Politics Chapter 12

Groups, Interests, and Movements

Preview

  • Organized groups and interests became increasingly prominent in the 20th century, transforming political interaction patterns.
  • Some observers in the 1950s and 1960s believed interest groups had replaced legislatures and parties as key political actors.
  • The growth of single-issue protest groups expanded the interest-group universe to include causes like consumer protection, animal rights, sexual equality, and environmentalism.
  • These groups were often associated with broader social movements (e.g., women’s movement, civil rights movement, green movement).
  • Interest groups and political movements thrive in mature democracies, serving functions from citizen empowerment to becoming part of government.
  • Debate surrounds their nature and significance, especially their impact on democracy.
  • Some believe groups distribute political power more widely, while others argue they empower the already powerful and subvert the public interest.
  • Social movements have been praised for stimulating decentralized political engagement but criticized for encouraging abandonment of formal representative processes.
Key Issues
  • What are interest groups, and what different forms do they take?
  • What have been the major theories of group politics?
  • Do groups help or hinder democracy and effective government?
  • How do interest groups exert influence?
  • What determines the success or failure of interest groups?
  • Why have new social movements emerged, and what is their broader significance?

Group Politics

  • Interest groups, like political parties, are major linkages between government and the governed.
  • Their origins parallel those of parties, arising from representative government and reflecting complex social divisions.
  • Political parties seek broad coalitions, while interest groups usually stake out distinct positions on specific issues.
  • Parties aim for direct influence by winning elections, whereas interest groups work toward indirect influence by pressuring government.
  • Interest groups predate representative government, such as the Abolition Society (founded in Britain in 1787).
  • The Abolition Society effectively raised public awareness of the slave trade's brutality and immorality.
  • Successfully persuaded the British Parliament to abolish the slave trade in 1807.
  • Inspired other advocacy groups to form.
  • William Wilberforce helped found the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals (RSPCA) in 1824.
  • The RSPCA promoted animal welfare and helped pass anti-cruelty laws.
  • RSPCA-style organizations were founded in many countries during the 19th century.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville reported that interest groups had already become a ‘powerful instrument of action’ in the USA in the 1830s.
  • Nationalist movements, like Young Italy (1831), became models for sister nationalist organizations.
  • The Society for Women’s Rights (France, 1866) stimulated a worldwide women’s suffrage movement.
  • By the end of the 19th century, powerful farming and business interests and a growing trade union movement existed in most industrial societies.
  • Most interest groups currently in existence are of recent origin, a product of pressure and protest politics since the 1960s.
  • This may be part of a broader process involving the decline of political parties and a growing emphasis on organized groups and social movements.
Types of Groups
  • Defining and classifying groups is challenging due to their imprecise nature and multiplicity of forms.
  • Focus on cohesive groups with a certain level of organization and visibility?
  • Consider any collection of like-minded people an interest group?
  • Must they pursue broader causes or public goals, or can they also pursue selfish and material interests?
  • Relationship between interest groups and government?
  • Are interest groups always autonomous, exerting influence from outside, or may they operate in and through government, perhaps even being part of the government machine itself?
  • Confusion is compounded by the lack of agreed terminology amongst political scientists.
  • The term ‘interest group’ is used in the USA to describe all organized groups, but in the UK, it refers only to groups that advance or defend the interests of their members.
  • The term ‘pressure group’ is therefore usually preferred in the UK, ‘interest group’ tending to be used as a subcategory of the broader classification.
  • Groups can nevertheless be classified into three types:
    • communal groups
    • institutional groups
    • associational groups.
Communal Groups
  • The chief characteristic of communal groups is that they are embedded in the social fabric, in the sense that membership is based on birth, rather than recruitment.
  • Examples include families, tribes, castes, and ethnic groups.
  • Unlike conventional interest groups, communal groups are founded on shared heritage and traditional bonds and loyalties.
  • Such groups still play a major role in the politics of developing states.
  • In sub-Saharan Africa, ethnic, tribal, and kinship ties are an important basis of interest articulation.
  • Communal groups also continue to survive and exert influence in advanced industrial states.
  • The resurgence of ethnic nationalism and the significance of Catholic groups in countries like Italy and Ireland demonstrate this.
Institutional Groups
  • Institutional groups are part of the machinery of government and attempt to exert influence in and through that machinery.
  • They differ from interest groups in that they enjoy no measure of autonomy or independence.
  • Bureaucracies and the military are the clearest examples of institutional groups, and each of these contains a number of competing interests.
  • In authoritarian or totalitarian states, rivalry amongst institutional groups may become the principal form of interest articulation.
  • The Stalinist system in the USSR was driven largely by entrenched bureaucratic and economic interests.
  • The Hitler state in Germany concealed bureaucratic infighting as Nazi leaders built up sprawling empires in an endless struggle for power.
  • Institutional groups are significant in non-democratic regimes and democratic systems.
  • Bureaucratic elites and vested interests in democratic systems shape the policy process, constraining elected politicians and governments.
  • Such groups form alliances with conventional interest groups, as in the case of the ‘military–industrial complex’.
Associational Groups
  • Associational groups are formed by people who come together to pursue shared, but limited, goals.
  • Associations are characterized by voluntary action and the existence of common interests, aspirations, or attitudes.
  • The most obvious examples of associational groups are what are usually thought of as interest groups or pressure groups.
  • The distinction between these and communal groups may sometimes be blurred.
  • For example, when class loyalties are strong and solidaristic, membership of an associational group such as a trade union may be more an expression of social identity than an instrumental act aimed at furthering a particular goal.
  • Although associational groups are becoming increasingly important in developing states, they are usually seen as a feature of industrial societies.
  • Industrialization both generates social differentiation, in the form of a complex web of competing interests, and, in a capitalist setting at least, encourages the growth of self-seeking and individualized patterns of behaviour in the place of ones shaped by custom and tradition.
  • When their primary function is to deal with government and other public bodies, such groups are usually called interest groups.
  • Interest groups appear in a variety of shapes and sizes.
  • They are concerned with an enormous array of issues and causes.
  • They use tactics that range from serving on public bodies and helping to administer government programmes to organizing campaigns of civil disobedience and popular protest.
  • They may operate at a local, national or international level, or at a combination of these.
  • Anti-constitutional and paramilitary groups are often excluded from this classification.
  • Groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) might not be considered interest groups because they sought fundamentally to restructure the political system, not merely to influence it, and used the tactics of terrorism and direct action instead of pressure politics.
  • There is a fine line though – many effective and legitimate interest groups have used direct action as part of broader pressure campaigns, without necessarily pursuing revolutionary goals.
  • Structure must, however, be imposed on the apparently shapeless interest-group universe by an attempt to further differentiate associational groups.
  • The two most common classifications are:
    • sectional and promotional groups
    • insider and outsider groups.
Sectional and Promotional Groups
  • Sectional groups exist to advance or protect the (usually material) interests of their members.
  • Trade unions, chambers of commerce, trade associations, and professional bodies are the prime examples of this type of group.
  • Their ‘sectional’ character is derived from the fact that they represent a section of society: workers, employers, consumers, an ethnic or religious group, and so on.
  • Strictly speaking, however, only groups engaged in the production, distribution and exchange of goods and services can be seen as ‘functional’ groups.
  • In the USA, sectional groups are often classified as ‘private interest groups’, to stress that their principal concern is the betterment and well-being of their members, not of society in general.
  • In contrast, promotional groups (sometimes termed cause or attitude groups) are set up to advance shared values, ideals, or principles.
  • These causes are many and diverse.
  • They include ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ lobbies on abortion, campaigns in favor of civil liberties or against sex and violence on television, protests about pollution and animal cruelty, or in defense of traditional or religious values.
  • In the USA, promotional groups are dubbed ‘public interest groups’, to emphasize that they promote collective, rather than selective, benefits.
  • The term non-government organization (NGOs) is also often used for such groups.
  • Promotional groups are therefore defined by the fact that they aim to help groups other than their own members.
  • Save the Whales, for instance, is an organization for whales, not one of whales.
  • Some organizations, of course, have both sectional and promotional features.
  • The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) addresses the sectional interests of American black people (by opposing discrimination and promoting employment opportunities) but is also concerned with causes such as social justice and racial harmony.
Insider and Outsider Groups
  • The alternative system of classification is based on the status that groups have in relation to government and the strategies they adopt in order to exert pressure.
  • Insider groups enjoy regular, privileged and usually institutionalized access to government through routine consultation or representation on government bodies.
  • In many cases, there is an overlap between sectional and insider classifications.
  • This reflects the ability of key economic interests, such as business groups and trade unions, to exert powerful sanctions if their views are ignored by government.
  • Government may also be inclined to consult groups that possess specialist knowledge and information that assists in the formulation of workable policy.
  • In Australia, for instance, ‘peak bodies’ is the term for various nationwide associations that advocate for the interests of their sector, and most have significant access to ministers and influence over government policy.
  • Many such bodies are aligned with important sectors of the economy, like the Minerals Council of Australia (mining) and the National Farmers Federation (agriculture).
  • The Australian Council of Social Service represents social workers and the community sector and advocates for the disadvantaged and is frequently consulted on social policy.
  • Insider status is not without its drawbacks, however.
  • Influence over government from the inside is about lobbying and negotiation, which sometimes means compromising principled goals for pragmatic gains.
  • Moreover, interest groups too closely associated with government tend to be viewed with suspicion by grass-roots activists.
  • Outsider groups, on the other hand, are either not consulted by government or consulted only irregularly and not usually at a senior level.
  • In many cases, outsider status is an indication of weakness, in that, lacking formal access to government, these groups must instead try to build popular support or electoral influence in the hope of exercising indirect pressure on the policy process.
  • Ironically, then, there is often an inverse relationship between the public profile of an interest group and the political influence it exerts.
  • Radical protest groups in fields such as environmental protection and animal rights may have little choice about being outsiders.
  • Not only are their goals frequently out of step with the priorities of government, but their members and supporters are often attracted by the fact that such groups are untainted by close links with government.
  • In that sense, groups may choose to remain outsiders, both to preserve their ideological purity and independence, and to protect their decentralized power structures.

Models of Group Politics

  • The nature of interest-group politics within a political system depends very much on factors like political culture, party system, institutional arrangements, and so on.
  • From a broad standpoint, we can also conceptualize and understand group politics from the standpoint of the rival theories of the state.
  • The most influential of these as models of interest-group politics are the following:
    • pluralism
    • corporatism
    • the New Right.
Pluralist Model
  • Pluralist theories offer the most positive image of group politics.
  • They stress the capacity of groups to both defend the individual from government and promote democratic responsiveness.
  • The core theme of pluralism is that political power is fragmented and widely dispersed.
  • Decisions are made through a complex process of bargaining and interaction that ensures that the views and interests of a large number of groups are taken into account.
  • Arthur Bentley’s emphasis on organized groups as the fundamental building blocks of the political process is neatly summed up in his famous dictum: ‘when the groups are adequately stated, everything is stated’.
  • David Truman’s The Governmental Process is usually seen to have continued this tradition.
  • Enthusiasm for groups as agents of interest articulation and aggregation was strengthened by the spread of behaviouralism in the 1950s and early 1960s.
  • Systems analysis, for example, portrayed interest groups as ‘gatekeepers’ that filtered the multiple demands made of government into manageable sets of claims.
  • Community power studies claimed to find empirical support for the pluralist assertion that no single local elite is able to dominate community decision-making.
  • From the pluralist perspective, group politics is central to a healthy democratic process.
  • A form of pluralist democracy had superseded more conventional electoral democracy, in that groups and organized interests had replaced political parties as the principal link between government and the governed.
  • The central assumptions of this theory are that all groups and interests have the potential to organize and gain access to government, that they are internally responsive in the sense that leaders broadly articulate the interests or values of their members, and that their political influence is roughly in line with their size and the intensity of their support.
  • One way in which this was demonstrated was by evidence that political power is fragmented in such a way that no group or interest can achieve dominance for any period of time.
  • As Robert Dahl put it, ‘all the active and legitimate groups in the population can make themselves heard at some crucial stage in the process of decision’.
  • The alternative idea of ‘countervailing powers’ suggests that a dynamic equilibrium naturally emerges amongst competing groups, as the success of, say, business merely encourages opponents, such as labor or consumers, to organize to counter that success.
  • Group politics is thus characterized by a rough balance of power.
  • This highly optimistic view of group politics has been heavily criticized by elitists and Marxists.
  • Elitists challenge the empirical claims of pluralism by suggesting that they recognize only one ‘face’ of power: the ability to influence decision-making.
  • In contrast to the notion that power is widely and evenly distributed, elite theorists draw attention to the existence of a ‘power elite’, comprising the heads of business corporations, political leaders, and military chiefs.
  • Marxists, for their part, have traditionally emphasized that political power is closely linked to the ownership of productive wealth, which suggests the existence of a capitalist ‘ruling class’.
  • For neo-Marxists this is reflected in ‘unequal competition’ between business and labor groups, the former enjoying a control of economic resources, a public status, and a level of access to government that the latter cannot match.
  • The rise of globalization has renewed such arguments, leading some to suggest that the increased mobility of capital and a free-trade international system has resulted in the ‘corporate takeover’ of government.
  • In the face of such criticism, a more critical or qualified form of pluralism, neopluralism, emerged.
  • This has highlighted the privileged position that business groups enjoy in Western polyarchies, while acknowledging that this seriously compromises the claim that such societies are democratic.
Corporatist Model
  • Corporatist models of group politics differ from pluralism in that they attempt to trace the implications of the closer links that have developed in industrialized societies between groups and the state.
  • Corporatism is a social theory that emphasizes the privileged position that certain groups enjoy in relation to government, enabling them to influence the formulation and implementation of public policy.
  • Some commentators regard corporatism as a state-specific phenomenon, shaped by particular historical and political circumstances.
  • For example, in Hong Kong, almost half of the legislature’s seats are allocated to so-called ‘functional constituencies’, which represent the various commercial interest groups in the city, such as insurance, banking, and wholesaling.
  • Moreover, pro-business organizations like the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce work very closely with government to coordinate policy, making Hong Kong an explicitly corporatist system.
  • Others, however, see corporatism as a general phenomenon that stems from tendencies that are implicit in economic and social development, and thus believe that it is manifest, in some form or other, in all advanced industrial states.
  • Even the USA, usually portrayed as the model of pluralist democracy, has invested its regulatory agencies with quasi-legislative powers, thereby fostering the development of formal bonds between government and major interests.
  • From this perspective, corporatist tendencies may merely reflect the symbiotic relationship that exists between groups and government.
  • Groups seek ‘insider’ status because it gives them access to policy formulation, which enables them better to defend the interests of their members.
  • Government, on the other hand, needs groups, both as a source of knowledge and information, and because the compliance of major interests is essential if policy is to be workable.
  • In increasingly differentiated and complex industrial societies the need for consultation and bargaining continues to grow, with the result that, perhaps inevitably, institutional mechanisms emerge to facilitate it.
  • The drift towards corporatism in advanced capitalist states, particularly pronounced in the 1960s and 1970s, provoked deep misgivings about the role and power of interest groups.
  • In the first place, corporatism considerably cut down the number and range of groups that enjoyed access to government.
  • Corporatism invariably privileges economic or functional groups, because it leads to a form of tripartitism that binds government to business and organized labor.
  • However, it may leave consumer or promotional groups out in the cold, and institutionalized access is likely to be restricted to confederations that speak on behalf of a range of organizations and groups.
  • A second problem is that, in contrast to the pluralist model, corporatism portrays interest groups as hierarchically ordered and dominated by leaders who are not directly accountable to members.
  • Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the price that group leaders pay for privileged access to government is a willingness to deliver the compliance of their members.
  • From this point of view, ‘government by consultation’ may simply be a sham concealing the fact that corporatism acts as a mechanism of social control.
  • Third, concern has been expressed about the threat that corporatism poses to representative democracy.
  • Whereas pluralism suggests that group politics supplements the representative process, corporatism creates the specter of decisions being made outside the reach of democratic control and through a process of bargaining that is in no way subject to public scrutiny.
  • Finally, corporatism has been linked to the problem of government ‘overload’, in which government may effectively be ‘captured’ by consulted groups and thus be unable to resist their demands.
  • This critique has been advanced most systematically by the New Right.
New Right Model
  • The antipathy of the New Right towards interest groups is derived, ideologically, from the individualism that lies at the heart of neoliberal economics.
  • Social groups and collective bodies of all kinds are therefore viewed with suspicion.
  • This is clearly reflected in the New Right’s preference for a market economy driven by self-reliance and entrepreneurialism.
  • However, the New Right has expressed particular concern about the alleged link between corporatism and escalating public spending and the associated problems of over-government.
  • New Right anti-corporatism has been influenced by public-choice theory, which argued that people join interest groups largely to secure ‘public goods’ – goods that can be enjoyed by individuals regardless of whether they contribute to their acquisition or maintenance.
  • A pay increase, for instance, is a public good in that workers who are not union members, or who choose not to strike in furtherance of the pay claim, benefit equally with union members and those who did strike.
  • This creates opportunities for individuals to become ‘free-riders’, reaping benefits without incurring the various costs that group membership may entail.
  • This analysis is significant because it implies that there is no guarantee that the existence of a common interest will lead to the formation of an organization to advance or defend that interest.
  • The pluralist assumption that all groups have some kind of political voice therefore becomes highly questionable.
  • Olson also argued that group politics may often empower small groups at the expense of large ones.
  • A larger membership encourages free-riding because individuals may calculate that the group’s effectiveness will be little impaired by their failure to participate.
  • The Rise and Decline of Nations advanced a trenchant critique of interest group activity, seeing it as a major determinant of the prosperity or economic failure of particular states.
  • The UK and Australia, for example, were seen as suffering from ‘institutional sclerosis’.
  • This occurred as strong networks of interest groups emerged that were typically dominated by coalitions of narrow, sectional interests, including trade unions, business organizations and professional associations.
  • The message is that there is an inverse relationship between strong and well-organized interest groups, on the one hand, and economic growth and national prosperity on the other.
  • Analyses like these had a powerful impact on New Right thinking.
  • The clearest demonstration of this was the backlash against corporatism from the 1980s onwards, spearheaded in the USA by Reagan and in the UK by Thatcher.
  • In the USA, this took the form of an attempt to deregulate the economy by weakening regulatory agencies; in the UK, it was evident in the marginalization and later abolition of corporatist bodies and a determined assault on trade union power.

Patterns of Group Politics

  • How important are interest groups?
  • It is widely accepted that interest-group activity is closely linked to economic and social development.
  • Whereas agrarian or traditional societies tend to be dominated by a small number of interests, advanced industrial ones are complex and highly differentiated.
  • Interest groups thus come to assume a central importance in mediating between the state and a more fragmented society, especially as the spread of education extends political awareness and organizational skills.
  • However, the roles and significance of organized interests vary from system to system, from state to state, and over time.
  • The principal factors determining group influence are the following:
    • the political culture
    • the institutional structure
    • party politics
    • the nature and style of public policy.
  • The political culture is crucial for two reasons.
  • First, it determines whether interest groups are viewed as legitimate or non-legitimate actors, whether their formation and influence is permitted and encouraged, or otherwise.
  • Second, it affects the willingness of people to form or join organized interests or to engage in group politics.
  • At one extreme, regimes can practice monism, suppressing all forms of voluntary associational activity in order to ensure a single, unchallengeable center of state power.
  • This typically occurs in military regimes and one-party states.
  • Although no contemporary or historical state has succeeded in stamping out all forms of group or factional activity, monistic regimes at least push group activity underground or ensure that it is expressed through the party–state apparatus and is thus entangled with the political and ideological goals of the regime.
  • Pluralist regimes, on the other hand, not only permit group politics, but encourage and even, in some cases, require it.
  • Groups may be asked to participate in policy formulation or to be represented on public bodies.
  • One of the reasons for the generally high level of group activity found in the USA, for instance, is the recognition in US political culture of the right of private groups to be heard.
  • This is enshrined in constitutional guarantees of free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and so forth.
  • In Japan, the absence of clear distinctions between the public and private realms has created a political culture in which, in pre-democratic and democratic periods alike, a close relationship between government and business has been taken for granted.
  • By contrast, in some European states, organized interests are regarded with suspicion.
  • This has traditionally been the case in France, where, influenced by Jacobin ideology, groups have been seen to both undermine the ‘general will’ of the people and challenge the strength and unity of the French state.
  • However, French political culture also embodies a tradition of direct action, demonstrated variously by farmers, students/trade unionists, and 'yellow vest' protesters.
  • The institutional structure of government is clearly significant in terms of interest-group activity in that it establishes points of access to the policy process.
  • Unitary and centralized political systems, such as the UK’s, tend to narrow the scope of group politics and concentrate it around the executive branch of government.
  • Although this does not condemn groups to a marginal existence, it places heavy emphasis on ‘insider’ status and broadens the capacity of the government of the day to choose whether or not to respond to group pressure.
  • The US government, on the other hand, is fragmented and decentralized.
  • This reflects the impact of bicameralism, the separation of powers, federalism, and judicial review.
  • The range of ‘access points’ that this offers to interest groups makes the US system peculiarly vulnerable to group pressures.
  • Although this undoubtedly acts as a stimulus to group formation and enlarges the number of influential groups, it may also be self-defeating, in that the activities of groups can end up canceling each other out.
  • The relationship between political parties and interest groups is always complex.
  • In some senses, they are clearly rivals.
  • While parties seek to aggregate interests and form political programs typically based on broad ideological goals, interest groups are concerned with a narrower and more specific range of issues and objectives.
  • Nevertheless, interest groups often seek to exert influence in and through parties, in some cases even spawning parties in an attempt to gain direct access to power.
  • Many socialist parties, such as the UK Labour Party, were effectively created by the trade unions, and institutional and financial links, albeit modified, endure to this day.
  • The pattern of interest-group politics is also influenced by the party system.
  • Dominant-party systems tend, quite naturally, to narrow the focus of group politics, concentrating it on the governing party.
  • Multi-party systems, on the other hand, are fertile ground for interest-group activity, because they broaden the scope of access.
  • The legislative influence of interest groups is perhaps greatest in party systems like the USA’s, in which political parties are weak in terms of both organization and discipline.
  • Finally, the level of group activity fluctuates in relation to shifts in public policy, particularly the degree to which the state intervenes in economic and social life.
  • As a general rule, interventionism goes hand in hand with corporatism, although there is a debate about which is the cause and which is the effect.
  • Whatever the answer, it is clear that, amongst Western states, the integration of organized interests, particularly functional interests, into public life has been taken furthest where social-democratic policies have been pursued.
  • The Swedish system is the classic example of this.
  • Interest groups constitute an integral part of the Swedish political scene at every level.
  • There are close, if not institutional, links between the trade unions and the Social Democratic Labour Party.
  • A similar pattern of corporate representation has developed in the Austrian ‘chamber’ system, which provides statutory representation for major interests such as commerce, agriculture and labor.
  • In Germany, key economic groups are so closely involved in policy formulation that the system has been described as one of ‘polyarchic elitism’.
How do groups exert influence?
  • Interest groups have at their disposal a broad range of tactics and political strategies.
  • Indeed, it is almost unthinkable that a group should confine itself to a single strategy or try to exert influence through just one channel of influence.
  • The methods that groups use vary according to a number of factors.
  • These include the issue with which the group is concerned and how policy in that area is shaped.
  • Similarly, the nature of the group and the resources at its disposal are crucial determinants of its political strategy.
  • These resources include the following:
    • public sympathy for the group and its goals
    • the size of its membership or activist base
    • its financial strength and organizational capabilities
    • its ability to use sanctions that in some way inconvenience or disrupt government
    • personal or institutional links it may have to political parties or government bodies.
  • Business groups are more likely than, say, trade unions or consumer groups to employ professional lobbyists or mount expensive public-relations campaigns, because, quite simply, they have the financial capacity to do so.
  • The methods used by interest groups are shaped by the channel of access through which influence is exerted.
  • In all states, interest-group activity tends to center on the bureaucracy as the key institution in the process of policy formulation.
  • Access via this channel is largely confined to major economic and functional groups, such as large corporations, employers’ associations, trade unions, farming interests and key professions.
  • In Austria, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian states, for example, corporatist institutions have been developed specifically to facilitate group consultation, usually giving these peak groups representing employers’ and employees’ interests a measure of formal representation.
  • More commonly in other political systems, the consultative process is informal yet institutionalized, taking place through meetings and regular contacts that are rarely publicized and are beyond the scope of public scrutiny.
  • The crucial relationship here is usually that between senior bureaucrats and leading business or industrial interests.
  • The advantages that business groups enjoy in this respect include the key role they play in the economy as producers, investors and employers, the overlap in social background and political outlets between business leaders and ministers and senior officials, and the widely held public belief that business interests coincide with the national interest.
  • The relationship is a necessary one on some level – changing something like health care policy is enormously complex and may involve coordination with hundreds of interest groups and large corporations, from pharmaceutical manufacturers to health insurers.
  • Bureaucrats rely to some degree on the expertise and compliance of such groups to make policy changes workable, but there is a fine line to tread, and the relationship can easily become too cozy.
  • This relationship is often consolidated by a ‘revolving door’ through which bureaucrats, on retirement, move into well-paid jobs in private business.
  • Influence exerted through the legislature, often called lobbying, is another important form of interest-group activity.
  • One manifestation of this is the growth in the number of professional lobbyists.
  • Interest-group activity surrounding the US Congress is usually seen as the most intense in the world.
  • This reflects the strength of Congress in terms of its constitutional independence and powerful committee system, and the fact that its decentralized party system allows individual representatives to be easily recruited by groups and causes.
  • Much of this influence is exerted through financial contributions made to election campaigns by political action committees (PACs).
  • For example, the National Rifle Association (NRA) owes much of its considerable power on Capitol Hill to the success of its PAC, the Political Victory Fund, in challenging gun-control candidates for Congress and supporting gun-owners’ rights candidates.
  • Policy networks have also developed through institutionalized contacts between legislators (particularly key figures on legislative committees) and ‘affected’ groups and interests.
  • In the USA these form two ‘legs’ (executive agencies being the third leg) of the so-called ‘iron triangles’ that dominate much of domestic policy-making.
  • Like bureaucrats, however, there is an element of necessity to the relationship – legislators are required to make decisions on a staggering array of issues, most which they are not likely to be experts on.
  • Some scholars have found that lobbyists act a sort of ‘adjunct staff ’ to legislators, providing them with crucial policy information and political intelligence that allows them to do their jobs.
  • As lobbyists are not neutral brokers of information, however, and some interest groups are better funded and lobby more effectively than others, the view legislators have through this process will invariably be distorted.
  • Lobbying activities focused on the legislature are less extensive and less significant in states like Canada and the UK in which party discipline is strong and parliaments are usually subject to executive control.
  • Nevertheless, a US-style lobbying industry has spread internationally.
  • In systems in which the courts are unable to challenge legislation and rarely check executive actions, interest-group activity focused on the judiciary is of only limited significance.
  • Where codified constitutions invest judges with the formal power of judicial review, however, as in Australia and the USA, the court system attracts far greater attention from interest groups.
  • Interest-group pressure is often also exerted through political parties.
  • In some cases, parties and groups are so closely linked by historical, ideological and even institutional ties that they are best thought of as simply two wings of the same social movement.
  • The principal means through which groups influence parties is via campaign finance, and the benefits they hope to achieve are clear.
  • Very different methods are employed by groups that seek to influence government indirectly via the media and public opinion campaigns.
  • Tactics here range from petitions, protests, and demonstrations to civil disobedience