Collective Action and Congressional Action.

This paper analyzes the impact on Congress of many types of collective action-demonstrations, lobbying, speeches, etc.-for 60 policy proposals on the congressional agenda 1989-90. For well over 30 years, researchers have systematically collected data on political activities from newspaper articles and estimated their impact on policy change. Most often the data have been on protest and its impact has been gauged for a single issue. This paper advances this research tradition in four ways. It (1) analyzes congressional action on a stratified random sample of 60 policy proposals; (2) uses data on all forms of political activity aimed at influencing congressional action on those proposals, as described in the press; (3) searches many publications in order to find data on as much political activity as possible; and (4) tests hypotheses about how much collective action there is likely to be, and about which types are especially likely to have an impact. There proves to be very little collective action; most of it is associated with a small number of proposals, while most proposals evoke little or none; the lack of collective action limits its impact. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]