This study empirically tests several explanations of membership in political interest groups by using transfer function ARIMA modeling to examine the aggregate membership of five midwestern state Farm Bureaus (Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska) from the 1920s to 1983. The Farm Bureau has an extensive history of institutional sponsorship. Using a model that focuses on the addition and elimination of selective material benefits, political benefits, and general economic conditions, the analysis finds an impact for the separation of the Extension Service from the Farm Bureau in three states and generates results that challenge earlier studies of membership in the American Farm Bureau Federation by not finding effects for economic conditions or political benefits at the state level.
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