Interest Groups

Interest groups are formal organizations, usually based on individual voluntary membership, that seek to influence public policies without assuming government responsibility. The majority of interest groups do not have primarily political goals. They are normally engaged in a disparate range of activities—work, recreational, philanthropic, humanitarian, and cultural—that develop independently in society. Such groups enter the political arena when they require some form of public intervention (financial, administrative, etc.) to support their interests or when they wish to influence the adoption or implementation of government decisions so as to secure some advantage or to protect the interests they represent. The goals of interest groups may be very specific or may be intended to make an impact on the entire political community. The strategies used to influence decision makers involve the combination of a repertoire of tactics, the breadth of which varies in relation to each group's organizational resources. In this entry, the origins and types of such groups and their respective functions in political decision-making processes are discussed. Their role with regard to the quality of democracy is also critically examined.

Since the end of the 19th century, there has been an exponential growth in the number of interest groups, prompted by the changes that have contributed to shaping the contemporary world. Industrialization has played a decisive role in this respect, favoring a specialization of production and services that has in turn given a strong impulse to the establishment of myriad groups with differentiated social interests. The formation and consolidation of nation-states has been equally important. Industrialization and the emergence of nation-states also engendered numerous conflicts of a social, political, and cultural nature that contributed to generating collective movements, interest groups, and parties. The further development of interest groups was encouraged by the extraordinary conditions created by the two world wars, which forced governments to involve the organizations of civil society in managing the emergency created by the wars. The establishment of new groups was also stimulated by the increasingly pervasive role of the state in society in the wake of the development of the welfare state, which created new needs and new interests.

The type of political regime that offers the most opportunities for groups to organize themselves independently and to influence decision makers is liberal democracy. By contrast, in totalitarian or authoritarian regimes, interest groups are established, controlled, or backed by a single party or state and often used exclusively as instruments for mobilizing consensus. This entry deals only with interest groups active in contemporary democracies, as, indeed, does virtually all the literature devoted to these political actors. Particular attention is given to examining the general functions of interest groups in the political system and the obstacles and opportunities they encounter in the various phases of the process involved in influencing public decisions.