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Interest Group is defined as 'an organized body of individuals who try
to influence public policy.' This system is designed so that interest groups
would be an instrument of public influence on politics to create changes, but
would not threaten the government much. Whether this is still the case or not
is an important question that we must find out. Interest groups play many
different roles in the American political system, such as representation,
participation, education, and program monitoring. Representation is the
function that we see most often and the function we automatically think of
when we think of interest groups. Participation is another role that interest
groups play in our government, which is when they facilitate and encourage
the participation of their members in the political process. Interest groups
also educate, by trying to inform both public officials and the public at large
about matters of importance to them.
Irving Kristol
Washington, DC
Washington MonumentLobby groups also keep track of how
programs are working in the field and try to persuade government to take
action when problems become evident when they monitor programs. The
traditional interest groups have been organized around some form of
economic cause, be it corporate interests, associates, or unions. The number
of business oriented lobbies has grown since the 1960s and continues to
grow. Public-interest groups have also grown enormously since the 1960s.
Liberal groups started the trend, but conservative groups are now just as
common, although some groups are better represented through interest groups
than others are. There are many ways that the groups can influence politics
too. The increase in interest group activity has fragmented the political
debate into little pockets of debates and have served to further erode the
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power of political parties, who try to make broad based appeals. PACs also
give money to incumbents, which means that incumbents can accumulate
large reelection campaign funds, that in result, discourages potential
challengers. As a result, most incumbents win, not because they outspend
their challengers, but because they keep good potential opponents out of the
race. Conservatives are one of the big groups that influence politics and for
many reasons.
Conservative thinking has not only claimed the presidency; it has
spread throughout our political and intellectual life and stands poised to
become the dominant strain in American public policy. While the political
ascent of conservatism has taken place in full public view, the intellectual
transformation has for the most part occurred behind the scenes, in a network
of think tanks whose efforts have been influential to an extent that only five
years after President Reagan's election, begins to be clear.
Conservative think tanks and similar organizations have flourished
since the mid-1970s. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) had twelve
resident thinkers when Jimmy Carter was elected; today it has forty-five, and
a total staff of nearly 150. The Heritage Foundation has sprung from nothing
to command an annual budget of $11 million. The budget of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has grown from $975,000 ten years
ago to $8.6 million today. Over a somewhat longer period the endowment of
the Hoover Institution has increased from $2 million to $70 million. At least
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twenty-five other noteworthy public-policy groups have been formed or
dramatically expanded through the decade; nearly all are anti-liberal.
No other country accords such significance to private institutions
designed to influence public decisions. Brookings, began in the 1920s with
money from the industrialist Robert S. Brookings, a Renaissance man who
aspired to bring discipline of economics to Washington. During the New
Deal the Brookings Institution was marked-oriented--for example, it opposed
Roosevelt's central planning agency, the National Resources Planning Board.
Only much later did the institution acquire a reputation as the head of
liberalism.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, as Americans enjoyed steady increases
in their standard of living and U.S. industry reigned over world commerce,
Washington came to consider the economy a dead issue. Social justice and
Vietnam dominated the agenda: Brookings concentrated on those fields,
emerging as a chief source of arguments in favor of the Great Society and
opposed to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In the Washington swirl where
few people have the time to read the reports they debate, respectability is
often proportional to tonnage. The more studies someone tosses on the table,
the more likely he is to win his point. For years Brookings held a dominance
on tonnage. Its papers supporting liberal positions went unchallenged by
serious conservative rebuttals.
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As the 1970s progressed, a core of politically active conservative
intellectuals, most prominently Irving Kristol, began to argue in publications
like The Public Interest and The Wall Street Journal that if business wanted
market logic to regain the initiative, it would have to create a new class of its
own --scholars whose career prospects depended on private enterprise, not
government or the universities. 'You get what you pay for, Kristol in effect
argued, and if businessmen wanted intellectual horsepower, they would have
to open their pocketbooks.'1
The rise of Nader's Raiders and similar public-interest groups--which
achieved remarkable results, considering how badly outgunned they were;
brought a change in business thinking about money and public affairs. So did
the frustration felt by oil companies, which were being fattened by rising
prices but still dreamed of being fatter if federal regulations were abolished.
They were willing to invest some of their riches in changing Washington's
mood.
Women also have a voice in their own interest groups. The Woman
Suffrage movement was headed up by many groups that differed in some of
their views. The moderate branch was by far the largest and is given most of
the credit for the Nineteenth Amendment. Under the banner of the National
Women's Party, the militant feminists had used civil disobedience, colorful
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demonstrations and incessant lobbying to get the Nineteenth Amendment out
of Congress.
These are just some of the ways that American politics in the twentieth
century was influenced by special interest groups. Interest groups have
grown this much in this century and will probably keep progressing in the
coming centuries.
Bibliography
1. Groliers Encyclopedia on CD-Rom, 1993 Grolier Inc., Software
Toolworks Inc.
2. Ideas Move Nations, The Atlantic Monthly, 1986