INTEREST GROUPS AND LOBBYING

Interest Groups and Lobbying

Interest Groups and Lobbying

Interest Groups

An interest group can be defined as an organized group sharing common objectives that actively attempts to influence government. Interest groups are private organizations that try to affect public policy and try to influence the behavior of political decision makers. As a result, interest groups are often called pressure groups because of their effort to exert pressure in an effort to promote their agenda. The term interest group covers just about any group of people attempting to influence government. David Truman defines an interest group as “a shared-attitude group that makes certain claims on other groups in society” (p. 37) by acting through the institutions of government. Some interest groups are temporary; others are permanent. Some focus on influencing a policy, others on sweeping changes. Some work through the executive or administrative agencies, others through the judicial or legislative sectors, still others through public opinion.

Lobbying

Lobbying is one form of advocacy. Advocacy seeks to influence collective or private policy-related decisions. Lobbying is a legally defined subset of activities within advocacy. Research, public education, community organizing, lobbying to enact laws, agency implementation of laws, and voter engagement are all forms of a cycle of advocacy addressed in other chapters of this collection. If a public charity cares about clean air and water, for example, it can organize to identify and pursue a plan targeted at changing the behavior of private and influential decision makers. Research and public education may be activities that inform and facilitate organizing.

To advance this mission, the charitable organization might decide that existing law needs to be changed or that a new law needs to be established. As defined by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), lobbying is part of the legislative process of supporting or opposing legislation. After a law is passed, the national charity may want to influence executive agencies that administer the environmental laws to ensure implementation and enforcement. Under the IRS rules for charitable organizations, efforts to influence executive implementation of laws are not considered lobbying, though the federal government does consider it lobbying for purposes of registering under the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act.

Interest Group and Lobbying

In broad terms interest groups (or pressure groups) are organizations that seek to influence public policy: that process of trying to achieve influence is 'lobbying'. US authors tend to use the term 'interest group' while the older British literature tended to 'pressure group'. There is no consensus as to whether these terms are describing discrete phenomena or whether they are synonymous.

The most important reason for studying interest groups relates to notions of democracy. The main contributions come from Dahl (e.g. 1989) who argued that interest groups are- though not necessarily - beneficial because they sustain a policy debate and influence political agendas. Of less theoretical significance, but of pioneering importance, was Truman's The Governmental Process (1951) in which he defined interests in terms of shared attitudes.

Interest group membership and the numbers of groups are thought to be on the ...