Groups that spend more relative to their opposition on a given policy are likelier to win… Although Baumgartner et al conduct an observational study, the size of their (to me, convincingly representative) sample to me suggests that if such an effect exists, it should be observable as a correlation in their analysis. The association they observe is pretty small.
I just skimmed this thread, so apologies if I missed a comment on this. But Baumgartner et al. don’t argue that money doesn’t matter. They believe that the reason there’s little evidence in their study that money affects outcomes is because “the status quo already reflects the distribution of power in previous rounds of the policy process.” I.e. they don’t see large changes during their 4 year study period, because the situation at the start of their study period tended to favour the resource-rich groups.
After your comments and @jackva’s, I actually struck this conclusion. I was trying to make a more modest statement that upon reflection (thanks to you) is (1) not such a valuable claim and (2) not well-supported enough to have >50% confidence in. It’s true Baumgartner don’t find that money doesn’t matter; my initial (now disavowed) read was that if resources mattered independent of deployment strategy, then we’d expect to see a much stronger correlation even in the observational context. I sort of think that this observation holds true even given the passage you’ve cited, but it’s definitely not a top-level extract from the lit review and definitely needs a considerably more robust defense than I am prepared to muster.
I just skimmed this thread, so apologies if I missed a comment on this. But Baumgartner et al. don’t argue that money doesn’t matter. They believe that the reason there’s little evidence in their study that money affects outcomes is because “the status quo already reflects the distribution of power in previous rounds of the policy process.” I.e. they don’t see large changes during their 4 year study period, because the situation at the start of their study period tended to favour the resource-rich groups.
After your comments and @jackva’s, I actually struck this conclusion. I was trying to make a more modest statement that upon reflection (thanks to you) is (1) not such a valuable claim and (2) not well-supported enough to have >50% confidence in. It’s true Baumgartner don’t find that money doesn’t matter; my initial (now disavowed) read was that if resources mattered independent of deployment strategy, then we’d expect to see a much stronger correlation even in the observational context. I sort of think that this observation holds true even given the passage you’ve cited, but it’s definitely not a top-level extract from the lit review and definitely needs a considerably more robust defense than I am prepared to muster.