Hello. I'm Craig, and this is Crash Course Government & Politics, and today I'm gonna
take a deep dive into political science theory and try to figure out why interest groups form.
So grab your snorkel, no, this is a deep dive, grab your scuba gear.
I know, I know, you're probably thinking that interest groups form to influence the government
with their piles and piles of cash, so the way they form is by amassing piles of cash,
and then, well, who really cares once they have all that cash? Maybe that's true, but
why we have some interests that get together in organized to influence policy and others
that don't is an interest-ing question.
[Theme Music]
So as you remember pluralist theory proposes that every group with a particular interest
should be able to form an organization that will pursue policies to further that interest.
So if I like birds, which clearly I don't, I should be able to join up with other bird
fanciers to work with the government, so that it protects birds' wildlife habitats. I hate
this analogy. And in fact there are a number of interest groups out there that can do this,
including the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Foundation.
I respect those clubs. I don't hate all eagles, just that eagle. But this doesn't mean that
everyone with an interest can form a group. Like, I like video games, I'm not going to
go form a group about it. Why doesn't every interest form a group? Well political scientists
would cite collective action problems.
These are the problems that occur because people should work together, but don't.
The classic example is building a road that many people could use but no one individual
could build on their own because, you know, building a road is hard.
Although there are obviously some situations where people can coordinate to get things
done without any government intervention, most of the time if you want to accomplish
big things like the Hoover Dam or building the highway systems, you need some sort of
government action to make sure it gets done.
And usually it gets done when the government collects taxes from everybody to build the
road. Now some people may use the road a lot; more than their taxes paid for, and some may not
use it at all, but the government collects taxes to pay for it all the same because otherwise it wouldn't get built.
One special type of collective action problem is called free riding. This is when people
who stand to get a big benefit from a project either don't pay a big enough share, or they
don't pay at all because they know that the project is so important that it will get done
whether they contribute or not. Then they will get the full benefit of the project - say
a pothole free road - without paying a dime.
Get it? Free ride? (Singing) Come on a take a free ride".
This becomes a problem when other people, not wanting anyone to get a free ride, also
refuse to contribute to the project and, you guessed it, it doesn't get done.
'The free rider problem is worse in larger groups and this partly explains why some interests
are better represented in American politics.'
Because large groups are more anonymous, it's easier to free ride; there are lots of other
people who probably care more than a single individual and, knowing this, the single individual
rationally chooses to free ride.
Also, the larger the group, the easier it is for an individual to claim that their efforts
don't matter which is a smaller version of the voter paradox. Finally, with a large number
of members, it's much harder for a group to enforce it's rules against slackers, who don't
pull their weight young man! Or woman - young person!
What this means in practice is that smaller groups are more successful in forming and
pushing their agenda, this is why producers are more successful at forming interest groups
than consumers, and why business owners are usually more successful then workers.
Now, many people will say that in the US labor is well represented through unions, but over
the last forty years at least union membership and the dues that come with it are shrinking
and unions are less able to get legislation passed.
So how do large groups solve the collective action problem and actually coordinate to
get things done? According to political scientist Mancur Olson they do this by providing selective
benefits to their members. In other words they build membership by providing perks.
These can be material things like special services or discounts on things like insurance,
or smaller things like baseball caps or bumper stickers.
One of the largest organized interest groups in the US, the American Association of Retired
Persons, or AARP provides a number of material benefits to their members including discounts
on a number of useful products and services.
AARP also provides many of the second type of benefits, informational benefits. Interest
groups can inform their members of policies that may affect them, and can provide guidance
about what to do in order to influence these policies.
The third type of benefits are called solidary, and they refer to friendship and comradery
that can come from being a member of a group. Ah, that's my favorite benefit.
Solidary benefits also include networking opportunities, and networking probably has
a lot to do with why people join professional groups. Gotta do the schmoozin'.
The final type of benefit that can help build interest groups is called the purposive benefit.
This is a feeling that by being a member of a group, you're helping to make a difference.
Purposive benefits partially explain why so many people joined up with groups during the
civil rights movements, it certainly wasn't for the SNCC keychains.
Another way that interest groups can be formed is by political entrepreneurs. These are specific
individuals who make extraordinary efforts to bring people together for the purpose of
changing policy. Often political entrepreneurs are politicians who recognize the latent potential
of groups that haven't yet organized. When successful, they benefit electorally.
One of the most famous examples in American politics was Claude Pepper who realized there were a lot of
older Americans in Florida and that if he became their champion and organized them, they would vote for him.
Even more well known than Pepper, was salt (Chuckles). No, Robert Wagner, whose sponsorship
of the National Labor Relations Act was so important that it's often still called the
Wagner Act. This helped create political power for labor unions, and unions helped keep Wagner in Washington.
I guess we also have to talk about the elephant, or if you're a Democrat, the donkey in the
room; lobbying. Lobbying is an attempt to influence policy by persuading a government
policy making official. As we say when we talked about iron triangles, this can be done
by providing officials with information that they can use. But most people still think
of it as providing campaign contributions in return for favorable policy outcome.
There's no real evidence of this quid pro quo bargaining, probably because it's really
close to bribery and therefore doesn't happen that much. But it has happened in the past
and this idea is pretty powerful, especially if you think all politicians are corrupt.
But there is more to lobbying than this, especially in the eyes of political scientists, who like
to divide lobbying into insider and outsider strategies. Insider strategies include directly
trying to persuade elected officials, and also using the courts. Actual direct lobbying
of congressmen has become more difficult over the years.
Congress has passed laws that have limited the ability to deduct lobbying expenses from
taxes, and restricted how much lobbyists can pay for official's travel expenses. This has
cut down a lot on the famous political junkets which often looked like a vacation paid for by lobbyists.
Congress has also passed laws limiting the gifts that lobbyists can give to officials
which now have a value of no more than fifty dollars. So no free Apple Watch for you congressman, sorry.
You could probably get Grand Theft Auto V at this point though.
While it's mostly elite groups that are able to lobby congressmen, executive department
heads or even the President directly, other groups have been more successful using the
courts as an insider strategy. One way to do this is through direct lawsuits like the
one that led to the Brown vs Board of Education decision. Another way is by finding plaintiffs
and funding their lawsuits, the old "find and fund," they call it. No one calls it that.
A third thing that interest groups can do is file amicus curiae, or "friend of the court"
briefs to get their legal ideas into Supreme Court decisions.
Groups on both sides of the political spectrum pursue all these avenues, but environmental
and civil rights groups are known for going after the courts. In particular the courts
are often the focus of minority groups, since they're the ones least likely to be successful in electoral politics.
The other types of lobbying strategies are called outsider strategies, let's explain
that in an animated way by going to the Thought Bubble.
Outsider strategies are those that involve interest groups mobilizing the public. Sometimes
these strategies are called grassroots lobbying. Mobilizing public opinion is sometimes called
"going public", but this is very confusing because it's the same term used to describe
the President's making direct appeals to public opinion. And also it happens when a company
floats it's stock on an exchange for the first time.
When interest groups go public the main things they do are organize advertising campaigns,
organize protests and engage in grassroots efforts to get their membership to lobby officials.
Advertising campaigns are expensive, so you don't see a lot of advertising on behalf of
things like poverty relief. The best know recent example of an interest group sponsored
advertising campaign was the Harry and Louise campaign, sponsored by healthcare groups and
doctors that was designed to stymie President Clinton's attempts at healthcare reform.
Interest groups organize protests to get the attention of politicians and the media, and
protests can be effective as we saw during the civil rights movement. Protests can also
help to form interest groups, like the Occupy movement during the height of the financial
crisis after 2008. Some protests, such as labor strikes, can impose costs on business
owners, and push them to lobby office holders more directly.
Grassroots lobbying occurs when an organized group encourages its membership to contact
elected officials, often through letter writing, emails or telephone calls. This is becoming
increasingly prominent because of the new rules that limit traditional lobbying, and
because technology makes it so easy for groups to reach large numbers of people, and to get
them to respond directly to elected officials.
But beware, sometimes technology makes it easy for well financed groups to give the
appearance of being a large-scale grassroots organization, when they really aren't. These
bogus attempts at grassroots organizing have been called astroturf lobbying, and one of
the few examples where political scientists have demonstrated their superiority at naming things.
Thanks Thought Bubble. So interest groups are all about changing policies, and they pursue both insider
and outsider strategies to influence policy makers. I hope that we've given you a balanced view
of interest groups, one that's not so cynical about the way they function in our politics.
Thanks for watching, I'll see you next time.
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