Interest Groups and Lobbyists in American Politics
• An American tradition?
• Logic of lobbying is transparent
– people who want to influence the decisions of government
understand the advantages of banding together and asking
powerful friends to help them out
– governments see the positives of lobbying
• help them gain support
• provides both political and technical information
– modern politics breeds professional lobbyists
• Remember Madison’s Federalist No. 10
– unpopular, but to paraphrase, the cures are worse than disease
• Madison’s solution to the dilemma
– social and institutional pluralism
Development of Interest Groups
• The colonial era
– insider lobbying
– public interest lobbying
• The early republic
– factions flourished
– political parties emerged
– coordinated efforts emerged
to shape government
– by 1830s many organizations
in America
• Tocqueville
– initially skeptical then viewed
such groups as essential to an
egalitarian social and political
system
• Later observers not so sure
– GAR puts drain on federal budget
– new groups such as large-scale
industrial corporations and trusts
engaged in lobbying
– their methods are viewed
negatively
– exposed by “muckrakers”
– led to laws regulating child labor,
wages and work hours, and so on
• Contemporary view?
– Unseemly?
– Selfish?
– Indispensable?
The Pluralist Defense of Interest Groups
• David Truman’s The Governmental Process (1951)
– defense of the legitimate role of interest groups
– consequence of economic development
• Moreover, the American political system is particularly
conducive to pluralist politics.
– decentralized
– elected officials need to form broad-based coalitions
• Idealized conception of system:
– Economic competition produces efficient markets, while political
competition produces public interest?
• Reality: system is biased
– money, information, access to authority, skill, bargaining power are
distributed unevenly
– Advantages the small at the expense of the large?
– Schattschneider: “The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly
chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent.”
What Do Lobbyists and Interest Groups Do?
• First, they try to survive.
– The role of Salisbury’s entrepreneur: examples are Nader and Schlafly
– organizations that survive on small contributions and mass
membership face particular challenges to organizational maintenance
– must focus on the issues that continue to generate contributions
– must pursue other means of securing member support
• Strategies of Influence: insiders vs. outsiders
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Lobbying
Electioneering
Grassroots lobbying
Litigation
Demonstrations (politics out of doors)
• Success as a function of goals:
– broad vs. narrow/status quo vs. change
• Effectiveness and access
• Interest group resources: money, information
– Money, information, expertise, strategic position, size?
The Collective Action Problem: Size =resource?
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The importance of organization:
Potential groups vs. actual groups
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The nature of collective goods
Why pay if you can get it for free?
Why pay if your contribution has no effect?
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Moral 1: Small groups have an advantage
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How do large groups compensate?
 Selective incentives and coercion
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Moral 2: The members of large groups may not care
about the groups’ policy goals!
(Their reasons for joining may lie elsewhere: unions, farm
organizations.)
How Public Interest Groups Overcome Free Riding
• Why are there so many public interest lobbies?
– rationality is overcome by the willingness to contribute to
groups espousing causes they care about.
– moral incentives
– the personal satisfaction of self-expression.
• Other large organizations circumvent the collective
action problem by offering “selective incentives:”
– benefits that can be denied to individuals who do not join
and contribute: magazines and baseball caps …
The Growth in the Number of Contemporary
Interest Groups
• Interest group universe is expanding.
– many sponsored by institutions such as corporations and
labor unions, etc.
– government entities (off-loading membership costs)
• state and local
• colleges and universities
• tribes
• Patrons
• Many prominent public interest groups, are financed mainly
by membership dues and small contributions.
• Memberships and budgets fluctuate with economic
circumstances.
Why Have Interest Groups Proliferated?
• Social ferment of civil rights and Vietnam eras
spawned many organizations that lobbied for
change.
• Increases in affluence and education of middle
class provided growing clientele.
• Technological advances made coalescing as a
group more possible.
• More government leads to more interest
groups.
Why Have Interest Groups Proliferated?
(continued)
• Inspiration of rival groups and imitators
• Encouragement of the federal government
– stimulated the organization of business interests
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• Business Roundtable
– encouraged the proliferation of organizations in the
nonprofit and public sectors
• American Farm Bureau Federation
• National Organization for Women
• Emergence to defend government programs
Fragmentation and Specialization
• Fragmentation of old interests
– new organizations form when new issues pull old
groups apart
– farm policy (example= milk producers)
– federally sponsored medical research (NIH)
• Increasingly complex issues and fragmented
policy processes force groups to specialize to
be effective
• Fragmented policy processes create more
opportunities for interest groups
Electoral Politics and PACS
• Electioneering/PACS
– FECA 1971-74 provided incentives for creation of PACs
– Explosive Growth of PACS
• PACs arise in diverse organizations
– labor, corporate, trade/membership/health, personal PACs of
MCs
• Focus on policy—narrow versus broad
– Influence?
• formidable barriers
• which way does the influence run?
The Persistence of Varying Interpretations
– Pluralists
• There is seldom a single public interest that unites us all
• Thus, politics should allow the free interplay of competing
interests in the hopes that a rough approximation of the public
interest might be produced.
– Hyperpluralists
• Out of control competition. No integrating set of goals.
Inconsistent policy.
• Are not some interests more legitimate than others?
• Confusion of implementation and administration with policymaking.
– Elitists
• Little of this activity truly matters. An elite is control of American
politics. It sets the agenda and calls the shots.