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• Interest Organizations, Information, and Policy Innovation in the U.S. Congress, Sociological Forum 22 (2007): 174-99 , Paul Burstein and C. Elizabeth Hirsh
  Interest groups and social movement organizations are hypothesized to strongly affect public policy, but the evidence for such a relationship is mixed. This paper argues that one reason for this disparity is a gap between theory and research: theory suggests that elected officials should be strongly influenced by information provided by interest groups and SMOs, but researchers generally ignore such information. We examine an important source of information for members of the U.S. Congress–testimony at committee hearings–to see if it influences congressional action on policy proposals. The data, based on the content-analysis of almost a thousand testimonies at hearings on a stratified random sample of policy proposals, describe who testifies, what arguments they make, and what evidence they provide. We find that supporters emphasize the importance of the problem, while opponents claim the proposed policy will be ineffective and try to reframe the debate. Information–particularly information provided by opponents-- does affect the likelihood that a policy proposal will be enacted.
• “Jewish Educational and Economic Success in the United States: A Search for Explanations.” Sociological Perspectives 50:209-228. , Paul Burstein
  Jews are much more successful economically and educationally than other ethnic, racial, and religious groups in the United States. This article asks why. It describes how well Jews do, and then presents four potential explanations: human capital, Jewish particularity, marginality, and social capital. Most attempts to explain Jews’ success use human capital explanations. They account for much of Jews’ success, but leave much unexplained as well. Social capital explanations seem useful, but it is striking how little research has been done to explain Jews' success. Likely reasons include social scientists’ lack of interest in successful groups; lack of data; and Jews’ anxiety about possible findings. The basics of a research agenda are set forth.
• “Why Estimates of the Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy Are Too High," Social Forces 84 (2006): 2273-90. , Paul Burstein
  Statistical studies often show public opinion strongly affecting public policy. But the studies may overestimate the effect because they focus on issues–-those especially important to the public–-on which governments are most likely to be responsive. This article considers what the opinion-policy linkage would be were less-important issues considered also, by examining a random sample of proposals addressed by the U.S. Congress. Opinion has considerably less impact in the random sample than in the statistical studies. But this does not mean that the public is being defeated by special interests. On many issues, the public has no meaningful opinions; organized interests, therefore, can win without the public losing.
• “Is Congress Really for Sale?” Contexts 2 (2003):19-25 , Paul Burstein
  Many Americans lament the way special interests sway politicians with campaign contributions and lobbying, winning privileged treatment even when the public is opposed. Research shows, however, that contributions and lobbying determine public policy much less than most people think. When major issues arise, party, ideology, and public opinion matter much more.
• The Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy: a Review and an Agenda. Political Research Quarterly 56 (2003):29-40. , Paul Burstein
  This article asks how much impact public opinion has on public policy; how much the impact is enhanced by democratization; how much the impact increases as the salience of issues increases; how much the impact of public opinion may be negated by interest groups, social movement organizations, political parties, and elites; the extent to which our conclusions can be generalized; and whether responsiveness of governments to public opinion has changed over time. Previous work shows that: the impact of public opinion is substantial; there is too little data about the impact of democratization to reach any conclusions; salience enhances the impact of public opinion; the impact of opinion remains strong even when the activities of political organizations and elites are taken into account; the extent to which the conclusions can be generalized is limited; and responsiveness appears not to have changed significantly over time. Gaps in our knowledge are addressed in proposals for an agenda for future research.
• “The Impact of Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Social Movement Organizations on Public Policy.” Social Forces 81 (2002):380-408 , Paul Burstein and April Linton
  This article tests four hypotheses about the impact of political parties, interest groups, and SMOs on public policy: (1) all three types of organizations have substantial impacts on policy; (2) when public opinion is taken into account, the political organizations do not have such an impact; (3) parties have a greater impact than interest groups and SMOs; and (4) interest groups and SMOs will affect policy only to the extent that their activities provide elected officials with information and resources relevant to their election campaigns. The data are from articles published in major journals, systematically coded to record the impact of organizations on policy. The major findings: political organizations affect policy no more than half the time; parties and non-party organizations affect policy about equally often; there is some evidence that organizational activities responding to the electoral concerns of elected officials are especially likely to have an impact.
• "Social Movements and Public Policy." In How Social Movements Matter, edited by Marco Giugni, et al. , Paul Burstein
  To understand how interest organizations influence public policy, we must analyze their activities in the context of theories of democracy. Doing so leads to three conclusions somewhat different from conventional ones about social movements. (1) There is no theoretical justification for distinguishing between social movement organizations and interest groups. (2) Because elected officials must respond to the wishes of a majority of their constituents to win re-election, when those wishes are clear and strongly felt, interest organizations cannot directly influence policy. (3) Interest organizations can influence policy directly on issues the public cares little about, by providing public officials with useful information, and by changing the public's preferences and the intensity of its concerns.
• "Interest Organizations, Political Parties, and the Study of Democratic Politics” , Paul Burstein
  Those studying democratic politics customarily identify three types of intermediary organizations linking citizens and government: social movement organizations, interest groups, and political parties. This paper argues that it is impossible, theoretically or empirically, to distinguish social movement organizations from interest groups, and that the most important differences between them and political parties are legal rather than organizational. Political organizations should therefore be studied together (rather than being divided among subdisciplines), in the context of theories of democratic politics. Among our expectations: intermediary organizations will not affect public policy directly on issues the public cares strongly about; they may affect public policy directly on issues the public cares little about, and indirectly through influence on the public's preferences; no tactic they use to influence elected officials will be more successful than any other, over the long term. In Social Movements and American Political Institutions, edited by Anne Costain and Andrew McFarland
• The Sociology of Jewry: Syllabi and Instructional Materials , Paul Burstein, editor
  Includes an Introduction: Why a Syllabus Collection in the Sociology of Jewry? Syllabi in the Sociology of Jewry: Beginnings. Syllabi in the Sociology of Jewry: Today. How to Design a Course on the Sociology of Jewry. Comparative-Historical Courses on Jewry. What We Teach about Jewish Life in North America. What We Teach about Israel. The Holocaust. Conclusions.
• Collective Action and Congressional Action , Paul Burstein
  There are many possible reasons why collective action is found, fairly frequently, to have little impact on policy change. This paper considers two. One is methodological: that collective action and policy change are poorly measured and mismatched (with the measured collective action not being directed at the specific policy changes examined). The other follows from Olson’s logic of collection action: there may be so little collective action directed at most policies that it almost necessarily has little impact. This paper examines how congressional action on a stratified random sample of 60 policy proposals is affected by many types of collective action, reported in over 100 newspapers and other periodicals, directed at those proposals. There is little or no publicly reported collective action on most proposals, and collective action has almost no impact on congressional action.
• Public Opinion, Public Policy, and Democracy: Old Expectations and New , Paul Burstein
  to appear in The Handbook of Politics, edited by Kevin Leicht and Craig Jenkins, Springer, 2010. Public policy is influenced by public opinion, often very strongly, according to most recent studies, implying that the democratic political process is working as it’s supposed to. Critics of such studies argue, however, that they exaggerate the impact of opinion on policy; the studies (1) focus on issues on which the government is especially likely to be responsive, (2)measure opinion and policy in ways that hide instances of nonresponsiveness, and (3) ignore powerful forces that undermine the public’s influence on policy. This chapter agrees with the critics–up to a point. But it goes on to argue that when we try to meet the criticisms, we will likely discover that studying a wider range of issues forces us to rethink our standards for deciding how well the democratic political process is working; that some decisions about measurement may lead us to underestimate, rather than overestimate, the impact of opinion on policy; and that organized interests may enhance, rather than undermine, the impact of opinion on policy.
• Jewish Nonprofit Organizations in the U.S.: A Preliminary Survey , Paul Burstein
  Organizations are at the heart of American Jewish life. Though there has been considerable work on specific organizations and types of organizations, there has been very little on the overall organizational structure of the American Jewish community. This article takes some preliminary steps in that direction. It presents historical data on American Jewish organizations, and an analysis of data on contemporary Jewish organizations from a source not used previously: the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s database on nonprofit charitable organizations. A majority of the 9,482 Jewish organizations included in the database are educational and religious, but there are significant numbers of other types as well. Jewish organizations are more concentrated geographically than the Jewish population; New York State remains the organizational center of American Jewry. Few organizations are targeted to the needs of Jewish young adults. Organizations connecting American Jews to Israel are quite varied in their purposes, and there are noteworthy numbers of organizations providing connection to Jews in many other countries. An agenda for future research is provided. to appear in CONTEMPORARY JEWRY
• Collective Action and Public Policy: How Americans Try to Influence Congress , Paul Burstein
  This paper addresses several questions about policy-oriented collective action in the U.S. How much is there? Is there as little as some theories predict? What do people do to influence the U.S. Congress? Who tries to do so? And what is the balance between action supporting policy change and action opposing it? To answer these questions, the paper confronts disagreements about the definition of collective action and advances methods for studying it. There is arguably very little collective action, in line with theoretical expectations; most consists of written and oral communications, very little of protest; much collective action is the work of people whose activities cost them little or nothing, and some are actually paid for it; there is considerably more collective action favoring policy change than opposing it. Presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.