The Interest Group Society Jeffery M Berry

The Interest Group Society by Jeffrey M. Berry has undertaken a careful and thoughtful analysis of the role of interest groups in the American political process. H is the treatment of them is a valuable contribution to the literature of American politics. The growth in the number and importance of pressure group so n the American political scene is familiar to all observers of political life. Berry refers to it, accurately, as "the advocacy explosion." He discusses it within the context of "Madison's dilemma"-the age-old problem of "curing the mischief of faction." Early in his study Berry reviews the influence that pluralist thought has had within the discipline of political science. He notes that there is a growing, but certainly not new, popular perception that the power of interest groups is in some respects unhealthy. (Berry, 90)

The interest group society has increased interest groups importance and their impact on the growing number of politics today. The text analyses the maintenance, marketing of interest groups and the origin also the relationship to the party system. Comprehensive coverage includes labor, trade and farm association also the public interest organization, public interest firms, corporations, and citizen groups. The emphasis of the book is on lobbying all three branches of public opinion, government, and grassroots support. The book gives particular stress to the reality that the waxing of interest groups has come during a period of party decline. The general weakening of partisanship and the rise in issue voting have been closely linked.

Increasingly more and more citizens look to interest groups to speak for them in the political process. The growth of interest group politics-whatever the attendant problems-has broadened representation within the political system. Yet the decline of the parties and the proliferation of interest groups clearly have worked ...