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Chapter 6: Interest Groups (Why join an interest group? (Rational (Making…
Chapter 6: Interest Groups
What is an interest group? What are their goals?
A group organized around a set of views or preferences and who engage in collective action to influence others in order to promote or protect those preferences.
Goals: 1. Seek new positive benefits to promote the group’s interest.
Defend current benefits to protect the group’s interest.
Why join an interest group?
Rational
Making choices that maximize benefits and minimize costs.
Material benefits
Tangible rewards gained from membership in an interest group.
Solidary benefits
Satisfaction gained from membership in interest groups such as friendship and a sense of belonging to a group or meeting people with similar interests.
Purposive benefits
Derive from feeling good about contributing to a worthy cause in an effort to improve the lot of society in general, not just the individual concerns of the group’s members.
Free riders
A person who makes the strictly rational choice to enjoy the benefits of public goods without incurring the costs of providing them, thus presenting a dilemma to the community as a whole.
Free riders
A person who makes the strictly rational choice to enjoy the benefits of public goods without incurring the costs of providing them, thus presenting a dilemma to the community as a whole.
How to overcome free rider problem
Selective benefits
Benefits provided by interest groups that are available to members only.
Create membership
Creation of interest groups
Pluralist theory
The idea that interest groups form in reaction to problems created by particular social or economic events.
Single-issue groups
Groups that take extreme, uncompromising positions on only one specific issue (e.g., abortion, guns, LGBTQ rights, the environment).
Resources
Money
Received from membership dues, fundraising campaigns, special events, endowments, returns on investments, etc.
Membership
Members throughout country and membership in numbers.
Leadership and expertise
Organized, persuasive, powerful, etc.
Lobbying
Activity of a group or person that attempts to influence public policymaking on behalf of the individual or the group.
Activities
Lobbyists
Individuals whose job it is to contact and attempt to influence governmental officials on behalf of others.
Direct lobbying
Direct contact by lobbyists with government officials in an effort to influence policy.
Indirect lobbying
The use of intermediaries by lobbyists to speak to government officials, with the intent to influence policy.
Power and regulation
Political Action Committees (PACs)
Organizations specifically created to raise money and make political contributions on behalf of an interest group.
Super PAC
A type of political committee that can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations, and wealthy individuals to independently support or oppose political candidates. Unlike traditional PACs, Super PACs may not contribute directly to or coordinate with political candidates’ campaigns.
Regulation of activity
Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA)
A 1971 act that allowed unions and corporations to form political action committees to raise and contribute campaign funds to candidates.
Hard money
Campaign contributions made directly to candidates and regulated by law.
Soft money
Campaign contributions given to political parties rather than directly to candidates.
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA)
A law that limited hard-money contributions during each election cycle to $2,000 from individuals and $5,000 from PACs, and banned soft money.
Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission
A 2010 Supreme Court case holding that corporations, labor unions, and mega-wealthy individuals have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money from their general treasuries to convince people to vote for or against some candidate.