Meta-Strategic Lobbying: The 1998 Steel Imports Case

Brook Douglas A.
Additional contact information
Brook Douglas A.: Naval Postgraduate School

Business and Politics, 2005, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: In 1998, the domestic steel industry in the United States devised and executed a complex and sophisticated effort to achieve an effective non-market response to a sudden, persistent, and damaging surge of imported steel. This campaign lasted until 2002, when President George W. Bush invoked Section 201 of the U.S. trade laws to impose tariffs on imports of most steel products. This case of the steel industry's trade policy campaign provides an opportunity to examine selected models of protection-seeking industries and lobbying to ask why and how the steel coalition achieved this extraordinary governmental response. These questions are explored though a descriptive case of the steel industry's protection-seeking campaign followed by a comparative examination of previous models of protection-seeking firms, and lobbying to achieve protectionist policies. A comparison with selected models of the determinants of protection-seeking and factors affecting lobbying strategies show that most, almost all, were present in the steel case. In fact, a meta-strategic approach that transcends the customary understanding of lobbying is suggested in a complex policy environment. Such an environment can be characterized by: the need to influence multiple governmental entities - legislative, regulatory, executive; the desire for multiple outcomes with varying levels of specificity - laws or resolutions, administrative rulings, policy choices; interactions between different levels and branches of government; employment of coordinated interrelated lobbying techniques; and simultaneity of these factors.

Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1469-3569.1094 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:buspol:v:7:y:2005:i:1:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bap

DOI: 10.2202/1469-3569.1094

Access Statistics for this article

Business and Politics is currently edited by Vinod K. Aggarwal

More articles in Business and Politics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().