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

influence in the national policy-making arena is found only in individual efforts,² I contend that the NGA is the most appropriate organization through which the influence of governors at the national level can be studied, and I do so for three reasons.

First, the NGA provides the optimal avenue for studying the national policy-making influence of governors because of the group’s methodical attempts in lobbying Congress. The literature that has thus far examined governors’ attempts to influence federal policies, as well as the policies of other states, has been relatively descriptive in nature. In general, this is due to the fact that researchers studying the policy-making impact of single executives are limited to small sample sizes, and as a result are typically forced to rely upon qualitative methods in their approach (e.g., King 1975). Though these efforts approaches have indeed provided useful information for scholars interested in such issues, they have not provided the systematic techniques and empirical analyses that are typically favored in contemporary political science. The NGA, however, shifts the unit of analysis from the individual executive to the organization. And because the NGA regularly attempts to shape federal policy and uses formal processes for doing so across time, it serves as an ideal organization through which to examine gubernatorial influence at the national level. In other words, the organization’s systematic attempts to affect national policy lend it to the possibility of empirical study by political scientists.

The second reason it is advantageous to examine the NGA rather than individual governors is that a number of factors suggest that governors would be more effective in securing state-friendly policies for the states at large if they worked together. For example, governors are responsible for handling many of the federal funds that are granted to the states. Thus, they actively lobby Congress for policies that are favorable to them and their