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ALL POLITIES ARE PRESSURE COOKERS. THEY DIFFER IN ALL SORTS OF ways – and many of the differences between them reflect the differences in the pressures they contain, in the way the ‘cooker’ has been designed or has found a durable shape, and in how they respond to the changing force and direction of the pressures. It is no longer fashionable to look with disdain at the special historical importance of such pressures within the American polity: we know all too well that comparable processes exist elsewhere. It remains true, however, that, within a changing context of society and culture, interest groups both public and private, are peculiarly alive and well within the American system.
1 Huntington, S. P., Political Order in Changing Societies, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1968, p. 130 Google Scholar. Also S. M. Lipset, The First New Nation, Heinemann, London, 1964.
2 Vile, M. J. C., Polities in the U.S.A., Lane, Allen, The Penguin Press, London, 1970, p. 125 Google Scholar. See also S. E. Finer, Comparative Government, London, 1970, pp. 245–6.
3 Steiner, G. Y., The State of Welfare, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1971, P. 337 Google Scholar.
4 Vile, op. cit., p. 138.
5 Common Cause is an active ‘citizens lobby’ set up in 1970 and led by a former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare: it has over 50,000 members. It has espoused a number of reform causes, e.g., limits on campaign finance (in which its fire was directed at both the parties) and Nixon's welfare reform plan. It also campaigned for a date to be fixed for withdrawal from Vietnam and (see below) against the SST. It is one of the ‘cause groups’ that has taken to filing suits of complaint on issues which concern it – a tactic that, of course, civil rights groups (and anti‐civil rights groups too) had used with some success. Thus Common Cause, like the more narrowly focused consumer and ecology groups, has a following among young lawyers of a radical disposition.
6 Freeman III, A. M. and Hareman, R. H., ‘Clean Rhetoric, Dirty Water’, The Public Interco, No. 28, p. 57 Google Scholar.
7 A piquant footnote to these events was the release on 20 August of a two years old report on the SST, hitherto classified as ‘privileged’, from a presidential panel which had recommended cancellation largely though not solely on economic and commercial considerations.
8 There is also the less well‐known item of educational appropriations for federal ‘impact aid’ to school districts where the children of military personnel are deemed to place special strains on local facilities. Congress generously allotted $612 million for this item for 1972 – over $100 million more than the Administration had asked.
9 Yarmolinsky, A., The Military Establishment, Harper & Row, New York, 1971 Google Scholar, Chapter 4.
10 The debate over the Anti–Ballistic Missile in 1969 (which ended, by a very narrow Congressional margin in acceptance of an appropriation of $759 million) is of interest in this respect. There was a most vigorous national and grassroots campaign of opposition – with some (probably scaled–down) propaganda for the Army. The ‘defence corporations’ who stood to gain from ABM seem to have refrained from direct lobbying of Congress – though some of them helped to finance the media and mailing campaign that was channelled through the adroitly named American Security Council.
11 Yartnolinsky, op. cit., p. 42.
12 See Domhoff, G. W., The Higher Circles, Vintage Books, New York, 1970 Google Scholar.
13 Steiner, op. cit., p. 103 and p. 105.
14 There are a number of sizeable though minor foundations with causes to press. Though independent they often are financed by the largest and more prestigious foundations, and led by members of the ‘moderate wing’ of the elite. Thus the Conservation Foundation lists among its donors the Ford Foundation and among its trustees Eugene Black. Another active group is the Center for Law and Social Policy which, since its foundation in 1968 has received large grants from the Meyer and Stern Foundations, as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. This Center has as Board Chairman Arthur Goldberg. Goldberg's firm is actively involved in conservation and environmental campaigns – a recent example of its activity is its intervention in the currently unsettled Alaska oil issue. The Center, has interlocking trustee relationships with two other environmental ‘consultancy’ agencies that have been set up in recent years.
15 Moynihan, D. P., Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, Free Press, New York, 1969 Google Scholar, especially pp. 40, 42, 72–3.
16 Williams, Robin M., American Society, 2nd ed., Knopf, New York, 1960, p. 272 Google ScholarPubMed.