INTEREST GROUPS IN CONGRESS

The Future of Interest Groups in Congress

The Future of Interest Groups in Congress

Introduction

An interest group can be defined as an organized group sharing common objectives that actively attempts to influence government (Verba, 2006). Interest groups are private organizations that try to affect public policy and try to influence the behavior of political decision makers. As a result, interest groups are often called pressure groups because of their effort to exert pressure in an effort to promote their agenda. The term interest group covers just about any group of people attempting to influence government.

(Ornstein, 2008) defines an interest group as “a shared-attitude group that makes certain claims on other groups in society” (p. 37) by acting through the institutions of government. Some interest groups are temporary; others are permanent. Some focus on influencing a particular policy, others on broad changes. Some work through the executive or administrative agencies, others through the judicial or legislative sectors, still others through public opinion.

Interest Groups Politics

As described by (Deutsch 2007), public policies distribute the costs and benefits of public programs either among many or among few. In a pluralist democracy, interest groups and individuals are expected to maximize the benefits of policies for themselves and to minimize their costs. In an idealized world with equal resources, knowledge, and power, every group could and would organize and gain access to public decision makers who would formulate policy based on the merits. In this system, lobbyists have the important role of explaining to decision makers the costs and benefits—who win and losses, intended and unintended consequences—of policy proposals (Dahl, 2007).

Lobbyists and other representatives of specific groups, particularly those with a financial bottom line, are expected to seek benefits for their own groups and to diffuse the costs among other groups or among the general public. This competition among all interests, in theory, permits decision makers to weigh all competing considerations and decide how best to meet the common good (Dahl, 2009).

In addition, without the concentrated money and connections, public interest organizations can find it difficult to be heard in the policy process (Cigler, 2008). For groups and issues that may not garner broad popular support at a particular time, such as those currently that represent pregnant teens, prisoners, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered communities, it may be difficult to organize and obtain social acceptance of any perceived costs despite the concentrated benefits to a specific group (Berry 2006). For diverse and disadvantaged groups such as the homeless and low-income Americans, there is a challenge both to organize the interests within the groups and to distribute the costs for policy solutions to other groups (the middle- and upper-income households) or the general public.

These political facts of life help us to understand some of the differences between special interest and public interest lobbying. The former often seeks to concentrate benefits for private interests and to distribute costs to the public through subsidies or regulatory policies that benefit them while distributing the costs of ...