The Interest Group Society

Jeffrey M. Berry, Clyde Wilcox

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315534077
• Édition: 6
• Sujet: Politics & International Relations
• Sous-sujet: Politics

Considered the gold standard on interest group politics, this widely-used text analyzes interest groups within the intuitive framework of democratic theory, enabling readers to understand the workings of interest groups within the larger context of our political system. Comprehensive coverage includes not only the traditional farm, labor, and trade associations, but also citizen groups, public interest organizations, corporations, and public interest firms

Brief in page count yet comprehensive in coverage, the book is flexible for different class settings. The book's rich content and lean size allows it to stand alone as the centerpiece of a course, or be assigned as one of several texts.

New to the Sixth Edition

• 
  
  

• Updates the role of money in interest group activity following the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

• 
  
  

• Covers new interest group actors including the Tea Party, Occupy, and others.

• 
  
  

• Examines new developments in key interest group arenas including health care and the environment.

• 
  
  

• Looks at the role of social media in interest groups.
• Adds a comparative look at interest group action, organization, and scholarship abroad.

1 Madison’s Dilemma

The image of a lobbyist in the popular mind has changed little over time. In 1888, the cover of Harper’s Weekly showed a well-fed man in top hat in a comfortable leather chair, cigar in hand and a table full of glasses and flasks offering a choice of alcoholic refreshment, and a look that seemed to invite a legislator to sit with him, drink, and be drawn into some corrupt scheme. In 2006, the news was full of photos of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pled guilty to charges of tax evasion, mail fraud, and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Abramoff was at the center of a corruption investigation that eventually led to guilty pleas or convictions of 21 other policymakers, lobbyists, and congressional aides. More recently, summing up the popular vision of lobbyists, the Daily Show’s segment On Topic—Division of Power—Interest Groups concluded, “lobbyists help Congressmen write legislation. They also provide them with transportation, meals, physical therapy, cocaine, and strippers.”

But although the popular imagination is drawn to stories of corruption, much of the work of interest groups and lobbyists involves legal methods of influencing government policy. Some of this interest group activity is highly visible. For example, when Congress was drafting the Affordable Care Act in 2009, the media was full of stories of battles between insurance companies, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and other economic interests, and especially over lobbying efforts over abortion coverage. But some of this activity takes place with little public scrutiny. Every five years the U.S. Department of Agriculture issues dietary guidelines for Americans, drawing on a panel of 15 academic experts who consult thousands of published studies. In 2015, the panel recommended that sustainability be considered in evaluating foods, and concluded that a diet based on plants is superior to one based on meat. Agricultural interests, and especially meat producers, immediately attacked the recommendation, charging that ideology and not “science” was the root of the recommendation. The head of the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association threatened that if the recommendation on meat was not removed he would go to the funding source (Congress) and overturn the draft guidelines. Dairy interests lobbied to change the guidelines to direct Americans to greater milk consumption.¹

A troubling dilemma lies at the core of the American political system. In an open and free society in which people have the right to express their political views, petition their government, and organize on behalf of causes, some segments of the population are likely to pursue their own selfish interests. Farmers push Congress to adopt price subsidies, even though it means families will have to pay more at the grocery store. Manufacturers and labor unions press for tariffs and other trade barriers to protect profits and jobs. Consumers, however, will be saddled with higher prices as a result. Outdoor enthusiasts fight for increasing the number of parks and wilderness preserves, even though development of those lands might provide jobs for some who are out of work. In short, people pursue their self-interest, even though the policies they advocate may hurt others and may not be in the best interest of the nation.

The dilemma is this: If the government does not allow people to pursue their self-interest, it takes away their political freedom. When we look at the nations of the world in which people are forbidden to organize and to freely express their political views, we find that there the dilemma has been solved by authoritarianism. Although the alternative—permitting people to advocate whatever they want—is far more preferable, it also carries dangers. In a system such as ours, interest groups constantly push government to enact policies that benefit small constituencies at the expense of the general public.

This dilemma is as old as the country itself, yet it has never been more relevant than today. As lobbying has grown in recent years, anxiety has mounted over the consequences of interest group politics. Interest groups are said to threaten the integrity of congressional elections. Liberal citizen groups are blamed for slowing economic development with the regulatory policies for which they have fought. Labor unions are held responsible because America fails to compete effectively in many world markets, while tax cuts granted to businesses seem to increase their profits at the expense of huge federal budget deficits. Environmental groups are accused of imposing standards that put companies out of business and workers out of their jobs, while companies are accused of blocking legislation that would preserve public health and slow global warming. Beyond the sins allegedly committed by sectors of the interest group community is a broader worry. Are the sheer number of interest groups and their collective power undermining American democracy?

It is important to remember that not all interest groups and lobbyists seek policies that enrich themselves. Despite the Daily Show’s skewering of lobbyists, former host Jon Stewart lobbied Congress on behalf of an organization seeking to make permanent a health care program for first responders in New York after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Religious bodies have lobbied for greater assistance to the poor, for changes in immigration policies, for policies to promote religious liberties at home and abroad, and for greater environmental protections.² Thus, interest groups can be thought to represent both efforts of individuals to pursue their own self-interest, sometimes by seeking narrow benefits that will enrich them at the expense of others, and also efforts by groups to represent the views of larger groups of citizens about the collective good. Some interest groups even lobby for reform of the lobbying process and urge government to enact stricter laws on lobbyists’ gifts to policymakers.

Curing the Mischiefs of Faction

Although the founding fathers might not have anticipated the myriad ways that lobbyists seek to further their group’s causes, they did foresee the dilemma of interest group involvement in politics. Contemporary discussions of this question inevitably turn to The Federalist, for James Madison’s analysis in essay No. 10 remains the foundation of American political theory on interest groups.³ Although at the time he was writing, the country had no political parties or lobbies as we know them, Madison correctly perceived that people would organize in some way to further their common interests. Furthermore, these groupings, or “factions,” as he called them, were a potential threat to popular government.

Factions were not anomalies, nor would they be occasional problems. Rather, as Madison saw it, the propensity to pursue self-interest was innate. The “causes of faction,” he concluded, are “sown in the nature of man.”⁴ As any society develops, it is inevitable that different social classes will emerge, that competing interests based on differing occupations will arise, and that clashing political philosophies will take hold among the populace. This tendency was strong in Madison’s eyes: He warned that free men are more likely to try to oppress each other than they are to “co-operate for their common good.”⁵

Madison worried that a powerful faction could eventually tyrannize others in society. What, then, was the solution for “curing the mischiefs of faction”? He rejected out of hand any restrictions on the freedoms that permitted people to pursue their own selfish interests, remarking that the remedy would be “worse than the disease.”⁶ Instead, he reasoned that the effects of faction must be controlled rather than factions themselves eliminated. This control could be accomplished by setting into place the structure of government proposed in the Constitution.

In Madison’s mind, a republican form of government, as designed by the framers, would provide the necessary checks on the worst impulses of factions. A republican form of government gives responsibility for decisions to a small number of representatives who are elected by the larger citizenry. Furthermore, for a government whose authority extends over a large and dispersed population, the effects of faction would be diluted by the clash of many competing interests across the country. Thus, Madison believed that, in a land as large as the United States, so many interests would arise that a representative government with checks and balances would not be dominated by any faction. Instead, government could deal with the views of all, producing policies that would be in the common good.

Madison’s cure for the mischiefs of faction was something of a leap of faith.⁷ The structure of American government has not, by itself, prevented some interests from gaining great advantage at the expense of others. Those with large resources have always been better represented by interest groups, and the least wealthy in society have suffered because of their failure to organize. Still, even though the republican form of government envisioned by Madison has not always been strong enough to prevent abuse by factions, the beliefs underlying Federalist No. 10 have endured.

This view that the natural diversity of interests would prevent particular groups from dominating politics found a later incarnation in American social science of the 1950s and 1960s. Pluralist scholars argued that the many (that is, plural) interests in society found representation in the policymaking process through lobbying by organizations. The bargaining that went on between such groups and government led to policies produced by compromise and consensus. Interest groups were seen as more beneficial to the system than Madison’s factions, with emphasis placed on the positive contributions made by groups in speaking for their constituents before government. Although the pluralist school was later discredited for a number of reasons (these will be outlined shortly), it furthered the Madisonian ideal: groups freely participating in the policymaking process, none becoming too powerful because of the natural conflict of interests, and government acting as a synthesizer of competing interests. Moreover, pluralists imagined that groups might form to pursue not only the narrow interests of their members but perhaps also broader conceptions of the public good. The ideal of multiple groups that offset each other’s power remains contemporary America’s hope for making interest group politics compatible with democratic values.

Madison’s solution was centered on the diversity of interests across the nation, even when a few interests might dominate at the state level. Today, states differ dramatically in the diversity of their economic interests; some states have one or two industries, others, like California, are extremely diverse. States differ in the strengths of their unions, and the diversity of their religious and civil society groups. Moreover, some states have government structures and political parties that provide interest groups with easier access to government. As a result the interest group ecology of states differs dramatically.⁸

Interest Groups and Their Functions

One purpose of this book is to re-examine the fundamental questions raised by Federalist No. 10. Can an acceptable balance be struck between the right of people to pursue their own interests and the need to protect society from being dominated by one or more interests? Can we achieve true pluralism, or is a severe imbalance of interest group power a chronic condition in a free and open society? Is the interest group universe toda...