DOMESTIC INTEREST GROUPS AND FOREIGN POLICY: A CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF THE THIRD UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON THE LAW OF THE SEA

This study employs the pluralist approach to examine the involvement of interest groups in U.S. foreign policy relating to the United Nations Conference on The Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Groups in each of several issue areas--ocean mining, offshore petroleum exploration and mineral rights, fishing rights, ocean pollution, navigation rights and marine research--are analyzed in terms of their contribution to positions taken by the United States. A conceptual framework on interest group involvement in the foreign policy process is developed and employed as an analytical model in a case study analysis of UNCLOS. The major source of data is a series of 112 interviews with officials from the active interest groups and government officials. Using internal characteristics and resources of the interest groups, a potential influence index was constructed to predict those interest groups most likely to have had an influence on the United States policy-making.; Group strategies and tactics were found to be relatively neutral factors since most groups adopted quite similar lobbying approaches. Noneconomic interest groups were found to engage in a much higher level of transnational activity than the economic group. Interest group access to decision-makers was found to be a controlling factor in interest group influence. Because economic interest groups were granted better access than the noneconomic interest groups, the former had a greater influence on U.S. policy. One clear pattern showed that the majority of the economic interest groups supported the President's decision not to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty while the majority of noneconomic groups opposed the decision. In the latter stages of the Conference, the anti-treaty network, which included nearly all of the economic interest groups, was much more extensive and powerful than the pro-treaty network, contributing to the eventual United States rejection of the Treaty. Finally, issue type served as a modifying factor and it is predicted that in future international conferences similar to UNCLOS or foreign policy issues approximating UNCLOS conditions, economic interest groups will have a sizable impact on United States foreign policy. Because different interests dominated at different times while interest group influence in general remained consistently high, compromises and agreements were made that later could be rejected by American policy-makers once a new domestic consensus emerged.