Summary
Contents
Guide to Interest Groups and Lobbying in the United States offers a thematic analysis of interest groups and lobbying in American politics over the course of American political history. It explores how interest groups have organized and articulated their support for numerous issues, and how they have they grown – both in numbers and range of activities – to become an integral part of the U.S. political system. Beginning with the foundations of interest groups during the late 19th-century Gilded Age, to the contemporary explosive growth of lobbying, Political Action Committees, and new forms of interest group cyberpolitics, readers are provided with multiple approaches to understanding the complex and changing interest advocacy sphere. This authoritative work will find an audience not only with students and scholars, but also with policy advocates.
American Pluralism, Interest Group Liberalism, and Neopluralism
American Pluralism, Interest Group Liberalism, and Neopluralism
For much of the history of political science, pluralism was the only theoretical approach of note used to study interest groups. Scholars studied interest groups if they thought that groups were the basis of politics. Taking a pluralist approach meant (1) that politics involved cooperating with some in order to compete with others; and (2) that society ...
