Interest Groups and Ideas: The Battle Over Housing Finance in the run-up to the Financial Crisis
Date
2015
Authors
Champagne, Maurice B.
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Abstract
This dissertation examines the relationship between interest group access and American policymaking in three papers. Paper 1 suggests a key mechanism for interest group influence is in the opportunity for campaign contributors to frame information and dominate the belief diffusion process in congressional committees. The paper proposes hypotheses around the impact of interest group access on belief diffusion in a committee-level social network. It then employs social network analysis and Correlated Topic Modeling to determine whether members of Congress with the same interest group donors develop statistically similar cognitive maps with respect to a complex policy issue.
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Keywords
Public policy, Political Science, Social structure, Belief diffusion, Congressional committees, Financial crisis, Government Sponsored Enterprises, Interest groups, Legislative subsidy