Special Interest Groups

Types of Interest Croups

Groups can be categorized in several ways, including by membership, organizational structure, and goals. Membership categories include groups run by members, groups with corporate or other types of entities as members, groups with pocketbook members, and groups without members that are run by their staffs. Pocketbook members are people who pay dues but do little else in the group, although they may occasionally write letters or call Congress if asked by the group. Some groups have a formal organizational structure while other groups are less formal, and some are not really structured at all. In terms of goals, private interest groups (i.e., businesses) primarily seek benefits that can be limited to their members. Public interest groups (i.e., civil rights) advocate for benefits that cannot be limited to their own members.

What Interest Croups Do

Interest groups seek to influence government policy and to obtain government benefits by lobbying the legislative and executive branches of government and sometimes by participating in election campaigns. After passage of a law, the lobbyists pressure the bureaucracy charged with creation and implementation of its regulations and/or the courts charged with interpreting the law.

Lobbying can be direct or indirect. Direct lobbying includes any activity intended to influence, which involves personal contact with government officials or their staff. Activities include meeting with, calling, faxing, or writing government officials and staff as well as giving testimony or speaking at public meetings, submitting position papers, engaging in relevant lawsuits, and writing amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs—statements written by nonparticipants in a case that supports the legal argument made by one of the participants.

Indirect lobbying seeks to influence government officials through a third party such as the media or a group's members. Staging events that obtain press coverage (i.e., press conferences and protests) and writing letters to the editor are two common methods of using the media. Also, groups ask their members to engage in various direct lobbying activities (rather than the organization doing so itself), perhaps by e-mailing or calling their congresspersons.

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