Interest Groups
• Why are groups so important?
– Can individuals made change acting alone?
• No, unless perhaps that person is extremely
wealthy
– Aggregation of resources
• Money, members = power
– Forming advocacy coalitions
• Collective voice louder than single voice
• Groups or “special interest groups” are
sometimes viewed as a bad thing. Why?
Interest Groups: Background
•
Have been around since founding
– Madison mentions them in Federalist 10
•
A relatively small number of groups until the
1960s
– Major growth in interest groups in the 1960s
•
Why?
1) Diversity of population
2) Diffusion of power: more actors involved, so more room for
lobbying
3) Increasing number of agencies/programs = more clients
4) Weakening of political parties: people turn to groups
5) Technology: Easier to form/maintain groups
6) Increasing public demands (resources and rights)
Kinds of Interest Groups
• Institutional interest groups
– Membership because you belong to a
particular institution, such as Univ. of
Kentucky
• Share some interests with other students
– Affordable tuition
– Quality education
• Membership interest groups
– Groups you choose to join
• NRA, Green Peace, AARP
Types of Membership Groups
• Economic (private interest)
– Are primarily interested in benefits for members
– Example: Labor Unions --> The economic security of
the group’s members are directly at stake
• Public interest groups
– Seek to create broad benefits for everyone
– Example: environmental groups
– ***Non-members of public interest groups are freeriders
• Other types of groups
– Churches, for example
Why Do People Join Groups?
• To gain some sort of a benefit.
– Economic well being or gain
– The desire to do good
– The desire to belong to or identify with a
group
– The desire to find a way to make one’s voice
heard
– To get the freebies: magazines, journals,
calendars, etc.
What Do Groups Do?
• Lobbying (providing information)
– Lobbying individual members of Congress,
Congressional Committees, members of bureaucracy
• Lobbyists can provide information that is unavailable or
unknown to elected officials
• Has to be GOOD information, or else no one would listen to
them again
• Support candidates
– Money to campaigns (directly or indirectly)
– Votes (mobilization of members to vote for candidate)
When Lobbying Fails…
....Interest Groups turn to other strategies:
• Mobilize members to take action
– Contacting members of Congress, boycotting
(Mont. Bus Boycott), March on Washington
• Sue in court
– NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc
• Most prominent victory was Brown v. Board
• Public protests and “direct action”
– Riots, Protests (World Trade Organization)
Groups and Power
• We all know that some groups have more
power than others
• Think of the most powerful interest groups
in the United States:
 AARP
 AFL-CIO (Labor Unions)
 NRA
Why do some groups have more power than
others?
Differences in Group Power
• Resources
– Money
– Information
• Size of membership
– Not just membership, but ability to mobilize members
• Voting, Contacting, Protest/Petition
• Reasons for membership
– Direct economic incentives
– Material inducements
• Congruence of goals with prevailing ideas and
values
– If public opinion supports a group’s cause
Free-rider Problem
• Public goods are goods that can benefit
everyone, and from which no one can be
excluded
– Two characteristics:
• non-rival -- one person's enjoyment or consumption of the
good does not prevent others from using it
• non-excludable -- people cannot be prevented from using the
good
• Examples:
– Roads, Nat’l defense, clean air, end of world hunger
etc.
Free-rider Problem
• Non-excludability leads to the free rider
problem:
• A free rider is a consumer or producer that
benefits from the actions of others without
paying
– Because of the free rider problem, public
goods are usually provided by the
government, which levies taxes to pay for the
goods
Overcoming Free-rider Problem
• Small Groups
– Peer pressure, solidarity incentives against free-riding
• Coercion
– Lobbying governmental jurisdictions to hire, approve,
or certify only their members, to force free-riders to
join
• Selective benefits
– Journals, consulting services, etc.
– AARP: World’s largest mail-order pharmacy, low-cost
insurance, discounts on goods/products/services (all
for $12.50/yr.)