A key question for any government institution is whether and how citizens can influence its policies. The pluralist model of American government suggests that its institutions are highly permeable, that most organized groups, assuming they can mobilize the necessary political resources, can press their views and affect policy. A more complex view analyzes how institutional rules, practices, and structures deeply influence who can have access to the institution and what kinds of access they can have. In executive branch agencies the White House staff could limit solar advocates' access to top decision makers by appointing officials not friendly to those advocates. On the other hand, the discussion in Chapter 5 of the conflict between the White House and both the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in the Ford administration suggests that the staffs in those agencies, particularly below the political appointee level, often thought about energy problems quite differently than did the White House and may have been a channel of influence for advocates who could not get access to the White House.

In addition to the agencies, the administrations sometimes operated ad hoc policy studies and processes. These activities often got much press and advocates' attention. I analyze one of them at length, the Solar Domestic Policy Review (DPR) of the Carter administration, examining how it provided outsider access to the policy process, to whom it did so, and the effect of such access.