Relations with Administration

Pressure groups are at their most spectacular in their support of and opposition to legislation, but equally important are their continuous relationships with the administrative agencies of government. A group may be instrumental in obtaining the passage of legislation; it may follow through with pressure, aid, and encouragement to the agency charged with responsibility for enforcing the act. Legislation may be applied vigorously or otherwise, and the choice may not be unrelated to the concern of various groups about the matter. With the growing complexity of government, legislative bodies have had to delegate authority to administrative agencies to make rules and regulations. Administrators become legislators, and pressure groups inevitably direct their activities to the point at which authority to make decisions is lodged. Where power rests, there influence will be brought to bear.

Within the federal administration, procedures have evolved that regularize the role of private associations in the rule-making process. The Federal Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 requires most federal agencies to give public notice of proposed rules, to permit interested persons to present arguments, and to receive petitions for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule. Pressure-group staffs keep track of such notices and when their organizations are affected prepare statements of the group position on the proposal. Such practices, to a degree at least, put the rule-making process into a goldfish bowl and recognize a right of all concerned to be informed of proposed action and to be given an opportunity to make their views known.

In contrast, when rules are issued without such procedures a premium exists on access to administrators through the back door, and the administrator may act without being confronted by the claims of all those to be affected. In 1955 a congressional investigation brought to light the easy access to the Department of Interior enjoyed by western utilities. Changes in regulations, to the advantage of the utilities, were issued in substantially the form recommended by the lobbyist whose advice had been requested by the Under Secretary of Interior. The action fell outside the terms of the Administrative Procedure Act, and the reversal of a policy of the Truman Administration was accomplished quietly and without fanfare. Advocates of regularized procedures, in effect, assume that if the opponents of an action have an opportunity to stir up a commotion, the decision will be different. Thus, the American Public Power Association, after it saw that private utilities had an inside track to the Interior Department, urged Congress in 1956 to extend the Administrative Procedure Act to decisions on the marketing of electricity.

Pressure groups on occasion mount a propagande campaign against administrative agencies, a campaign calculated to discredit an agency and to influence its decision. This may even extend to attempts to influence a quasi-judicial agency which is obligated to act somewhat as a court. In 1952 the Federal Trade Commission initiated a proceeding that involved a disputed interpretation of fair-trade legislation. The Bureau of Education on Fair Trade, a lobbying outfit, proclaimed the action to be an effort to obstruct the will of Congress; it urged all concerned to “Tell your Congressmen and Senators about this Threat Now.” The bureau declined an invitation to appear before the commission as amicus curiae to present its views; it sought rather to affect the legal decision by pressure on the commission to drop the proceedings.

A well-worn channel by which private groups attempt to influence administrative agencies about both general rules and decisions in individual matters is through Representatives and Senators. Congressmen, so the reasoning goes, control appropriations and legislation, and their word may approach intimidation in its effect on administrators. Legislative intervention may also jog a timid administrator to fulfill a plain duty or to moderate arbitrary practices. The administrative-legislative-lobby triangle at times includes group influence calculated to emasculate legislation by influencing Congress to make inadequate appropriations. Contrariwise, those groups desirous of adequate programs may reinforce the requests of administrators for appropriations.

Appointments to administrative posts are by no means a matter of indifference to theassociation whose members are affected by the agencies in question. Organized labor is deeply interested in who is Secretary of Labor; organized business hopes that the Secretary of Commerce is a man acceptable to it. Other groups with specialized interests may cherish the wish that a friendly bureau chief will be appointed. Private groups seldom have publicly proclaimed "candidates" for these appointments; by less formal means they make their wishes known to appointing authorities. Often groups with conflicting interests have an interest in the same appointment; their differences may be aired in the process of senatorial confirmation if the equities are grossly violated by the designation of a person likely not to be impartial.

The notion should not prevail that the administrator and the organizations of those affected by his agency engage in endless strife. Apparently in the course of time a customary balance develops in their relations. The administrator of a new piece of legislation may be in fairly steady conflict with the regulated groups until the administration shakes down, the bugs are ironed out of the legislation, and those subject to the law become reconciled to it. The resulting equilibrium may well draw the fangs of the legislation; it may also reflect a condition of willingness to live and let live. The happy state of affairs reflected in a pattern of peaceful co-existence may be disturbed by changes in the political situation. The election of 1952, for example, gave many groups hope that they might alter the administrative environment and stimulated them to propaganda and lobbying efforts against administrative relations to which they had adjusted with reluctance.