Political Capital in the 21st Century

Presidential Grassroots Lobbying Organizations in the Obama Administration

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6182382
AutoresJonathan D Klingler (Department of Political Science, University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi), Jonathan Klingler (0000-0002-5672-5479, University of Mississippi, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen47
Número3
Páginas301-337
Fecha de publicación2020-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCongress & the Presidency (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0734-3469 • E-ISSN: 1944-1053
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07343469.2020.1769772
OpenAlexW3123749140
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas32

This article advances the study of presidential leadership by analyzing the circumstances under which Organizing for America/Organizing for Action (OFA) mobilized core supporters of President Barack Obama for policy purposes using digital tools and other resources developed for the president’s election campaign. I argue that the policy mobilization efforts of such presidential grassroots lobbying organizations (PGLOs) are constrained by electoral opportunity costs and innate factors which lead PGLOs to be most effective at maintaining the support of presidential copartisans in Congress. These constraints are used to develop several hypotheses about the timing and frequency of OFA grassroots lobbying mobilization efforts, which are tested using a dataset of 245 OFA mobilization requests to supporters sent via e-mail from January 2009 through January 2017. The resulting analysis finds support for several of these hypotheses, as well as the proposition that PGLO grassroots lobbying efforts carry electoral costs. Furthermore, it supports the claim that OFA leadership were most willing to pay the costs of lobbying mobilization when President Obama’s copartisans set the agenda in Congress under unified government and OFA mobilization of Democratic “super-activists” could have most easily kept presidential priorities under consideration. Rather than judging them on their ability to mobilize the mass public and coerce opposition legislators to side with the President on key votes, I argue that these findings support a reevaluation of OFA and similar groups' effectiveness on the basis of their ability to unify and motivate the president's co-partisan allies in Congress

Administration (probate law · Democracy · Economics · Government (linguistics · Grassroots · Mobilization · Opposition (politics · Political capital · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidential system · Public relations · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Public Administration · Social Media and Politics