A Study On Political Participation Of U.S. IT Industry Interest Group

Since the 1990s, the fast development of knowledge economy based on information technology has promoted deep reforms of economic operating mechanism at micro level, economic industry structure at middle level, and economic growth mode at macro level. With IT industry becoming the main impetus to economic growth of U.S., a batch of enterprises such as Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Netscape, Oracle ,etc, which are concentrated on the IT fields such as compute, Internet, semiconductor, etc., has been developing fast and become the symbols of U.S. New Economy. The fast development of IT industry not only brought forth new products, new technologies, new supplying resources and new enterprise systemstructures, but also paved the way for the rise of new economic interest group ------U.S. ITindustry interest group.Before the 1980s, the universality and depth of U.S. IT industry's political participation were restricted by the restriction of organizational resources and financial resources, which made U.S. IT industry fall into a sorry plight when collective political action was needed. Under the circumstances of industry association devoid of the ability of integrating common interests in the industry, U.S IT industry seldom participated in policy-making of government, some policies benefiting whole U.S. IT industry derived from the spillover effects of political participation of some large-scale IT enterprises. The holistic political participation of U.S. IT industry interest group originated from U.S.-Japan semiconductor trade disputes in the 1980s, and through the connection of industry associations the U.S IT enterprises started to carry out large-scale and ongoing action of political participation in this critical incident of life and death happened in this industry. In the 1990s, with the further development of U.S. New Economy and the boost by the motivation of defensive and offensive, the scale and scope of political participation of U.S. IT industry interest group have been on the increase and had an important influence on the making of public policies such as trade policy, tax policy, technician immigrant policy, IPR protection policy, export control policy, etc.It's an exploring issue to discuss the influence of political participation of U.S. IT industry interest group. The exploration of the political participation of U.S. IT industry interest group will help us know more about the operating mode and actual process of U.S. interest groups politics and provide material for the study of relation between U.S. IT industry interest group and the change of public policies of U.S. government. So this dissertation researches the history, current situation, resources and strategies of political participation of U.S. IT industry interest group, and chooses the export control on IT productsas a case to analyze the political participation of U.S. IT industry interest group in the policy issue of export control.This dissertation argues that U.S. IT industry interest group has grown into an unassailable power on the stage of U.S. internal politics in the later 1990s. U.S. IT industry interest group competes with traditional industries for political status and is becoming one of main representatives for U.S. industries. In the electoral politics, U.S. IT industry interest group has become a political power that both parties want to strive for. In addition, the political participation of U.S. IT industry interest group influenced the U.S. pluralism democratic politics. Because of the existence of interest divergence inside the group, the political participation extent of U.S. IT industry interest group will depend on its internal integration.