Chapter 10: Interest
Groups
Daily Dilemma: Who is going to win the
presidential election? Talk to the person
sitting next to you.
Policymaking
• A continuous, long-term process, and those
who want to try to influence government
must develop appropriate strategies
Interest Groups and the American
political tradition
• An interest group is an organized body of individuals
who share some political goals and try to influence
public policy decisions
• Are interest groups good or evil?
Pro or anti?
Anti-Interest Group
• People dislike interest
groups in general because
they do not offer equal
representation to all
• Some sectors of society are
better represented than
others
• “We hate lobbies, except
those who speak on our
behalf ”
Pro-Interest Group
• It’s natural for people to
form associations
• “Liberty is to faction what
air is to fire” –Madison
• When issues need interest
groups, they will form
The Role of interest
groups
• Representation– interest groups represent people before their
government
• Participation– Interest groups are vehicles of political
participation
• Education– Interest groups help educate their members, the
public at large and government officials
• Agenda Building– Interest groups bring news issues into the
political limelight
• Program Monitoring– Interest groups and lobbies follow
government programs that are important to their constituents,
keeping up to date of developments in Washington and the
communities where policies are instituted
How Interest groups
form
• Truman– “When individuals are threatened by change,
they band together in an interest group.” Points of
disturbance force new groups to form.
• Interest group entrepreneurs– An interest group
organizer or leader
• Must have something attractive to “market” in order to
convince people to join
• The organizer of an ideological group must convince
potential members that the group can effectively lobby
the government to achieve their particular goals
Who is being
organized?
• Three variables discuss whether a group will become fully
organized or not:
1. An adverse change or disturbance can contribute to
people’s awareness that they need political
representation.
2. The quality of leadership is critical to the organization
of interest groups.
3. The higher the socioeconomic level of potential
members is, the more likely they are to know the value
of interest groups and to participate in politics by joining
them.
Interest group
resources
• A group’s most significant resources are its members, lobbyists,
and money, including funds that can be contributed to political
candidates
MEMBERS– One of the most valuable resources an interest group
can have is a large, politically active membership. A legislator may
sway his/ her opinion on letter writing or phone call campaigns.
• Members must be persuaded the group is doing a good job to
keep its members. New members must also be attracted.
• Groups must prevent the free-rider problem– the idea that people
benefit from certain activities but do not contribute to those
activities
Lobbyists
• Lobbyists represent the organization before the
government
• Lobbying mainly means passing information on to
policymakers (though is sometimes maligned because
it looks like people are trading favors)
• When hiring a lobbyist, an interest group looks for
someone who knows people in Washington.
• 40% of representatives and senators who leave Congress
become lobbyists.
Political action
committees
• An organization that pools campaign contributions from group
members and donates those funds to candidates for political office
• The greatest PAC growth has been corporate
• Most PACs are rather small, but 5% of PACs make up the largest
share of campaign contributions
• Critics charge that PAC contributions influence public policy, yet
political scientists have not been able to document consistent link
between campaign donations and the representatives vote on
specific issues
• Members of Congress or staffers would have a hard time turning
down a meeting with a PAC who made a large campaign
contribution
Lobbying tactics
DIRECT LOBBYING
• Relies on personal contact with policymakers
• Lobbyists must maintain contact with congressional and agency
staffers, constantly providing them with pertinent data
GRASSROOTS LOBBYING
• Grassroots tactics include letter-writing campaigns and protests.
Often used in conjunction with direct lobbying.
POLITICAL PROTEST
• If the government is unresponsive, a group might resort to
political protest
Information
campaigns
• Organized efforts to gain public backing by bringing a
group’s views into public attention
• Sponsoring research is another way interest groups
press their cases
• COALITIONS form when two groups share an
opinion on an issue
Is the system biased?
• Policymaking is determined more by the interaction of
groups with the government than by elections
• How do we determine if the system is fair?
1. All significant interest groups should be adequately
represented by lobbying groups
2. Government should listen to the views of all major
interests as it develops policy
Membership patterns
• Some sectors of society are much better represented
than others
• Those who work in business, or in a profession, and
those with a high level of education, and those with
high incomes are more likely to belong to an interest
gorup
• 10% of adults who work in executive, managerial or
administrative capacity are represented by 82% of the
organizations that advocate on economic issues
Citizen groups
• Citizen’s groups are lobbying groups that are unrelated
to people’s vocational interests and rather focus on
policies
• Poor people’s lobbies are not enough based on the
numbers of individuals who benefit from welfare and
social service programs
• The interests that are most affected by free riders are
broad societal problems, in which everyone could be
considered to have a stake (the environment, consumer
protection)
Business mobilization
• Business lobbies have increased in Washington
• Whereas citizen groups can try to mobilize individual
members, trade associations can mobilize the
corporations that are members of the organization
reform
• Some sectors of the interest group community may still
enjoy advantages that are unacceptable
• Are the advantages of some groups so great that they
affect the equality of people’s opportunity to be heard?
Do the disadvantaged need to be protected?
• Do all interest groups have the same ability to form?