The New York Farm Bureau and the Legislative Processes: A Study in Agricultural Politics

This study analyzes the role of the New York Farm Bureau in the state legislative processes during 1961–1965. The method is empirical and analytical, with extensive interviews and legislative and Bureau reports providing the major sources of data. It supports more general analyses of pressure group politics, such as those of V. O. Key and David Truman, by showing how the organizational unity and efficiency of the Bureau, combined with favorable political and institutional factors, give an organized farm group greater political influence than its numbers would seem to warrant. The conclusion is similar to that demonstrated by Hadwiger and Talbot in their recent study of national agricultural politics: that legislators and groups representing farming areas still determine, for the most part, the contents of governmental farm legislation. There is a need for increased study of state politics and the role of pressure groups, and especially for studies of New York. This analysis is one of several efforts made in recent years to meet this need, and it continues in a more microscopic way the pioneering work done by Belle Zeller in the 1930's on New York pressure group politics.