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Interest Group is defined as "an organized
body of individuals who try
to influence
public policy." This system is
designed so that interest groups
would be an
instrument of public influence on politics to create changes, but
would not
threaten the government much. Whether
this is still the case or not
is an important
question that we must find out. Interest
groups play many
different roles
in the American political system, such as representation,
participation,
education, and program monitoring.
Representation is the
function that we
see most often and the function we automatically think of
when we think of
interest groups. Participation is
another role that interest
groups play in
our government, which is when they facilitate and encourage
the participation
of their members in the political process.
Interest groups
also educate, by
trying to inform both public officials and the public at large
about matters of
importance to them. Lobby groups also
keep track of how
programs are
working in the field and try to persuade government to take
action when
problems become evident when they monitor programs. The
traditional
interest groups have been organized around some form of
economic cause,
be it corporate interests, associates, or unions. The number
of business
oriented lobbies has grown since the 1960s and continues to
grow. Public-interest groups have also grown
enormously since the 1960s.
Liberal groups
started the trend, but conservative groups are now just as
common, although
some groups are better represented through interest groups
than others
are. There are many ways that the groups
can influence politics
too. The increase in interest group activity has
fragmented the political
debate into
little pockets of debates and have served to further erode the
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power of
political parties, who try to make broad based appeals. PACs also
give money to
incumbents, which means that incumbents can accumulate
large reelection
campaign funds, that in result, discourages potential
challengers. As a result, most incumbents win, not because
they outspend
their
challengers, but because they keep good potential opponents out of the
race. Conservatives are one of the big groups that
influence politics and for
many reasons.
Conservative thinking has not only claimed the
presidency; it has
spread throughout
our political and intellectual life and stands poised to
become the
dominant strain in American public policy.
While the political
ascent of
conservatism has taken place in full public view, the intellectual
transformation
has for the most part occurred behind the scenes, in a network
of think tanks
whose efforts have been influential to an extent that only five
years after
President Reagan's election, begins to be clear.
Conservative think tanks and similar
organizations have flourished
since the
mid-1970s. The American Enterprise
Institute (AEI) had twelve
resident thinkers
when Jimmy Carter was elected; today it has forty-five, and
a total staff of
nearly 150. The Heritage Foundation has
sprung from nothing
to command an
annual budget of $11 million. The budget of the Center for
Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) has grown from $975,000 ten years
ago to $8.6 million
today. Over a somewhat longer period the
endowment of
the Hoover
Institution has increased from $2 million to $70 million. At least
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twenty-five other
noteworthy public-policy groups have been formed or
dramatically
expanded through the decade; nearly all are anti-liberal.
No other country accords such significance to
private institutions
designed to
influence public decisions. Brookings,
began in the 1920s with
money from the
industrialist Robert S. Brookings, a Renaissance man who
aspired to bring
discipline of economics to Washington.
During the New
Deal the
Brookings Institution was marked-oriented--for example, it opposed
Roosevelt's
central planning agency, the National Resources Planning Board.
Only much later
did the institution acquire a reputation as the head of
liberalism.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, as Americans
enjoyed steady increases
in their standard
of living and U.S. industry reigned over world commerce,
Washington came
to consider the economy a dead issue.
Social justice and
Vietnam
dominated the agenda: Brookings concentrated on those fields,
emerging as a
chief source of arguments in favor of the Great Society and
opposed to
U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In the Washington swirl where
few people have
the time to read the reports they debate, respectability is
often
proportional to tonnage. The more
studies someone tosses on the table,
the more likely
he is to win his point. For years Brookings held a dominance
on tonnage. Its papers supporting liberal positions went
unchallenged by
serious
conservative rebuttals.
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As the 1970s progressed, a core of politically
active conservative
intellectuals,
most prominently Irving Kristol, began to argue in publications
like The Public
Interest and The Wall Street Journal that if business wanted
market logic to
regain the initiative, it would have to create a new class of its
own --scholars
whose career prospects depended on private enterprise, not
government or the
universities. "You get what you pay
for, Kristol in effect
argued, and if
businessmen wanted intellectual horsepower, they would have
to open their
pocketbooks."1
The rise of Nader's Raiders and similar
public-interest groups--which
achieved
remarkable results, considering how badly outgunned they were;
brought a change
in business thinking about money and public affairs. So did
the frustration
felt by oil companies, which were being fattened by rising
prices but still
dreamed of being fatter if federal regulations were abolished.
They were willing
to invest some of their riches in changing Washington's
mood.
Women also have a voice in their own interest
groups. The Woman
Suffrage movement
was headed up by many groups that differed in some of
their views. The moderate branch was by far the largest
and is given most of
the credit for
the Nineteenth Amendment. Under the
banner of the National
Women's Party,
the militant feminists had used civil disobedience, colorful
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demonstrations
and incessant lobbying to get the Nineteenth Amendment out
of Congress.
These are just some of the ways that American
politics in the twentieth
century was
influenced by special interest groups.
Interest groups have
grown this much
in this century and will probably keep progressing in the
coming centuries.
Bibliography
1. Groliers Encyclopedia on CD-Rom, 1993
Grolier Inc., Software
Toolworks Inc.
2. Ideas Move Nations, The Atlantic Monthly,
1986
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