Interest Groups and their impact on Public Policies

Interest Groups and their impact on Public Policies

Introduction

Public Policies are a very important part of the Government's payback to the public because with the designing and implementation of different public policies; the government works to provide to the general public with their rights. Public Policies refer to the laws and regulations passed by the congress for catering to the needs of the public in light of the government requirements and rules. However, these policies are not merely designed by taking votes from the general public; but are a result of discussions and idea generation by different people and parties in power (Lasswell & Horowitz, 2012).

Interest groups are one such party which has an important say in how public policies are designed and implementation. In order to better understand about the role of interest groups in public policy development; an in depth discussion regarding the relevant factors is required.

Discussion

Understanding the Interest Groups

Before understanding about how interest groups affect the public policy through their personal and group influence; it is necessary to first have an understanding of what interest groups actually are. Also known by the name of special interest groups, an interest group refers to any organization consisting of people that have a set of common goals to follow.

The basic idea behind the development of interest groups is to have likeminded people working together in order to bridge the gap that exists between lawmakers and the public. Apart from working to bridge the gap, interest groups also target their efforts towards influencing the public policy, elections and public opinion etcetera.

Characteristics of Interest Groups

As far as the characteristics of interest groups are concerned, these groups have no specific set of characteristics which could be used to define them. These groups could have a member strength ranging from merely a handful of people to thousands or millions of people. The structure of these interest groups could also be information, loosely held or even highly disciplined and structured. Moreover, some interest groups have a lot of resources where others have fewer resources in comparison (Abramowitz & Domhoff, 2011).

Examples of Interest Groups

Interest groups exist in many different ways in the society. For instance, some of the most prominent types of interest groups include the following:

General Welfare Organizations which work for promoting some particular group's welfare.

Government Interest Groups that consist of different government officials working for their own agenda at work.

Public Interest Groups that are in action for representation of public needs and fulfillment of those needs.

Religious Groups which work for representing the viewpoints of different religious parties (Hays, n.d.).

Apart from the above mentioned types, interest groups also exist in a lot of other different types working for other purposes.

Relationship between Interest Groups and Political Parties

There are not so many differences between political parties and interest groups when one looks in detail. Simply speaking, political parties and interest groups are two different individual organizations which have some opinions and attitudes in common. and they both seek to influence elections, government ...