influence public policy (Yoho, 1998) – is often
explained in terms of lobbying tactics and political context (e.g., Ainsworth, 2002; Baumgartner
& Leech, 1998). Yet interest group studies largely neglect any analysis of a group’s maturation
process in conjunction with their use of lobby tactics, because the subjects of these studies
tend to be veteran interest groups and the designs are cross-sectional. By accessing interest
group public documents as a longitudinal source of a group’s lobbying evolution, we explore
whether it is possible to trace the evolution of an interest group’s lobby activity choices through a
traditional content analysis of the interest group’s press releases. We begin with a brief overview
of the interest group lobbying literature, introduce our case study of the Greater Yellowstone
Area’s Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC), and subsequently posit our research hypotheses, detail
the methodology, and then present our findings.
1. Interest group lobbying tactics
Contemporary interest group lobbying is understood primarily as policy advocacy activities
(Browne, 1998) and, to a lesser extent, organizational maintenance or survival (Baumgartner
& Leech, 1998; Lowery, 2007). The studies in the last three decades on interest group lobbying
have focused uniquely on the national level to understand the extent to which established interest
group lobbying efforts influence public opinion or policy output. There is no consensus over
why interest groups fail or succeed; only that sometimes they are ineffectual and sometimes
effective (Baumgartner & Leech, 1998). Baumgartner and Leech turn the focus from which
lobbying tactics make interest groups most influential to how interest groups behave and under
what circumstances. It is within this framework that we delve into various lobbying tactics,
expressed in two complementary but different dimensions: direct and indirect lobbying and
conventional and unconventional lobbying.
1.1. Direct and indirect lobbying
Direct and indirect lobbying is the traditional manner in which interest group lobbying tactics
are categorized. Direct lobbying activities are direct communications between interest group
representatives and government officials (elected officials, agency heads) to influence policy
E.A. Shanahan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 137–150
139
outcome; indirect lobbying are indirect communications through the media and constituents to
heighten the politics and the pressure around the issue. The actual activities of direct and indirect lobbying have been amassed over time through the diligent use of surveys of interest groups
(Berry, 1977; Kollman, 1998; Schlozman & Tierney, 1986; Victor, 2007; Walker, 1991). Taken
from these studies, direct lobbying efforts include the following lobbying activities: personal
contact with elected officials, testifying at congressional or agency hearings, litigation, presenting research to government, and contributing money to campaigns. Part of this direct lobbing
includes “venue shopping” where groups seek out more favorable institutional venues for their
causes (e.g., Pralle, 2006, p. 26). Indirect lobbying efforts include: protests, demonstrations,
letter-writing, talking to the press, and presenting research to the press. The strategic choice
between using direct and indirect lobbying tactics has been explained through contextual variables such as policy salience and issue popularity (Kollman, 1998), organizational culture and
structure (Berry, 1977), and political environs (Baumgartner & Leech, 1998). However, this
framework does not help to explain choice of lobby tactics as newly established groups mature
over time; hence we turn to another manner of describing lobbying tactics, that of conventional
and unconventional lobbying.
1.2. Conventional and unconventional lobbying
Conventional lobby tactics are referred to as “pragmatic attempts at reform of the political
system” and include all the direct lobby activities and mobilizing and networking activities
(Dalton, Recchia, & Rohrschneider, 2003, pp. 750–752). Unconventional activities are nonviolent demonstrations (Best & Nocella, 2006) and protests (Dalton et al., 2003; Munro, 2005, p.
78). Whether groups decide to use conventional or unconventional lobby activities is explained
in the social movement literature through resource mobilization theory. This theory basically
posits that a group’s behavior choices are dependent upon its resources (McCarthy & Zald,
1977). As Dalton et al. (2003, p. 756) contend, “resource-rich and professional organizations
tend to perform routine ‘low risk’ activities” whereas groups with “small budgets and staff may
be more likely to perform more confrontational activities.” Thus, the greater the resources, the
more likely that the choice of lobby activity leans toward the conventional; the thinner the
resources, the choice of lobby activity tends to be more unconventional. As Dalton et al.
(2003) note, age of the group may be correlated with the amount of resource base available to
a group. When interest groups are in their initial development stages, they lack resources and
access to policy decision makers and thus rely on unconventional lobby activities.
As shown in Fig. 1, overlapping the traditional framework of direct versus indirect with that
of conventional versus unconventional provides a unique typology of lobby tactics that may
be useful in examining lobby choice for new interest groups. This new typology includes four
dimensions: direct-conventional, direct-unconventional, indirect-conventional, and indirectunconventional. Direct-conventional lobbying is the traditional interest group activity of talking
to elected officials and other decision makers in hopes of persuading them to follow the group’s
policy prescriptions. Direct-unconventional lobbying involves an interest group attempting to
communicate directly with elected officials or agency heads using a protest or symbolic action.
For example, an interest group attempting to communicate their displeasure with a particular
policy by throwing an egg at an elected official would constitute direct-unconventional lob-
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Fig. 1. Interest group lobbying tactic typology.
bying. Indirect-unconventional lobbying involves interest groups communicating indirectly to
elected officials through the media or the public by way of protests and symbolic events aimed at
influencing public opinion. For example, demonstrations with dramatically dressed protesters,
even when on the steps of a capitol building, is indirect-unconventional if the intent is simply
news coverage or heightening public awareness. Indirect-conventional lobbying occurs when
a group uses either traditional or new media sources (YouTube, Internet, blogs) to disseminate
information in an effort to influence public opinion. For example, releasing disturbing footage
on YouTube of the treatment of the bison after capture is indirect-conventional. While descriptively interesting in itself, this typology also allows for a deeper analysis of the relationships
between choice of lobby strategy typologies and group maturation, issue salience, financial
resources, and change of governing coalitions in the group’s political environment.
2. Case study: the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) and the Buffalo Field Campaign
To understand the interest group the Buffalo Field Campaign, it is first necessary to grasp
the political context of the Greater Yellowstone Area. A 19 million acre region in the American
West (Wyoming, Montana, ID, USA), the GYA is a place where policy battles are fierce over
the management of public resources such as bison, roads on forest lands, and snowmobile
access. Yellowstone National Park (YNP) lies at the heart of the GYA. As the world’s first
national park, YNP captures the interests of those at local, regional, national, and international
levels. The GYA is an area where public and private land interests collide, where federal and
state jurisdictions overlap, and where the economy and population of the region have rapidly
changed and grown. Thus, politics in this region involves a “deep cultural conflict” centering
on “mythic visions of the American West” (Tierney & Frasure, 1998, pp. 305–306).
E.A. Shanahan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 137–150
141
The contending interests in the GYA reside in one of two competing advocacy coalitions:
(1) the Old West Advocacy Coalition consisting of extractive industries (ranching, mining,
and timber) and motorized recreation advocates and (2) the New West Coalition consisting of
environmental groups and non-motorized recreation users (e.g., Cawley & Freemuth, 1993).
These two coalitions help to create an intractable or “wicked problem” policy environment
(McBeth & Shanahan, 2004), where policy debates are intensely symbolic and emotional
(Tierney & Frasure, 1998; Wilson, 1997). The turbulent GYA political environment results in
a plethora of interest groups that construct policy narratives to influence public opinion.
The Buffalo Field Campaign is one such interest group in the GYA. Because it is a recently
formed citizen interest group whose lifespan is easily captured, the BFC is an excellent case
study to explore maturation in lobbying tactics as measured in a group’s public documents.
Formed in 1996, the BFC is a single-issue group concerned with current bison management
practices in Yellowstone National Park. While the complexities of the Yellowstone bison issue
have been well documented elsewhere (e.g., Franke, 2005; Morris, 2000), a brief description is provided here. The Yellowstone bison herd is the last free ranging bison herd in the
United States. After the near extinction of bison in the late 1800s, bison were restored in YNP,
representing one of the first successful wildlife restoration efforts in United States history. Brucellosis, a bacterial disease that currently infects the Yellowstone bison herd, is central to the
management conflict. The Animal, Plant, Health Inspection Service (APHIS) certifies a state
as ‘brucellosis free’ when cattle do not test positive for the bacterial disease brucellosis. The
loss of a brucellosis free status imposes additional costs on a state’s ranchers when they ship
cattle across state lines. Because of the fear of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle, the
state of Montana has implemented a variety of management techniques to keep the two species
temporally and spatially separated, including the hazing of bison back into YNP’s boundaries
and killing of bison at slaughter stations just outside the Park’s borders. The National Park
Service has participated with the State of Montana in the management (and killing) of bison
since the mid-1990s.
Under the guidance of co-founder Michael Mease, BFC occupies a unique niche in the
population of GYA interest groups. BFC works directly in the field, relies on volunteers, and
occasionally uses colorful protest tactics. As is common with many environmental interest
groups (Davis, 1996), the group formed with few financial resources but quickly gained a
relatively strong membership base. They are part of the “new” media; through video imagery
and the use of new communication technologies such as Internet sites, You Tube, and email
lists, the BFC shares their perception of bison management activities. They are also a story for
the national media; they have been featured in ABC’s Nightline and an Arts and Entertainment documentary. They regularly post press releases and other documents on their website
(http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org) making it possible to content analyze a running record
of their policy narratives for their self-reported use of varying lobbying tactics.
3. Research questions
The research questions for this study are: (1) does the BFC evolve over a ten year period in
terms of lobby typologies and if so, how?; (2) qualitatively, what are these lobby activities?;
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and (3) how does choice of lobby typology relate to traditional predictors of lobby choice
including age of the group, issue saliency, financial resources, and external political context?
4. Data and methods
From the Buffalo Field Campaign’s website, the census of news releases from January 1,
1999 through June 2008 were found (N = 168) and content analyzed by multiple coders for lobby
activities described in the news releases. While most of these news releases depict activities
that had already occurred, there were two that served as announcements of future events; one
was excluded from our study, as there was no confirmation of the event and one was retained,
given verification of the lobby activity. This parameter is important, because news releases that
announce lobby events may deviate from how they actually occur. The coding protocol asked
coders to identify the reported lobbying activities and then categorize these activities as either
direct or indirect and conventional or unconventional (for lobby activities coded, N = 126).
Each coder had codebook rules that defined these activities. Inter-coder reliability was 82%
agreement on coding conventional versus unconventional and 91% agreement on coding direct
versus indirect.
As discussed earlier, typologies of lobby activities were derived by overlaying the two frameworks of lobby activities categories: direct and indirect with conventional and unconventional
(see Fig. 1). In the 168 documents, all 126 reported lobby activities were coded along the
two dimensions separately and then examined to identify which typology of lobby tactics the
activity was situated: direct-conventional, direct-unconventional, indirect-conventional, and
indirect-unconventional.
Typically with multiple coders, there are differences of opinion as to how to categorize
activities. One such discussion revolved around whether to categorize BFC’s releasing of video
footage as a conventional or unconventional activity. While there was agreement that this activity was indirect, the research team determined that because releasing video footage is considered
part of the ‘new media,’ such lobby activities are conventional, akin to releasing research to the
media. Another possible troubling aspect in coding is whether a particular lobby activity might
be interpreted as either direct or indirect. For example, a BFC protest outside an elected official’s
office could be construed as direct (if BFC was trying to talk directly to the elected official as they
left the office) or indirect (if the protest was merely being conducted for media consumption or
Internet dissemination). Coders were instructed to code such activities as “both direct and indirect” and then in the reconciliation process, discuss the multiple interpretations. Fortunately,
the activities of the BFC were identified distinctively as direct or indirect both in independent
coding and in the reconciliation process. BFC direct lobbying activity involved filing lawsuits,
testifying before legislative committees, and writing letters; their indirect activity took place in
the field and involved media or BFC videotaping. Most of the disagreements on coding were
the result of a coder overlooking the listing of a lobbying activity and not the result of a differing
interpretation of an activity. However, other researchers replicating this study should take note
that multiple interpretations are possible and that codebook rules will have to be developed in an
iterative process.
E.A. Shanahan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 137–150
143
In addition to coding BFC policy narratives for type of lobby tactic, other data were collected by year that reflect traditional measures used in the interest group lobby literature (see
Baumgartner & Leech, 1998; Dalton et al., 2003; Kollman, 1998; McCarthy & Zald, 1977).
First, the BFC’s financial resources were assessed by examining the group’s tax returns, publically available given their 501(c)(3) status (GuideStar, 2008, http://www2.guidestar.org/).
However, rather than disclose their net assets, we report this data in a simple index with year
one as the base year (1.00). Second, we account for policy issue salience through a count of
national media coverage (using methods similar to Hayes, 2008) of the bison/brucellosis management issue. These data were garnered through a Lexis–Nexis search of articles appearing in
national papers that included the three search terms ‘Yellowstone,’ ‘bison,’ and ‘brucellosis.’
Finally, two measures of external political context were developed. First, political context is
measured by the annual bison deaths related to management actions by the NPS and the State
of Montana. The second measure of external political context was simply the partisanship of
Montana’s governor for each year studied.
5. Results and discussion
The Buffalo Field Campaign did indeed evolve in its use of lobby tactics between 1999
(soon after the group’s inception) and 2008. Table 1 presents the BFC’s lobby typology
by year. Dominant typologies are determined by the highest usage rate; the BFC demonstrated strong preferences, ranging from 60% to 70% of any one lobby typology used each
year. The lobby typology evolved in three stages. The group emerged with an emphasis on
indirect-unconventional lobbying in the years 1999, 2000, and 2002. In 2001, 2003, and 2004
they swung in the opposite direction, utilizing primarily direct-conventional lobbying tactics.
Finally, in the consecutive years of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 their lobby tactics evolved into
indirect-conventional tactics. There were no examples of direct-unconventional lobbying over
the ten year period studied. Before we explore the relationship between lobby tactic choice and
the more traditionally utilized variables such as age, financial resources, policy salience, and
external political context, we first quantitatively and qualitatively explore the three dominant
lobbying typology phases of BFC.
5.1. Indirect-unconventional lobby tactics: protests, demonstrations and blockades
As seen in Table 1, the BFC engaged indirect-unconventional lobby activities 67% of the
time in 1999, 63% of the time in 2000 and 62% of the time in 2002. In these three years, financial
resources were limited, issue salience had peaked in 1999, bison deaths were relatively low,
and a Republican (Racicot and, in turn, Martz) held the Montana’s governor’s seat. While
the group relied on some traditional lobbying acts, a preference for unconventional tactics is
evidenced. For instance a 1999 BFC press release publicized the blockade of a bison capture
facility (Nackoney & Bowersox, 1999). The BFC blockade consisted of building a tripod out
of lodge-pole and suspending group members from a perch some 100 feet in the air. The tripod
blocked an entrance to area where the U.S. Forest Service was building a bison capture facility.
The standoffs were dramatic and one such standoff was captured by the Arts and Entertainment
144
Direct-conventional
Indirect-conventional
Indirect-unconventional
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
11% (1)
12% (1)
60% (3)
15% (2)
60% (3)
63% (15)
33% (7)
31% (4)
20% (3)
0% (0)
22% (2)
25% (2)
40% (2)
23% (3)
0% (0)
21% (5)
62% (13)
61% (8)
73% (11)
62% (8)
67% (6)
63% (5)
0% (0)
62% (8)
40% (2)
17% (4)
5% (1)
8% (1)
7% (1)
38% (5)
Total
31% (39)
43% (54)
26% (33)
Financial
resources
Issue
salience
Bison
deaths
Montana
governor
1.00
0.86
0.45
0.43
0.26
0.41
9.39
9.43
8.16
NA
244
28
50
90
113
130
96
38
30
74
94
0
6
2002
246
281
101
1,016
67
1,616
Racicot-R
Racicot-R
Martz-R
Martz-R
Martz-R
Martz-R
Schweitzer-D
Schweitzer-D
Schweitzer-D
Schweitzer-D
Data sources: Financial resources from http://www2.guidestar.org/; issue salience from Lexis–Nexis Academic search of national newspapers using search
terms “Yellowstone,” and “bison,” and “brucellosis”; bison deaths: http://www.bfc.org. Financial data for 2008 is unavailable at this writing. Note. Inter-coder
reliability was 82% agreement on conventional v. unconventional and 91% agreement on direct v. indirect. Bold values indicate the lobby tactic used at the
highest frequency that year.
E.A. Shanahan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 137–150
Table 1
Lobby tactic typology, financial resources, issue salience, bison deaths, governors.
E.A. Shanahan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 137–150
145
Network in a documentary on the bison controversy (Arts & Entertainment, 1999). In the spring
of 2000, BFC activists were arrested when “[t]wo women deployed a 20 × 50 foot banner
reading ‘Racicot’s Buffalo Slaughter Kills Tourism’ from the ten story Big Sky Conference
Center Hotel” (Lovejoy, 2000); the protest banner depicted two massive bloody buffalo heads.
The BFC engaged in no indirect-unconventional lobbying activities during 2001, a year in
which their reported activities were low as were financial resources, bison deaths, and issue
salience. Yet, they returned to these indirect-unconventional activities in 2002. Here, protest
marches and blockades interrupted bison capture attempts. In March 2002, for example, the
group reported that “a man identifying himself as ‘coyote’ blocked” a Forest Service Road
and that “the man effectively closed the gate to the head of the road by locking his arms into
two 55 gallon barrels on either side of the gate” (Leusch & Brister, 2002). Other attempts
at interference with bison capture activities included three capture facility blockades wherein
activists locked themselves into the facility itself or into a vehicle that blocked access to the
facility. Thus, the early years (1999, 2000, 2002) reveal the BFC as a dramatic unconventionalindirect lobbying group, basing 19 of a reported 30 lobbying activities in these years (63%) in
sometimes colorful and dramatic public protest or interference events.
5.2. Direct-conventional lobby tactics: traditional venue shopping
The group then enters into another stage of lobby tactic use, that of direct-conventional
lobbying activities (2001, 2003, 2004). The BFC engaged in direct-conventional activities
60% of the time in 2001, 60% of the time in 2003, and 63% of the time in 2004. In these years,
financial resources were low, issue salience climbs in 2003 and 2004, bison deaths increase
in 2003 and 2004, and Republican Judy Martz remained as Montana governor. During these
years, the BFC reported greater use of the legislative and judiciary venues and employed more
direct lobbying techniques to influence the state executive branch. The 2001 press releases
chronicled the progress of a lawsuit that called for an end to the building of the bison capture
facility because of the impact of such building on federally protected bald eagles. The BFC
only reported five lobbying activities during 2001 with three of these being categorized as
direct-conventional. Likewise in 2003, while the group faced diminishing financial resources,
they reported only five lobbying activities, with three of these activities categorized as directconventional. Significantly, however, for the first time in group history, the BFC reported the
introduction of buffalo friendly legislation in the U.S. Congress with the introduction of the
Yellowstone Buffalo Preservation Act co-sponsored by a Republican and Democratic U.S.
House member (Sanchez, 2003). In 2004, BFC became much more active perhaps because of
the introduction of the Buffalo Preservation Act and reported 24 lobbying activities with 15 of
these categorized as direct-conventional. It was in 2004 that the group gave an account of their
federal suit over civil rights violations. The BFC contended that, in the wake of the September
11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, they were categorized by state and local law
enforcement officials as an “eco-terrorist organization” (Mease, 2004); they filed a lawsuit in
federal court asserting that their civil rights had been violated. According to the BFC, law
enforcement officials had threatened and intimidated members and had physically assaulted,
searched, and interrogated an Indiana doctor who was mistaken as a BFC member because his
car had been seen at BFC headquarters by local police (Mease, 2004). Such judicial activity
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was characteristic of the group’s lobby tactics in this period, with 21 of a reported 34 activities
in these years (62%) focusing on direct conventional activities, much of it venue shopping.
5.3. Indirect-conventional lobby tactics: YouTube, action alerts, and congressional
testimony
The final four years of study find the BFC making a third lobbying tactical shift by primarily using indirect-unconventional tactics. In 2005, the group received a significant boost in
financial resources with a large contribution to the group moving BFC from an index score of
0.41 in 2004 to 9.39 in 2005 (see Table 1). These years also saw issue salience decline despite
two dramatic years of bison killings (2006, 2008). In addition, a Democrat (Brian Schweitzer)
was elected as Governor of Montana and took office in 2005. The group’s financial resources
remained steady until a slight decrease in 2007. The group became more active and reported
21 lobbying activities in 2005, 13 in 2006, 15 in 2007, but only 13 in 2008 when 1,616 bison
died. In 2005, after the election of new governor Brian Schweitzer, the BFC held a press conference on the planned bison hunt decision, and the hunt was subsequently cancelled after
the governor saw the possibility of negative publicity (Seay, 2005). As the Montana Fish and
Wildlife Commission later approved a new hunt for Yellowstone bison, the BFC pledged to
document the hunt and share the images with national media as well as post them on their
website (Brister, 2005). Indeed, these images did appear on their website and YouTube during
the winter of 2006–2007. Increasingly, the BFC used the new media in a manner that was
classified as indirect and conventional. In 2006, the group in reflecting a more conventional
interest group approach, released an action alert which included a sample letter for comments
directed toward the NPS (BFC, 2006). Finally, in a move toward further mainstream tactics, BFC and Patagonia, Inc. initiated a billboard campaign to protest bison killing (BFC,
2006).
The U.S. Congressional election of 2006 provided further change in governing coalitions
and prompted BFC’s first testimony before a congressional committee. On March 20, 2007,
BFC coordinator Joshua Osher testified before the House Natural Resources Committee on
National Parks, Forest, and Public Lands where he linked bison to the creation of Yellowstone
National Park and the later passage of the Lacey Act. Osher testified, “In 2007, Congress can
play an equally important role in the protection of the Yellowstone bison from state and federal
agencies operating under an inherently flawed management plan” (Geist & Brister, 2007).
Yet, despite their direct lobbying before a congressional committee, the group increasingly specialized in indirect-conventional activities primarily using YouTube to disseminate
the group’s message. Such a primary emphasis on indirect-conventional activities continued
through 2008, resulting in 40 of the reported 54 lobby tactics in these years (74%) occurring
in this later period.
In sum, we find that the BFC has evolved in their use of lobby tactics over time from indirectunconventional to direct-conventional to indirect-conventional. While utilizing more radical
lobby tactics in the early years, the BFC swung to more mainstream tactics in the middle years
and have recently reached a homeostasis settling into indirect-conventional tactics. While
we have determined a pattern of lobby tactic choice for the BFC, the next question is to
address whether there are associations are between dominant lobby tactic choice and the more
E.A. Shanahan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 137–150
147
Table 2
Associations between lobby typology and age, financial resources, issue salience, and external political context.
Pearson correlation
Coefficients
Age
Financial resources
Issue salience
Bison deaths
Eta correlation ratio
Governor
Direct-conventional
Indirect-conventional
Indirect-unconventional
−.096
−.224
−.008
−.337
.720**
.889***
−.501
.391
−.558*
−.593*
.439
−.059
.910
.525
.349
Data sources: Financial resources from http://www2.guidestar.org/; issue salience from Lexis–Nexis Academic
search of national newspapers using search terms “Yellowstone,” and “bison,” and “brucellosis”; bison deaths:
http://www.bfc.org. Note. Data reported by year, n = 10 years; * p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01; Pearson r coefficients
used for the following interval ratio variables: year/age, financial resources, issue salience, and bison deaths; Eta
used for nominal variable governor and interval variable of lobby activity percents and is a non-linear measure of
association and does not report statistical significance.
traditional measures of age, financial resources, issue salience, and external political context
(see Table 2).
Age has a statistically significant inverse relationship with the use of indirect-unconventional
lobby tactics (Pearson’s r = −.558, p < .10) and a statistically significant positive association
with the use of indirect-conventional tactics (Pearson’s r = .720, p < .05). In other words, the
younger the group, the greater the use of indirect-conventional lobby tactics; the older the
group, the greater the use of indirect-conventional tactics. While there was no association
between age and the direct-conventional lobby tactic, age does appear to matter in the choice
of lobby tactic; however, this is likely confounded by the group’s financial resources.
Like age, financial resources for the interest group are significant for two out of the three
lobby tactic choices. There is a statistically significant inverse relationship between financial
resources and the use of indirect-unconventional lobby tactics (Pearson’s r = −.593, p < .10),
and a statistically significant positive one with the use of indirect-conventional tactics (Pearson’s r = .889, p < .01). In other words, the fewer the financial resources, the greater the use
of no or low cost indirect-unconventional lobby tactics; the greater the financial resources, the
greater the use of indirect-conventional tactics. With limited resources in the early years, the
BFC was buoyed by a highly significant monetary contribution that put the group into a strong
financial situation during the most recent years.
Interestingly, issue salience and one of the two measures of the external political context,
bison deaths, were not significantly correlated across any of the three lobby tactic choices.
During the indirect-unconventional lobby use, bison deaths were generally low ranging from
zero to 202, and issue salience peaked in 1999 and then declined. The low number of bison
deaths is explained partially by low bison population numbers after the huge number killings
in 1996–1997 and from the mild winters of those years. Thus, despite the lower numbers
of killings, bison policy was still dominated by ranching and livestock interests. In addition,
during these years, the State of Montana for the first time started actively hazing bison to
move them back into Yellowstone National Park. During the direct-conventional lobby choice,
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bison deaths were increasing and well as issue salience, but with no significant association.
Finally, during the indirect-conventional lobby tactic stage, bison deaths had two years of large
numbers, with issue salience very low and incommensurate to the bison deaths.
Finally, what of the governing entities during this time? The eta ratio calculated between
partisanship of Montana’s governor was .349 for direct-conventional, a robust .910 for
indirect-conventional, and .525 for indirect-conventional. Thus, during the years of Republican governors, the BFC participated predominantly in the polar opposite of lobby choices:
indirect-unconventional and direct-conventional. However, when a Democrat won the seat, the
group has primarily utilized the moderate approach, that of indirect-conventional.
In concert with the literature (Dalton et al., 2003), an increase in financial resources occurred
with the choice of conventional lobby tactics. However, other scholars (Baumgartner & Leech,
1998; Kollman, 1998) argue that political context and issue saliency are the biggest predictors of indirect versus direct lobbying. What we were interested in was the combination of
direct/indirect and unconventional/conventional. Our data shows that issue saliency and the
political context of bison deaths played no role in BFC’s choice of overall lobbying typology.
However, age, financial resources and the political context of the partisanship of the governor
show strong measures of association with BFC’s choice of dominant lobby typology. Yet, none
of these independent variables reveal significant correlations with direct-conventional lobbying and yet this typology constitutes 31% of the BFC’s lobby tactic choice. The group use of
direct-conventional lobbying seems opportunistic rather than strategic.
As with any data analysis, other explanations for the change in lobbying activities merit
exploration. There is a large body of literature on the import of leadership on group behavior
(e.g., Follett, 1926; McGregor, 1957); interestingly however, the BFC has been led since its
inception by one person, Michael Mease. In addition, the impact of technology cannot be
ignored as a factor in changed lobby activities. Foremost, the development of YouTube is
believed to have played a role in the group’s evolution toward indirect-conventional activities.
Thus, leadership and emerging technologies must be considered in an interest group’s lobby
choice.
6. Conclusion
Our study frames an innovative yet straightforward and reliable method for determining
the relationship between lobby tactic choice and age, financial resources, issue salience, and
political context. This study is unique for three reasons. First, we developed a typology of lobby
tactics that incorporates two dimensions often discussed in the literature: direct/indirect and
conventional/unconventional. Second, the case study involves a new interest group, allowing
us to identify lobby tactic choice from the beginning of its maturation through the next ten
years. Third, in contrast to the traditionally employed elite interviews or surveys, the data in
this study were derived from a content analysis of the interest group’s publically disseminated
political narratives. Given this self-reporting of lobby activities, our results indicate that lobby
tactics do systematically change with maturation, financial resources, and external political
context (measured in presiding governing coalition) but are not associated with issue salience
and external political context events (measured in bison deaths).
E.A. Shanahan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 137–150
149
With the advent of technology and the new media, increasingly interest groups are going
to engage in indirect-conventional lobbying activities. Such activities allow interest groups to
reach a wide audience in a low cost manner. Yet, such a wide audience allows that group to
engage in significant fundraising activities. Our data indicates that the Buffalo Field Campaign
clearly moved from an unconventional to conventional interest group over the time period
studied. Taking advantage of new media sources, the group seems to have found a unique
niche in the Greater Yellowstone policy environment. The BFC will likely remain an active
player in the controversy over the management and killing of the United States last wild herd
of bison.
In sum, this case study of the Buffalo Field Campaign provides opportunity to apply an
innovative method of future studies of interest group lobbying. Grounded in content analysis,
this methodology may be applied to both old and new interest groups that produce a running
record of their lobby activities. The identification and coding of direct or indirect lobbying
tactics and whether the tactics are conventional or unconventional allows other researchers to
replicate and generalize our method and findings to a variety of interest groups.
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