Interest Groups

• Why are groups so important?

– Can individuals made change acting alone?

• No, unless perhaps that person is extremely wealthy

– Aggregation of resources

• Money, members = power

– Forming advocacy coalitions

• Collective voice louder than single voice

• Groups or “special interest groups” are sometimes viewed as a bad thing. Why?

Interest Groups: Background

• Have been around since founding

– Madison mentions them in Federalist 10

• A relatively small number of groups until the 1960s

– Major growth in interest groups in the 1960s

• Why?

– Diversity of population

– Diffusion of power: more actors involved, so more room for lobbying

– Increasing number of agencies/programs = more clients

– Weakening of political parties: people turn to groups

– Technology: Easier to form/maintain groups

– Increasing public demands (resources and rights)

Kinds of Interest Groups

• Institutional interest groups

– Membership because you belong to a particular institution, such as Univ. of Kentucky

• Share some interests with other students

– Affordable tuition

– Quality education

• Membership interest groups

– Groups you choose to join

• NRA, Green Peace, AARP

Types of Membership Groups

• Economic (private interest)

– Are primarily interested in benefits for members

– Example: Labor Unions --> The economic security of the group’s members are directly at stake

• Public interest groups

– Seek to create broad benefits for everyone

– Example: environmental groups

– ***Non-members of public interest groups are free-riders

• Other types of groups

– Churches, for example

Why Do People Join Groups?

• To gain some sort of a benefit.

– Economic well being or gain

– The desire to do good

– The desire to belong to or identify with a group

– The desire to find a way to make one’s voice heard

– To get the freebies: magazines, journals, calendars, etc.

What Do Groups Do?

• Lobbying (providing information)

– Lobbying individual members of Congress, Congressional Committees, members of bureaucracy

• Lobbyists can provide information that is unavailable or unknown to elected officials

• Has to be GOOD information, or else no one would listen to them again

• Support candidates

– Money to campaigns (directly or indirectly)

– Votes (mobilization of members to vote for candidate)

When Lobbying Fails…

....Interest Groups turn to other strategies:

• Mobilize members to take action

– Contacting members of Congress, boycotting (Mont. Bus Boycott), March on Washington

• Sue in court

– NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc

• Most prominent victory was Brown v. Board

• Public protests and “direct action”

– Riots, Protests (World Trade Organization)

Groups and Power

• We all know that some groups have more power than others

• Think of the most powerful interest groups in the United States:

à AARP

à AFL-CIO (Labor Unions)

à NRA

Why do some groups have more power than others?

Differences in Group Power

• Resources

– Money

– Information

• Size of membership

– Not just membership, but ability to mobilize members

• Voting, Contacting, Protest/Petition

• Reasons for membership

– Direct economic incentives

– Material inducements

• Congruence of goals with prevailing ideas and values

– If public opinion supports a group’s cause

Free-rider Problem

• Public goods are goods that can benefit everyone, and from which no one can be excluded

– Two characteristics:

• non-rival -- one person's enjoyment or consumption of the good does not prevent others from using it

• non-excludable -- people cannot be prevented from using the good

• Examples:

– Roads, Nat’l defense, clean air, end of world hunger etc.

Free-rider Problem

• Non-excludability leads to the free rider problem:

• A free rider is a consumer or producer that benefits from the actions of others without paying

– Because of the free rider problem, public goods are usually provided by the government, which levies taxes to pay for the goods

Overcoming Free-rider Problem

• Small Groups

– Peer pressure, solidarity incentives against free-riding

• Coercion

– Lobbying governmental jurisdictions to hire, approve, or certify only their members, to force free-riders to join

• Selective benefits

– Journals, consulting services, etc.

– AARP: World’s largest mail-order pharmacy, low-cost insurance, discounts on goods/products/services (all for $12.50/yr.)