Interest Groups

Interest Groups

Introduction

Many authorities and resources have provided various definitions and meanings associated with the interest groups, though all these descriptions share the same concept. This paper aims to highlight the different views that represent the meaning of Interest groups, followed by providing the various examples of the interest groups. Moreover, a discussion on the relationship of Interest groups and Politics, highlighting the special focus upon the ability of the interest groups to influence the political framework.

Discussion

Defining Interest Groups

According to an online resource by the University of Texas (n.d) that terms interest groups as an organization that aims to highlight the interests of its members through private and public medium. Such groups offer membership and benefits to their patrons but their primary objective being advocating the rights of their members. In the political sphere, these interest groups could be classified as legal interest group, lobbying interest groups and electioneering interest groups.

Conversely, Edwards, et al (2006) in their book identify interest groups as an association of people that share the same views and opinions on different or a single issue. These groups of people try to justify their views and strive to accomplish attaining the fulfillment of their objectives through challenging and influencing the policy framework of their region or country. Edwards et al (2006) further comments that it is due to this characteristic of propagating for different political policies that distinguishes these interest groups from political parties itself. Similarly, Twyman & Whitney (2009) explain interest groups by other names such as that of a pressure group, advocacy group, special interest group or a lobbying group. Moreover, they too verify the influence of these groups over politics by stating that these groups either promote or thwart any sort of change in the public policy, without any active participation in politics themselves.

Tsujinaka (n.d) define interest groups as 'social groups' that tries to fulfill its mandate of interests through influencing society and the politics. Thus, any type of group that is influencing the social and political reforms can very well be termed as an interest group. Moreover, Tsujinaka (n.d) comments upon the difference between the interest groups and interest associations by stating that these associations formed exclusively to function as influencing bodies, though groups are not. For example, a business organization can be identified as a interest group and not an association, similarly an industry specific organization can be identified as an association and not a group.

Furthermore, Tsujinaka (n.d) goes in detail explaining the concept of the interest groups by individually discussing in length the plausible meanings of each word of this term. By doing, so a clear concept and understanding of the term is elucidated. Hence, Tsujinaka (n.d) defines the term interest as a vigorous concern, or anything of importance that is based upon one's passion, beliefs and values, as well as any matter of importance that inculcates strong urge to voice one's concern and opinion, which also makes an impact on the others.

This classification is of key importance to the ...