Political Interest Groups
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AMERICAN POLITICS
CHAPTER 8
Interest Group-Voluntary association of citizens who share a common economic or ideological interest.
Interest is a group of citizens who share a common set of concerns and goals.
Interest groups are organized while interests are not.
Federalist paper #10 (Madison)
Allowing citizens to pursue their interests freely raised 2 critical issues:
1) Interests of different groups of citizens were frequently in conflict, government policies that served the interests of one group could threaten the interests or even the rights of another group.
2) Interests of a group of citizens and even the interests of the majority of citizens could be bad for society in the long run.
We know that narrowly based interest groups can exercise power far out of proportion to their numbers. They may do so by expending huge sums of money to influence representatives and the public or by taking advantage of the federal governments large decentralized structure to apply pressure at key points. Interest groups also benefit greatly by aligning themselves with friendly congressional committees and executive agencies, creating small by influential power centers within the government.
An alternative, proposed by the political scientist Jack L. Walker, is to distinguish between groups on the basis of their history and social structure...