AP government By: LILIA PIEDADE AND JOHNECE DIGGS

Chapter 11 pages 320-360

Interest Groups Notes
Kleins’ quick notes:
Interest groups: Organization of people with shared policy goals.
Participation in I.G.’s increased since 1960.
“Saved the Spotted Owls” is an interest group.
Theories of interest group politics:
PLURALIST: interest groups compete with each other to accomplish goals which cause gridlock.
ELITE: divided along class lines; upper class rules.
HYPERPLURALIST: groups are so strong government is weakened. Exaggerated form of pluralism.

All Americans have some interest they want represent.

The right to organize groups is protected by the constitution, which guarantees

people the right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for
a redress of grievances”. This is an important first Amendment right as freedom
of speech and press.

Interest groups differ from parties in many aspects like:

Interest groups may support candidates for office, but do not run their own slate of
candidates. While parties run candidates for public offices. They are also often
policy specialists, whereas parties are policy generalist. Interest groups have a hand
full of key policies to push, they do not face the constrains imposed by trying to
appeal to everyone as parties do.

Interest group suffer a lot of stereotype, they are seemed as faction

➢ Pluralist theory argues that interest group activity brings representation to

all, and group competes and counterbalances one another in the political
marketplace.
(Groups provide a key link between people and government, they
compete, no one group is likely to became too dominant, and group
weak in one resource can use another.)
➢ Elite theory argues that few groups (primarily the wealthy) have most of the
power.
(The fact that there are numerous interest groups proves nothing
because they are extremely unequal in power, awesome power is
held by the largest corporations, other groups may win many minor
policy battles, but the corporate elites prevail when it comes to the
big decisions).
➢ Hyper pluralist theory asserts that too many groups are getting too much
of what they want, resulting in government policy that is often contradictory
and lacking in direction. It is necessary to examine them carefully. (Also
called interest group liberalism.)(Groups have become too powerful
 in the political process as government tries to appease every
conceivable interest.
(Trying to please every group results in contradictory and confusing
policy.)The hyperpluralists’s major criticism of the interest group
system is that relations between groups and the government have
become too cozy.