Interest Groups

Role of interest groups

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.

US interest groups

The interaction between capital and labor highlights the broader issue of how interest groups in general operate in each country. Interest groups play essential roles in both nations' systems but employ varying strategies to achieve different goals in each. U.S. and German citizens acknowledge the importance of interest groups and do not hesitate to criticize their flaws, but each citizenry underlines those imperfections and dangers in different terms. (Berman, 45)

History of interest groups

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 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 ...