An Organizational Analysis Of Political Action Committees

As the number and putative importance of political action committees have grown, so too has scholarly attention to this new breed of political organization. Yet this attention has been uneven. Although much is now known about the aggregate spending patterns of PACs, much less is known about their internal lives. The present study attempts to open the PAC black box to empirical inquiry. Drawing on interviews with the managers of 70 Washington-based political action committees, we suggest how theoretical perspectives about formal voluntary associations may be usefully applied in explaining the behavior of PACs. After examining the relationships among several variables - organizational goals, constituency relations and decision making, strategy, and interorganizational relations - we show how these forces affect the behavior of corporate, trade/membership, labor, and nonconnected PACS. © 1985 Agathon Press, Inc