Indeed, financial resources are often critical in influencing governmental policy. In some cases, money is used directly to influence politicians — for example, a lobbyist may treat a legislator to an expensive dinner. These instances are almost always considered corrupt, and are often outlawed as bribery. Money can also be used in more subtle ways to pressure lawmakers into voting in a particular way. For example, because they play a large role in the national economy, large corporations have an advantage in influencing lawmakers.
If these large corporations were to suddenly become less successful, it might create economic trouble, which could turn public opinion against elected officials. Thus, the wealthier a corporation is, the more political clout it tends to have. Likewise, large corporations have greater access to politicians than other groups, because corporate leaders often have insider status in powerful groups.
Moreover, an interest group might also make use of financial resources in order to donate to a political campaign. In this instance, the donation is not explicitly tied to a policy vote, and is therefore a legal contribution. That being said, the expectation is that interest groups will use their wealth to elect candidates that support their issues. In all of these ways, interest groups use money to gain success and influence on many levels. Apart from using money to directly influence bureaucrats, interest groups may also use their wealth to launch issue campaigns.
In this case, organizations try to gain popular support among American voters for a particular issue. Ultimately, the goal of this tactic is to pressure legislators into acting a certain way in response to a perceived public mandate. Since legislators are elected, there is a strong incentive for them to vote for issues that are popular with the current public opinion.
Media campaigns can be very effective at marshaling public opinion, but they are very expensive, because campaigns need to buy television and radio air time, as well as print advertisements.
Money is also required to hire and fund the professionals who will run these campaigns. Thus, interest groups with greater funds are far more likely to successfully influence policy than those groups with fewer financial resources. As organizations attempting to influence politics through public opinion, interest groups with larger memberships have an advantage over smaller ones. Since legislators are accountable to voters, the more public support there is for an issue, the more likely it is to receive support and governmental attention.
Larger interest groups necessarily have influence because of how many voters participate in them. They are also effective because the core group membership is able to more effectively campaign on behalf of an issue than a group with a smaller membership. Additionally, larger interest groups are able to stage large demonstrations that make visible the widespread support for an issue.
Interest groups often rely on leaders to organize their fundraising and make their advocacy efforts successful. Differentiate between the different kinds of leadership structures in interest groups and social movements. The role of leadership varies based on the political orientation or goals of an interest group.
Some interest groups, especially corporations, hire lobbyiststo lead their advocacy efforts. Interest groups with organized media campaigns may be led by political strategists. In contrast, more amorphous social movements that act as interest groups may coalesce around charismatic, but often unofficial, group leaders. When interest groups attempt to influence policymakers through lobbying, they usually rely on professional lobbyists. Lobbyists are often well-connected professionals, such as lawyers, whose role is to argue for specific legislation.
Successful lobbyists achieve insider status in legislative bodies, meaning they can talk directly to lawmakers. Recent estimates put the number of registered lobbyists in Washington, D. Interest groups that attempt to influence policy by changing public opinion may be led by political strategists, who are often consultants familiar with public relations, advertising, and the political process.
Political strategists are responsible for determining a campaign plan. The campaign plan usually involves deciding on a central message the interest group hopes to use for persuading voters to support their position. Additionally, the strategist determines where advertisements will be placed, where grassroots organizing efforts will be focused, and how fundraising will be structured.
In issue-based campaigns, successful political strategists create public awareness and support for an issue, which can then pressure legislators to act in favor of the interest group.
Interest groups may be broader than one formal organization, in which case advocacy may form a social movement. A social movement is group action aimed at social change.
Social movements may have some formal hierarchy, but they are often disorganized, with funding and support coming from a range of decentralized sources. Because of these factors, social movements do not always have a clear leader the way corporate lobbying efforts and media campaigns do. Instead, social movements may either rely on a network of local leaders, or may be led informally by a charismatic or influential participant. For example, the Civil Rights Movement was a diffuse and widespread effort toward social change, involving many formal organizations and informal groups.
Still, many consider Martin Luther King, Jr. Interest groups with a de facto leader may be more successful at sustained political advocacy than those with no clear hierarchy, because a clearly defined leader allows for more efficient organization of fundraising efforts, demonstrations, and campaigns.
That being said, social scientists often disagree when defining social movements and the most effective forms of advocacy, finding that leadership plays an ambiguous role in terms of the overall success of many interest groups. Advocacy groups that form along ideological, ethnic, or foreign policy objectives tend to have higher levels of internal cohesion. In the social sciences a social group has been defined as two or more humans who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity.
Other theorists, however, are a wary of definitions which stress the importance of interdependence or objective similarity. A social group exhibits some degree of social cohesion and is more than a simple collection or aggregate of individuals, such as people waiting at a bus stop or people waiting in a line.
Characteristics shared by members of a group may include interests, values, representations, ethnic or social background, and kinship ties. Kinship ties being a social bond based on common ancestry, marriage, or adoption.
In a similar vein, some researchers consider the defining characteristic of a group as social interaction. Convention Center. Groups vary considerably in size, influence, and motive; some have wide-ranging, long-term social purposes, others are focused and are a response to an immediate issue or concern.
Motives for action may be based on a shared political, faith, moral, or commercial position. Groups use varied methods to try to achieve their aims including lobbying, media campaigns, publicity stunts, polls, research, and policy briefings.
Some groups are supported by powerful business or political interests and exert considerable influence on the political process, others have few such resources. The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee is an example of an ethnic interest group in the United States — its mission is to influence American foreign policy and maintain a robust alliance with Israel.
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people, in which the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints.
Antecedent factors, such as group cohesiveness, structural faults, and situational context, play into the likelihood of whether or not groupthink will impact the decision-making process. Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is generally thought of as the loosening of self-awareness in groups, although this is a matter of contention. Sociologists also study the phenomenon of deindividuation, but the level of analysis is somewhat different. For the social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation.
As such, social psychologists emphasize the role of internal psychological processes. Other social sciences, such as sociology, are more concerned with broad social, economic, political, and historical factors that influence events in a given society. An interest group is a group of individuals who share common objectives, and whose aim is to influence policymakers.
Institutional interest groups represent other organizations, with agendas that fit the needs of the organizations they serve. Examples include the American Cotton Manufacturers which represents the generally congruous southern textile mills and the U. An important example for this are trade unions, educational unions, and labor unions. Much work has been undertaken by academics in trying to categorize how pressure groups operate, particularly in relation to governmental policy creation.
Membership interests represent individuals for social, business, labor, or charitable purposes to achieve political goals. An interest group is a group of individuals who share common objectives, and whose aim is to influence policymakers.
Institutional interests are organizations that represent other organizations, whose rules and policies are custom-fit to the needs and wants of the organizations they serve. This includes the American Cotton Manufacturers which represents the generally congruous southern textile mills and the U.
Chamber of Commerce which represents the multitude of wants of American businesses. Membership interests are organizations that represent individuals for social, business, labor, or charitable purposes, in order to achieve civil or political goals. Membership includes a group of people that join an interest group and unite under one cause. They may or may not have an opinion on some of the issues the staff pursues.
Similarly, staff are the leaders of this group that heads up the membership. With the membership united under one cause, the staff has the ability to pursue other issues that the membership may disagree on, but will remain members united by the primary cause.
The general theory is that individuals must be enticed with some type of benefit to join an interest group. Known as the free rider problem, it refers to the difficulty of obtaining members of a particular interest group when the benefits are already reaped without membership.
For instance, an interest group dedicated to improving farming standards will fight for the general goal of improving farming for every farmer, even those who are not members of that particular interest group. Thus, there is no real incentive to join an interest group and pay dues if the farmer will receive that benefit anyway. Interest groups must receive dues and contributions from its members in order to accomplish its agenda. While every individual in the world would benefit from a cleaner environment, an Environmental protection interest group does not, in turn, receive monetary help from every individual in the world.
Selective material benefits are benefits that are usually given in monetary benefits. For instance, if an interest group gives a material benefit to their member, they could give them travel discounts, free meals at certain restaurants, or free subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, or journals. Many trade and professional interest groups tend to give these types of benefits to their members. A selective solidary benefit is another type of benefit offered to members or prospective members of an interest group.
A solidary incentive is one in which the rewards for participation are socially derived and created out of the act of association. An expressive incentive is another basic type of incentive or benefit offered to being a member of an interest group. People who join an interest group because of expressive benefits likely joined to express an ideological or moral value that they believe in. Some include free speech, civil rights, economic justice, or political equality. To obtain these types of benefits, members would simply pay dues, donating their time or money to get a feeling of satisfaction from expressing a political value.
Also, it would not matter if the interest group achieved their goal; these members would merely be able to say they helped out in the process of trying to obtain these goals, which is the expressive incentive that they got in the first place. The types of interest groups that rely on expressive benefits or incentives would be environmental groups and groups who claim to be lobbying for the public interest.
Mancur Lloyd Olson, a leading American economist, sought to understand the logical basis of interest group membership and participation. The reigning political theories of his day granted groups an almost primordial status.
Some appealed to a natural human instinct for herding, others ascribed the formation of groups that are rooted in kinship to the process of modernization. Olson offered a radically different account of the logical basis of organized collective action. A collective good refers to something of value that cannot be withheld from a nonmember of a group.
To illustrate the free rider problem and collective goods, take environmental groups who advocate for a cleaner environment. While every individual in the world would benefit from a cleaner environment, an environmental protection interest group does not, in turn, receive monetary help from every individual in the world.
These incentives involve benefits like socializing congeniality, the sense of group membership and identification, the status resulting from membership, fun and conviviality, the maintenance of social distinctions, and so on.
Also, it would not matter if the interest group achieved their goal. These members would merely be able to say they helped out in the process of trying to obtain these goals, which is the expressive incentive that they got in the first place.
A purposive incentive refers to a benefit that comes from serving a cause or principle; people who join because of these are usually passionate about the cause or principle. Protests at the Republican National Convention : A purposive incentive refers to a benefit that comes from serving a cause or principle; people who join because of these are usually passionate about the cause or principle.
Demonstration against Ahmadinejad in Rio : An expressive incentive is another basic type of incentive or benefit offered to being a member of an interest group. An advocacy group is a group or an organization that tries to influence the government but does not hold power in the government. A single-issue group may form in response to a particular issue area sometimes in response to a single event or threat. In some cases initiatives initially championed by advocacy groups later become institutionalized as important elements of civic life for example universal education or regulation of doctors.
Groups representing broad interests of a group may be formed with the purpose of benefiting the group over an extended period of time and in many ways; examples include Consumer organizations, Professional associations, Trade associations and Trade unions. Health News Watchdog : Media watchdogs ensure that media coverage is factually accurate and as objective as possible. Advocacy groups exist in a wide variety of genres based upon their most pronounced activities.
Anti-defamation organizations issue responses or criticisms to real or supposed slights of any sort by an individual or group against a specific segment of the population that the organization exists to represent. Watchdog groups exist to provide oversight and rating of actions or media by various outlets, both government and corporate. They may also index personalities, organizations, products and activities in databases to provide coverage and rating of the value or viability of such entities to target demographics.
Support Public Libraries Advocacy : Advocacy groups seek to influence government policy. In cases such as public libraries, advocacy groups have been critical in lobbying for continued funding across the nation.
Lobby groups work for a change to the law or the maintenance of a particular law and big businesses fund very considerable lobbying influence on legislators, for example in the U. Legal defense funds provide funding for the legal defense for, or legal action against, individuals or groups related to their specific interests or target demographic. This is often accompanied by one of the above types of advocacy groups filing Amicus curiae if the cause at stake serves the interests of both the legal defense fund and the other advocacy groups.
Political parties are lobbied vigorously by organizations, businesses, and special interest groups such as trades unions. A party or its leading members may be offered money or gifts-in-kind. These donations are the traditional source of funding for all right-of-center cadre parties. They started a new party type, the mass membership party, and a new source of political fundraising, membership dues.
Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations which focus on specific political or social issues. In other words, they carry out, resist or undo a social change. Political science and sociology have developed a variety of theories and empirical research on social movements. For example, some research in political science highlights the relation between popular movements and the formation of new political parties as well as discussing the function of social movements in relation to agenda setting and influence on politics.
In most liberal democracies, advocacy groups tend to use the bureaucracy as the main channel of influence. In liberal democracies, bureaucracy is where the decision-making power lies. Advocacy groups can also exert influence on political parties, and have often done so. The main way groups exert their influence is through campaign finance.
In the US, George W. It was financed mainly by large corporations and industrial interests. In contrast to the conservative right, left-wing parties are often funded by organized labor. When the Labor Party was first formed, it was largely funded by trade unions. Similarly, political parties are often formed as a result of group pressure. For example, the Labour Party in the UK was formed out of the new trade-union movement, which lobbied for the rights of workers.
George W. Bush : George W. More often than not, lobbying coalitions enter into conflict with each other. For example, in the issue of free trade, some corporate lobbyists seek to eliminate or dismantle tariffs, promoting free trade and the free movement of goods and services. By contrast, lobbyists representing farmers and rural interests seek to maintain or reinforce existing tariffs.
It is in their best interest to preserve the status quo. If tariffs are reduced or eliminated, then American farmers are forced to compete with farmers from other trading countries. As these coalitions enter into conflict, congressmen must choose how to vote in the face of different pressures from different constituencies. Privacy Policy.
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