Studying Interests and Policy From the Inside1

This is a nontraditional PSJ article. It is intended as an advocacy essay on one way to study organized interests and their public policy role. It's written in a light-hearted fashion, calling for more professional involvement in the actual politics of public policy, going beyond Fenno's famous “soaking and poking.” There are three purposes here. One is emphasis on the usefulness of intense policy domain studies. The second is arguing for close and ongoing academic relationships with policy players. The third is arguing that those relationships provide wonderful opportunities to gather large and reliable data sets that are unavailable otherwise.