The impact of organized interests on eligibility determination: The case of veterans' disability compensation

The bureaucracy has a profound impact on the direction of policy when it determines eligibility for a variety of government programs. Given the significance of eligibility determination for policy and the fact that street-level bureaucrats have great latitude when interpreting eligibility standards, organized interests have an incentive to try to influence the application of eligibility rules. Despite this, few researchers have explored the impact of organized interests on eligibility determination. Using data from the Veterans' Disability Compensation (VDC) program, we examine how organized interests affect the implementation of eligibility-based programs. We emphasize the dual role of many organized interests as both traditional advocacy groups and service providers and use insight from the interest group and third-party service provider literature to formulate hypotheses. We find that veterans' groups affect variables capturing demand for, access to, and effective implementation of the VDC program, although we do not find effects for every measure of implementation included in our study.