Gilt by Associations.

The U.S. executive depends upon organized civil society to help set policy and facilitate its implementation. There are currently over one thousand authorized Federal Advisory Committees (FACs) in which such consultation takes place, including 160 that address matters of national security. FACs offer outside organizations, including business firms, voluntary associations, relief organizations, universities, and other private enterprises an important opportunity to exert influence over the direction of foreign policy. I argue that this influence primarily involves covertly helping the administration plan and execute a political strategy for securing consent to pursue a chosen policy. This paper offers an analysis of FAC appointments between 1997 and 2012, based on data published by the General Services Administration, which I have extended in several ways. It has three core empirical findings. First, consistent with the literature on the "two-presidencies" thesis, these data show that congressional involvement is much lower in national security FACs than in other policy domains. Second, these data show that association appointments increase for FACs addressing the most contentious geopolitical issues when the opposition has a more powerful, unified caucus in Congress. Third, association appointments increase when the president is popular among the public. This supports the proposition that interest group access improves when the executive needs help with its political strategy, to mobilize the public as a means to overcome an oppositional Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]