Governing the States and the Nation: The Intergovernmental Policy ...

as a tool to try to influence the way those grants were administered by the federal government (Wright 1972). Recently, scholars have described the NGA as a “public interest group,” “public official organization,” and an “intergovernmental lobby” whose purpose is to advance the interests of the members of the organization as well as the interests of the political entities that they serve. Through this lens, one can view the NGA as a group that is instrumental in representing a “population”—the state governments—that would otherwise go unrepresented at the federal level of government (Arnold and Plant 1994). Some observers, most notably John Nugent (1998), have gone as far as to say that the NGA assists the governors in fulfilling their constitutional roles as representatives of the states.

The NGA comprises various committees that allow for the specialization of tasks and effective leadership. The organizational structure has shifted over the years as the governors have responded to outside stimuli (primarily the changing nature of the federal-state relationship), and a number of scholars credit structural and organizational reforms with assisting the governors in their attempts to be effective policy formulators at the state and national levels. Currently, there are five standing committees within the Office of Federal Relations. The first is the Executive Committee, which is composed of an annually elected chair, vice chair, and nine-person body. The Executive Committee acts on behalf of every NGA member with respect to high-priority policies, and issues policy positions for which there is broad consensus among the governors. The four other standing committees are the Economic Development and Commerce Committee; the Education, Early Childhood, and Workforce Committee; the Health and Human Services; and the Natural Resources Committee. Each of these committees lobbies the federal government on policies that are relevant to their interests.