The Politics of Animal Protection: A Research Agenda

Robert Garner 1

University of Exeter, United Kingdom

This article seeks to provide a research agenda for the study of animal protection politics. It looks firstly at the animal protection movement's organization and maintenance in the context of Olson's theory of collective action. While existing research suggests that activists tend to be recruited because of the purposive and expressive benefits they offer rather than the material ones emphasized by Olson, these alternative forms of selective incentives can hinder the achievement of the movement's goals. Secondly, the article outlines alternative models of policy making and shows how they might be operationalized to explain the development of animal welfare policy-making in Britain and the United States. Preliminary observations suggest that Britain's animal welfare record is more substantial because policy communities have been able to manage and limit change through concessions and cooptation. No such mechanism is available in the American political system where the greater openness and fragmentation often results in severe confrontation and ultimately, stalemate.

Organizational concern for the plight of animals dates back to the nineteenth century but over the past two decades or so the animal protection movement has been revitalized and radicalized to the extent that it has become an important player in the social movement and pressure group universes. Despite this, social sciences - and political scientists in particular - have been seemingly reluctant to regard the movement on behalf of animals as worthy of extensive study. Thus, in the inaugural editorial of this journal, it was pointed out that "sociopolitical movements, public policy and the law" is an area under-represented in the animal studies literature (Shapiro, 1993, p. 2). To illustrate the dearth of material, a recent substantial collection of the latest pressure group scholarship emanating from the United States all but ignores the animal protection movement despite allocating a generous amount of space to the increasingly significant phenomena of cause or public interest groups (Petracca, 1992).

It would be wrong to give the impression that little has been published on the sociopolitical character of the animal protection movement. However, much of the available literature has been written by those active in the movement and often participants in the events they describe (see Hollands, 1980; Ryder, 1989; Newkirk, 1992). Although such work is often enlightening, valuable, and sometimes exceptional, it understandably tends to lack analytical rigor. Likewise, journalistic accounts tend to be descriptive, sensationalist, and sometimes inaccurate (Henshaw, 1989; Newsweek, 1988). Academic accounts remain few and far between. One early exception was a chapter by Jeffrey Berry on the American group Friends of Animals (Berry, 1977, pp. 110-40). There is evidence that the neglect is beginning to be rectified. Book length accounts of the movement in the United States have appeared in recent years (Jasper & Nelkin, 1992; Sperling, 1988); there is a growing interest in the psychological characteristics of the movement (Shapiro, 1994; Herzog, 1993); and social movement theory has been utilized to explain how animal protection organizations are created, organized and maintained (Jasper & Poulsen, 1991; Jasper, 1992).

What has been largely missing is the input of political scientists (for the exceptions see Garner, 1993, 1993a; Thomas, 1983). One only has to consider the number of groups seeking legislative redress for animals to recognize that the political and institutional dimension of animal studies should have a higher priority. To help this process along, this article seeks to identify the parameters of the political dimension of animal studies and to indicate potentially fruitful research avenues. While the primary aim is to chart a research course, empirical work relating to the organization and maintenance of the animal protection movement is reviewed and some preliminary findings of my own work relating to interest group intermediation are also outlined.

The Olson Legacy

Animal protection groups are usually categorized, along with consumer and environmental organizations, as public interest causes since they aim to achieve collective benefits not restricted to the narrow economic interests of their members. Such a label is generally problematic (environmental protest movements, for instance, may be campaigning against a specific localized development - such as the placement of a new road - which threatens their own interests economically or otherwise) but it is particularly so for the movement seeking to protect animals. Uniquely among the pressure group community, the focus is not on human beneficiaries and, because of this, animal protection is particularly susceptible to the charge - often laid against it by opponents - that it has narrow concerns unconnected with any human interests, let alone public interests. In a prescriptive sense, then, it is clearly necessary for the animal protection movement to forge a common agenda with others - such as environmentalists, consumer groups, and health-care reformers - who have a greater claim to the "public interest" label. To do this requires demonstrating the link between animal exploitation and human concerns (Stallwood, 1994).

Leaving this difficulty aside, it should be pointed out that the problems allegedly associated with creating and maintaining public interest groups do clearly apply to animal protection organizations and potentially impact upon their political effectiveness. The notion that there is a problem relating to the creation and maintenance of associations of individuals with common aims and/or interests is a relatively recent phenomenon. Up to the mid-1960s, the conventional wisdom was that it was completely natural for like-minded people to organize themselves into groups whenever common interests, grievances or deprivations arose, in order to seek public policy goals (Truman, 1951). This was to change with the publication of Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action (Olson, 1965). Since then, questions of organizational recruitment and structure have been an important area of research.

For Olson, it is against the self-interest of individuals to participate in the achievement of collective goals even if they value these goals. The rational individual, he argues, will take a "free ride" by calculating that it is not worth paying the costs of participation since she will enjoy the benefits gained by the group anyway. Thus, in the case of animal protection, one individual's participation in the movement will not significantly affect the chances of the movement's success. This, of course, makes the process of organizing a group and recruiting members a problem area since, if Olson is right, it is not clear how any groups can be mobilized for collective action. Yet groups, of course, do exist. Olson's answer to this apparent paradox is that groups are able to recruit members either because they can coerce members to join (in a "closed shop," for instance) or because they can offer "selective incentives" which are not available to non-members (Olson, 1965, pp. 132-3). It is primarily economic groups, of course, which can offer such selective incentives in the form, for instance, of pension benefits or cheaper insurance rates. Public interest groups, on the other hand, are not generally organized for reasons other than campaigning or lobbying and, with few exceptions, are unable to provide substantial material benefits.

Olson's work produced a major shift in the preoccupations of interest group scholars toward the analysis of organizational creation and maintenance and led to the formation of a new so-called "resource mobilization" school of study (see McCarthy & Zald, 1977). As far as the animal protection movement is concerned, there are two ways of reacting to the problem Olson identified. The fact that animal protection groups on both sides of the Atlantic have succeeded in surviving and, in some cases, prospering (as have many other public interest groups) would suggest either that Olson's rational choice model is wrong or that groups are able to compensate in some way for their inability to offer selective incentives. Whatever the answer, there is a clear research agenda here which has only just begun to be explored.

The Role of the Entrepreneur

One approach to the creation of groups from within the Olsonian tradition is to focus on the role of organizational elites. There are two strands to this argument. One is that group leaders:

learned how to cope with the public goods dilemma not by inducing large numbers of new members to join the group through the manipulation of selective benefits, but by locating important new sources of funds outside the immediate membership (Walker, 1983, p. 397).
Thus, groups seek to attract large individual gifts and foundation grants as a means of overcoming the problem of attracting enough members paying subscriptions. The second strand focuses on the role of individual "entrepreneurs" who are prepared to pay the costs of setting up organizations and providing a set of benefits with which they hope to attract members. In return, they expect to retain a senior staff position within the organization. As the major exponent of this "exchange theory" of interest groups points out, most group activity "has little to do with efforts to affect public policy decisions but is concerned rather with the internal exchange of benefits by which the group is organized and sustained" (Salisbury, 1969, p. 20).

This approach does seem to have some explanatory capacity as far as the animal protection movement is concerned. Many groups have relied and some still do rely on a small number of large donations (Garner, 1993, p. 46). More research, however, is needed here. Some groups (particularly in the United States - witness PETA's progress) do have much larger memberships and conceivably do rely much more on them for their organization's costs. Indeed, the major characteristic of the revitalization of the movement in the past few years has been not just the formation of many new groups but increasing memberships for the older ones too (Garner, 1993, pp. 41-48).

The idea of entrepreneurs also has a great deal of resonance. The animal protection movement includes Cleveland Amory (Fund for Animals) and Christine Stevens (Animal Welfare Institute) in the United States and Jean Pink (Animal Aid) and Mark Glover (LYNX) in the United Kingdom, to name but a few, who have played a crucial, sometimes indispensable, entrepreneurial roles in creating organizations. This concurs with Berry's study which found that entrepreneurs were responsible for the creation of 55 of the 81 public interest groups in his sample (Berry, 1977, p. 24). The problem here is that such entrepreneurs hardly fit the model of utility maximizers required by rational choice theory. Many of those creating animal protection groups did not need the staff job that Salisbury's theory posits was their motivation and one can only assume their main concern was the plight of the animals their groups were set up to ameliorate.

A Post-Olsonian Agenda

An alternative model is the idea that members are recruited into public interest groups because of the solidary rewards that derive from associating in group activities. That is, the very act of participating along with others is inherently satisfying, meeting deep-seated psychological needs, irrespective of the external benefits accruing from it. Olson rejects this inherent satisfaction explanation as insufficiently precise to be included as a selective incentive. Nevertheless, if valid as a explanation for group recruitment, it does have important implications for the political effectiveness of the animal protection movement. The only other viable explanation for involvement in group activities is the "common sense" view that individuals have purposive, ideological or issue-oriented goals. This, of course, clearly takes us beyond the Olsonian framework.

The limited amount of empirical research so far conducted on the motivations of animal protection activists would support an issue-oriented explanation. Shapiro's portrait of animal rights activists, for instance, is centered around such an assumption (Shapiro, 1994). Likewise, Jasper and Poulsen have emphasized the role of ideas or moral sentiments as people are recruited into the animal protection movement through the use of "shock" symbols that raise "such a sense of outrage in people that they become inclined towards political action even in the absence of a network of contacts" (Jasper & Poulsen, 1991, p. 10; see also Jasper, 1992). Thus, Jasper and Poulsen suggest that these shocks tend to affect isolated individuals with little involvement in other progressive causes. A significant proportion of those recruited into the animal protection movement, then, do not hear about the organizations and issues through a pre-existing social and organizational network, although once involved in the movement they may join other groups in this way. This also suggests that, for some at least, concern about issues occurs prior to the desire to enjoy the benefits of participating in a group of like-minded individuals (confirmed by Herzog, 1993, p. 117).

It can be argued, however, that the issue-based reasons for involvement are not totally separate from those associated with the inherent satisfaction of group involvement. It is recognized that the development of a collective identity is crucial for the formation of solidary feelings and that this becomes a problem in groups with no common social location in a class or ethnic group (Gamson, 1992, p. 56). It is reasonable to assume, then, that in the case of animal protection this collective identity is promoted by an ideology which internally unites movement members and sets the movement apart from others. Thus, it is worth speculating that the elaboration of rights for animals serves precisely this function, of providing a distinct ideology which aids the recruitment and mobilization of members.

This is potentially problematic for the animal protection movement since it could lead to a conflict between organizational maintenance (requiring the use of a distinctive ideology promoting an "us and them" mentality) and the achievement of organizational goals requiring a certain degree of compromise, and negotiation. Seen in this way, the achievement of welfare-based goals becomes counterproductive since it reduces the exclusiveness of the identity required for organizational maintenance (after all, virtually everyone can claim to be concerned about the welfare of animals). Conversely, the achievement of these goals is itself hindered by the need to maintain the identity of the group. If this is correct, we may well have hit upon one important reason why the animal protection movement has expanded in recent years but also why the potential of an active mass movement has not realized more fundamental changes in the way animals are treated.

Focusing on Public Policy

Political scientists are primarily concerned with the relationship between interest groups, the state, and public policy and the rest of this paper will seek to sketch out a research agenda for this area of animal protection politics. In the past, scholars and movement participants have paid little attention to the political-institutional dimension of animal protection. This is partly because the movement itself has adopted a whole range of strategies, most not dependent upon influencing national (or even local) decision-makers and partly because attempts to achieve public policy goals have invariably failed. Of course, many groups have, from the outset, sought to indirectly influence decision-makers through seeking to influence public opinion on specific issues and, more generally, to create an alternative cultural climate more favorably inclined toward the well-being of animals. Such activity is essential for groups who do not have regular access to decision- makers and may, of course, be a prerequisite for access to the political arena. A focus on a public policy strategy requires an effective means of following up public campaigns and full-time, permanent lobbyists with influential contacts.

There are a number of reasons for suggesting that students of the movement must focus more on national decision-making arenas. In the first place, it can be argued that alternative forms of action - designed to bypass the decision-making arena - are unlikely to achieve a great deal more. Attempts to influence consumers can only work effectively with legislative backing, for example, on labelling (Garner, 1993, pp. 185-8). Likewise, the various types of direct action in defense of animals are only, at best, a supplement to legislative activism and, at worse, can hinder the achievement of public policy goals (Garner, 1993, pp. 222-7). Finally, there is also evidence to suggest that targeting specific companies (the strategy particularly associated with Henry Spira in the United States) is of limited utility now that the food industry and the animal research community have learned the lessons of the early days of the animal protection movement by countermobilizing effectively (see Jasper & Poulsen, 1993). Of course, these strategies should not and will not be jettisoned but the importance of laws protecting animals should not be underestimated. If effectively drawn up and enforced, they will not only immediately improve the lot of animals but also help to change people's attitudes towards them as well as symbolizing the importance of the issue on the political agenda (Kagan, 1985).

Secondly, whatever one may prescribe, the animal protection movement has over recent years focused a great deal more on the decision-making arena. While this has happened less in Britain (for reasons connected with the dominance of the RSPCA and the more closed executive- dominated structure of the political system) there are signs of a switch in emphasis. The classic example here is the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection which has made a deliberate effort to move away from the traditional direct-mail approach of outsider groups and now targets far more of its resources toward lobbying decision-makers in Britain and the European Union. In the United States, there are now over 30 animal protection and wildlife conservation groups with Washington offices and a majority of these have emerged in the past 15 years or so (to put this into perspective, there are over 70 organizations which have varying degrees of interest in defeating the animal protection movement's demands for more stringent legislation). Nevertheless, as a result of the growth of the animal protection lobby and greater public concern, most members of Congress now have staffers who deal with animal welfare issues.

This greater emphasis on conventional lobbying, of course, is itself the consequence of the growing maturity of the movement and its greater legitimacy in the eyes of political actors. While one can point to the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act in Britain and the various Animal Welfare Acts in the United States as steps in the right direction, this is not to say that great legislative strides have been made. In any case, a fuller understanding of the policy-making process is becoming more important if only to explain why more has not been achieved.

Public Policy Theory

Explaining policy-making is an enormously complex task and the process of disentangling the importance of the various potential influences upon public policy is fraught with difficulties. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the literature contains competing models of decision-making. Very generally, policy decisions come about as the result of the interaction between elected politicians, bureaucrats in government departments and agencies, interest groups, and public opinion. This interaction is mediated through the particular historical, social, economic and scientific contexts within which decisions are made.

What we have to explain is why certain public policy decisions are made over others or why certain policy demands are ignored. Taking this one step further, there is a general consensus among political scientists that policy outcomes are the product of policy networks. Thus, it is argued, policy is made at a sectoral level in a variety of more or less autonomous networks each involving a different mix of political actors. The nature of these networks has been a matter of some dispute and it is possible to identify a continuum based on their degree of openness, complexity and competition (Marsh & Rhodes, 1992, p. 249).

At one end is the so-called policy community, sometimes referred to as an iron triangle or a sub-government (Jordan, 1990). It is characterized by regular interaction between a small number of long-term participants, usually a government agency and certain privileged interest groups, operating within a large degree of consensus and closed off from other competing groups and areas of government. At the other is the so-called issue network, characterized by a considerable degree of openness and flux with a variety of competing groups able to gain access to decision-makers (Heclo, 1988). These two models are, ideal types representing two extremes and the reality may well reside on some point between the two. In addition, it should be remembered that different networks may apply to different issue areas.

After identifying the type of network, the next step is to seek to explain why it exists. An obvious line of inquiry is to examine the interest groups involved with a particular issue since it is often assumed that the ability of a group to gain a privileged place in decision-making is a product of the resources it is able to muster. These resources can include conventional items such as money, expertise and so on. In addition, it has been argued that business groups also have structural power in the sense that governments are more likely to offer them a privileged position because of the vital economic role - providing employment, aiding the balance of trade - that such organizations perform (Lindblom, 1977). In the case of animal protection, for instance, economic defenses of factory farming and animal experimentation are common. While this is an attractive conclusion which surely has some empirical force, the role of group resources should not be overestimated since to do so is to neglect other variables such as the preferences of politicians and officials and the general cultural climate and historical circumstances within which groups are operating (see Nordlinger, 1981).

Animal Protection and Public Policy

It will now be reasonably clear what a research agenda for animal protection politics should look like. Operationalizing it to discover the character of animal protection policy networks is not an easy task. The first step is to identify the rules and regulations concerned with animal welfare. It is useful to adopt a comparative study of two or more countries, particularly countries with different political structures and records on animal welfare, since it might be possible to isolate a particular variable or variables responsible for differential policy outcomes (Kitschelt, 1986). It is generally recognized, for instance, that animal protection laws and regulations are more stringent in Britain than in the United States where no federal legislation or regulations exist to protect the husbandry of farm animals, and where animals used for experimental purposes have only minimal legislative protection.

Tracing legislative proposals and the fate of regulations relating to animal welfare through the press and such sources as the Congressional Record, Hansard, and European Union documents is an easy enough, albeit laborious, task. A study of Congressional bills is essential here since Congressional committees (and particularly the chairpersons) have a great deal of influence and may indeed (along with certain groups and a particular government agency) form one leg of an animal welfare iron triangle.

Some work has been done on groups relevant to animal protection, specifically farmers (see Lowe, 1986) and the food industry in general (see Browne, 1988; Browne & Cigler, 1990; Guither, 1980; Mills, 1992) although none of these focus on the issue of animal protection. Thus, all that these sources can provide is some preliminary indications of which groups are involved, what role they play and how important they are. Building upon this, a more comprehensive list of participants can be devised by utilizing published lists of associations and lobbyists (for the UK see Millard, for the US see Close). Once such a list is created, it is then possible to seek to elicit further information from the groups identified. This can initially take the form of a questionnaire to develop a more manageable list of the most active and influential groups to be drawn up. These organizations can then be targeted for more extensive interviews, along with the relevant government officials responsible for animal protection policy.

Preliminary Observations

Based on my own research utilizing the methods described above, a number of preliminary observations can be made and a hypothesis open to further testing suggested. In the first place, it is clear that self-contained animal protection policy networks do exist. In Britain, for instance, there are separate sections within the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and the Home Office dealing with farm animal welfare and animal experimentation respectively. Likewise, there are separate networks concerned with issues relating to companion animals (again centering on the Home Office) and wild animals (Department of the Environment).

The results of a survey of group involvement confirms the self-contained nature of the policy networks by revealing that the sphere of group concerns tends, with few exceptions, to be narrow. Groups do not usually traverse the boundaries between the four animal protection areas identified above (i.e., groups involved in the farm animal sphere do not concern themselves with laboratory animal issues). Even those groups (such as the RSPCA, the Humane Society of the US and Putting People First) who have a wider scope do not always lobby extensively on all animal- related issues even if they have a position on all of them. Moreover, not only are network boundaries rarely traversed but, in addition, group concerns are sometimes focused even more narrowly within a particular network. Thus, for instance, the League Against Cruel Sports in Britain does not concern itself with other issues involving wild animals, leaving that to other groups such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds which, in turn, does not get involved with blood sports. Likewise, organizations representing particular commodities, whether it be pigs or eggs, tend to stick to issues directly affecting their industries. The Research Defense Society in Britain, is far more active on the issue of product testing than on medical research using animals.

In Britain, it is clearly apparent that, in the area of farm animals and animal experimentation at least, the reality approaches the policy community model. In the case of agricultural policy, including farm animal welfare, the National Farmer's Union (NFU) has a dominant role dating back to the Second World War and the immediate post-war period. The origins of the community are instructive since they illustrate, as Smith persuasively argues, how historical circumstances (in this case the need for an efficient farming sector providing a plentiful and reliable source of food) can explain the institutional organization of policy- making. Thus, it was not so much the power of the NFU which determined its privileged position as it was government's appreciation of a problem to which the NFU offered a solution (Smith, 1990). In addition, the NFU's position has, if anything, been strengthened by Britain's membership in the European Union (Smith, 1990, pp. 147-77). Thus, while animal protection groups do have access, occasionally, to the Secretary of State and more often to the Animal Welfare Division of MAFF, this is not the formalized, regular access that the NFU and other subordinate members of the food industry has.

Similarly, the animal experimentation community, based around E Division of the Home Office and the Animal Procedures Committee, is dominated by scientists and the pharmaceutical industries and, while animal protection organizations do have occasional access through the Animal Procedures Committee, only those groups who accept the prevailing ethos of the community (that animal experimentation is worthwhile and that prohibiting any particular procedure is illegitimate) are accepted as fully paid-up members. More radical groups - most notably the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection - have recently been successful in securing meetings with civil servants; this a minor advance over their former portrayal as terrorists.

What is fascinating about the British case is that the policy networks have engaged in a seemingly deliberate strategy of cooptation and concession. For example, the outcry over factory farming in the 1960s produced a government response in 1965 (the Brambell Committee's Report) which, over a period of years, led to limited legislation and the creation of the Farm Animal Welfare Council (1979) on which representatives from the animal protection movement sit. Likewise, similar concerns over laboratory animals produced the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act and the creation of the Animal Procedures Committee, again allowing for the participation of animal welfare interests. Only moderate animal welfarists are coopted as "valid" spokespersons precisely because they do not challenge the dominant ideology of the policy community. When the moderates challenge the prevailing consensus, they can be replaced or ignored. Thus, although the government has acted upon FAWC reports, more radical suggestions (such as the banning of fur farms) have been ignored. The danger this points to is that animal welfare interests granted some formalized access may well find themselves imprisoned within a community they are unable to influence. Arguably, the strategy of concessions and cooptation was precipitated by governmental actors, raising the interesting speculation that policy networks have been manipulated in order to serve the long-term interests of animal researchers and agribusiness.

The position in the United States is less clear and is the area most in need of research. The American political system has often been regarded as much more open and therefore more likely to produce issue networks than its British equivalent because of the numerous access points for groups provided by the separation of powers, the federal system, the lack of party discipline and the recent reforms which have further decentralized power in Congress (see Smith, 1993, pp. 8- 10; Browne, 1988, pp. 41-45). The number of animal protection groups with offices in Washington would seem to attest to this fact. Paradoxically, fewer and less stringent animal protection laws exist in the United States. Two alternative answers seem plausible. In the first place, it might be argued that the system is more closed than it appears. Traditionally, for instance, committee chairpersons in Congress had enormous power to block legislation and, in the case of farm animal welfare in particular, there is no question that farming and agribusiness interests have been well represented on agricultural committees in addition to within the Department of Agriculture. Likewise, the animal research community has always been extremely influential within agencies such as Health and Human Services. The National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health have been research's mouthpiece, defending animal experimentation much more vigorously than equivalent agencies in Britain.

Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that the influx of new cause groups in recent years and the changing public agenda has had an impact on interest representation. In the case of animal protection, it has proven much more difficult in recent years for policy communities to ignore animal welfare issues, not least because Congress, ever vigilant of public opinion, provides an important counterweight to government agencies (see Rifkin, 1992 for evidence of the "greening" of Congress). The problem for animal protection groups is that while their influence is greater now than it has ever been, the fragmented nature of the political system has produced so many competing policy-making centers that something approaching stalemate is the result.

The classic example of this is the fate of the 1985 amendments to the Animal Welfare Act (known as the Improved Standards for Laboratory Animals Act). Much to the alarm of the research community, this legislation was carried as part of the Farm Bill, largely because of the patronage of Robert Dole and Congressional reaction to revelations about the way some animals were treated in the laboratory environment. Although a moderate piece of legislation, the research community was determined to fight it at the implementation stage. Here, they were clearly aided by an administration indifferent to animal welfare and hostile to the expenditure needed for the legislation's effective enforcement. As a consequence, the Act and its predecessors are under- funded. Other parts of the executive branch, including the Office of Management and Budget and the National Institutes of Health applied enormous pressure on the Department of Agriculture (responsible for drawing up the regulations fleshing out the spirit of the legislation) and as a consequence some regulations are not yet in force. Even though the Animal Legal Defense Fund won a spectacular victory in the Washington D.C. District Court, ordering the Department to come up with regulations in accord with the spirit of the legislation, an appeal (promoted by the National Association for Biomedical Research) resulted in an overturn of the ruling.

Thus, while it appears that a more open system does exist in the United States, there are numerous points where the research community can regroup and fight the same battles over and over again, thereby obstructing or diluting legislation. What is interesting is that in the area of animal experimentation, the absence of a clearly-defined, self-contained and confident policy community seems to prevent, unlike in Britain, the granting of concessions and the cooptation of the more moderate elements of the animal protection movement. It is not entirely clear why this should be so or what the long-term implications are, but it explains why less has been achieved by the animal protection movement in the United States.

Conclusion

There is no question that the revitalization and radicalization of the animal protection movement in the past two decades has had a significant impact. Earlier, decisions on the welfare of animals were made in closed de-politicized policy communities. Only humane societies challenged the status quo, and their moderation and failure to focus on the institutional abuse of animals represented no great threat. Now, with growing public concern - partly the product of years of campaigning by the animal protection movement - animal welfare questions can no longer be safely ignored in cozy policy communities.

This is not to say that the policy communities have collapsed. Particularly in Britain, regular and effective access to decision-makers for the animal protection movement has proved to be largely elusive. Even in the United States, where the legislature is more open to group influence, those groups who have an interest in obstructing animal welfare measures are extremely powerful. Nevertheless, in both countries cracks are beginning to emerge. In Britain, policy communities have had to make concessions and, while the logic behind them is to maintain the community intact so as to prevent more radical change in the future, the granting of concessions does indicate a weakening of their position and reflects the government's need to take into account changing public demands. In the United States, Congress has begun to take animal welfare more seriously and the animal protection movement's opponents are more often forced out into the open to defend their position.

On the periphery, in both countries, there is an ideological battle (what Gramsci called a "war of position") resembling an issue network with, for the first time, those who use animals having to vigorously defend themselves in order to win over an increasingly hostile public. This is crucial, as Smith points out, for "the institutional exclusion of other interests cannot last long without a legitimizing ideology" (Smith, 1990, p. 38). As in the case of farm animals, it is not just the welfare of animals that governments have to consider, but also the environmental and health problems associated with intensive agriculture. It is these "problems," rather than the purely moral case for the humane treatment of animals, that is likely to undermine the present power relationship simply because the farmers and agribusiness interests do not seem to offer a solution. Indeed, they may be seen as part of the problem.

While much of this is optimistic for animal advocates, it should be pointed out that for the most part it is the animal welfare and wildlife conservation agenda rather than animal rights that is at issue not only with decision-makers but with the general public as well. As the first part of this article demonstrated, the ideological and solidary reasons that seem to attract activists into the movement can conflict with a goal-achieving welfare agenda. There is an ever present danger that the needs of organizational maintenance hinder the crucial task of coalition-building, a prerequisite for keeping the plight of animals, and realistic proposals to improve their condition, before the public.

Note

1. Correspondence should be sent to Robert Garner, Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, UK, EX4 4RJ. The research and writing of this article was aided by a grant awarded by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

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