- [Instructor] Let's discuss interest groups
and as you can see here, it is one of the three parts
of the iron triangle that we first studied
when we looked at the bureaucracy in the executive branch.
And the whole point of the iron triangle is to show
how these different parties can influence each other.
And so just as a reminder, an interest group
is any collection of folks who organize
in order to advocate for something in public policy.
This could be groups of corporations.
It could represent an industry.
It could represent a social cause.
And we're going to look at some major interest groups
in the United States in a few minutes,
but some can be quite large and some can be quite small.
But what you see from the iron triangle
is how these parties can influence each other.
An interest group can give electoral support
to a member of Congress by getting its members
to go out and vote for that member of Congress,
or maybe even doing advertising for that member of Congress
or giving direct financial support.
In exchange, they might get friendly legislation
and oversight, and that'll happen
because a congressperson who got that support
from the interest group might have a friendly ear
to that interest group and might be open
to hanging out with lobbyists from that interest group.
The term lobbyist, or lobbying is believed to originate
in 17th century England where people
who wanted to influence members of Parliament
would hang out in the lobby of the parliamentary building
waiting to talk to those members of Parliament.
And that's what essentially lobbyists do today.
They try to meet with congresspeople
or meet with the staff of congresspeople
and try to influence the types of bills
that are introduced to Congress for consideration
and how various members should vote for those bills.
Now bureaucracy, these are the folks
who for the most part are doing the work
of actually running the government
and they have influence and they can dictate
what regulations are going to be,
who gets various contracts, and so you can imagine
that might be of interest to interest groups.
Now to make tangible what some of these interest groups are,
you have entities like the AFL-CIO,
which stands for the American Federation of Labor,
Congress of Industrial Organizations.
And this is a meta organization of a bunch of labor unions
and as you can imagine they are going to advocate
for labor-friendly policies.
It might be things that favor the manufacturing industry
or that favor employees' rights to collectively negotiate
with their employer.
It might be advocating for trade policies,
which would be perceived as more friendly
to the American worker.
Its membership is roughly 12.5 million people
and so just getting them out to vote
can have a significant influence on elections.
You have groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
and what's interesting here, this membership
of over 300,000, this isn't just individuals.
This includes corporations.
Even though the Chamber of Commerce
does not have the biggest budget of the groups
we're gonna look at, it is actually consistently
the biggest lobbying group,
spending most of this money on lobbying.
And they're going to try to advocate
for business-friendly policies in our government.
You have groups that advocate for social causes
like the NAACP, they don't have a huge budget
but they are considered very, very influential
when it comes to issues surrounding minority rights.
You also have very influential groups
like the National Rifle Association.
And when we compare the NRA to some of these other groups
it's interesting to think about the number of issues
they concentrate their efforts on.
For example, the Chamber of Commerce
might be thinking about a very broad array
of policy decisions that might affect commerce,
that might affect businesses,
while the National Rifle Association and its members,
and this is a significant membership here,
is likely to be much more focused on a narrower set
of issues around gun rights and gun ownership.
You have the American Medical Association,
which despite its relatively small membership here
is highly, highly influential because these 240,000 people
are for the most part physicians,
who many of us are very used to listening to.
You have the American Association for Retired Professionals
which has a membership of 37 million people
and a budget of 1.6 billion.
So these entities can be very large
and very, very influential.
Now as I mentioned, not all of these dollars
go directly to lobbying.
They could be spending money on voter education.
They could be spending money on legal funds
to advocate for cases that are in their interest.
They could be giving direct support
to various candidates or to various parties.
They could be advertising in the media for their cause.
But if we think about directly lobbying,
this chart right over here is quite interesting.
It comes from OpenSecrets.org and if you're really intrigued
by understanding more of how money and influence
come together in American politics
I encourage you to go to their site.
But this is a list in 2017 of the top spenders
in lobbying in the United States, and as I mentioned
you see here at the top the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
at $82 million, and this isn't even the most
they've ever spent in a year.
There's some years where it is well over $150 million
that they've spent.
The National Association of Realtors,
the Business Roundtable, Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America.
And this money is, for the most part, to pay lobbyists
who will meet with members of our government
to directly advocate for certain policies.
Now an interesting thing to think about is
what positive things might be done by interest groups,
and what potentially negative things might be there
and how equitable is this system?
The positive things, folks could argue, are hey,
they could work on voter education.
Many issues that policy makers are trying to decide on
are quite complex, so it might be good
to have experts weighing in, but on the other hand,
it might seem like money is disproportionately influential
and that industries that generate a lot of money
could have a disproportionate amount of influence
and they could potentially use that influence
to further benefit those industries
to give them even more power and influence.
So I will let you decide.