Unit 2 - Participation and Public Opinion

In this unit, we will look at the participation of citizens in their governments. We are all born into political culture, and our political socialization begins as young as age 3, when we first learn our attitudes toward police officers. Think back on your childhood. Did you hear your mom or dad say, "If you ever get lost, find a police officer, and they will bring you home", or did you hear "Oh no! Slow down! It's the cops!"? One gives you a good feeling toward police, and authority in general, while the other instills fear.

Our environment continues to shape our political opinions as we grow, and when we become eligible to vote, we also decide whether to join parties or interest groups or even whether or not to participate in political marches or other forms of protest. Some of us may grow up in a political void and feel alienated, while others try to use the government to promote racist and hate-filled agendas; when their voices are rejected, or even "silenced", they feel disenfranchised and resort to violence. In a democracy, hearing everyone's voice is the goal, even if we do not like what our fellow citizens are saying.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 25 hours.

• Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  • analyze the concept of political culture;

  • illustrate the political socialization process;

  • discuss the role and importance of public opinion in influencing government decisions;

  • assess the role of mass media in politics;

  • explain the influence of interest groups within the political process;

  • identify the role of political parties;

  • compare and contrast two-party and multi-party systems;

  • compare the electoral system of the U.S. to a proportional representation system; and

  • analyze global trends in voter turnout and political participation.

2.1. Political Culture

American Political Culture

As you read this article, consider this question: what have the defining characteristics of American political culture been, as a whole? As this article mentions, the political culture of other countries may be characterized by different core values. For example, the political culture of Asian countries is often characterized by an emphasis on the good of the group over the good of the individual. Countries in Northern Europe tend to have political cultures characterized by secular values and self-expression, while the political culture of African countries often centers around traditional and community values

Political Culture

Read the Preamble and Section 6.1. As these sections describe, political culture is "a nation's personality" or "the habits of the heart". Political culture involves a country's shared ideologies, beliefs, norms, customs, traditions, and heroes. A defined political culture can help bind citizens to one another, facilitating consensus-building.

2.2. Political Socialization and Public Opinion

Political Socialization

People are not born as Democrats or Republicans; instead, political knowledge, beliefs, and values are learned over the course of one's life. As this section describes, political socialization is "the process by which people learn their roles as citizens and develop an understanding of government and politics". Political learning takes place through "agents" of political socialization. The most commonly recognized agents of political socialization include the family, school, peer groups, and the media. Which of these agents of socialization have been most influential in the development of your political beliefs?

Political Culture and Socialization ant the Age of Information

As television and internet usage grows, so does their potential to influence citizens' political knowledge. While media has typically been included as an agent of political socialization, do you agree with this section when it claims that this influence is growing? Why do some people believe that it is not good for young people to learn about politics solely through the media?

Public Opinion

Public opinion is the expression of political beliefs or values, and it is measured through political polls. In a democracy, we typically accept that the will of the people should direct the actions of government, and so public opinion polls have become a critical part of the political process in the U.S. and other democracies. In the Unit 1 article on political representation, you were asked to consider the different perspectives on representation, and so you should think about those different perspectives as you read about public opinion. Should political leaders try to copy public opinion precisely? Or, should political leaders use their best judgment to make decisions, even if that means going against public opinion? As explained towards the end of the article, many people are uninformed about politics. Does that mean that political leaders should still take public opinion into account when making decisions? 

Politicians have long been interested in the moods and opinions of the people. After all, members of Congress and the President are elected to represent the people, a difficult task if one does not know and understand what the people want. Even George Washington employed his own "pollster", a friend back in Virginia who would mingle with the "ordinary folks" to find out what they thought of the President.1 While the measurement of public opinion has become much more scientific and precise since Washington's day, the attitudes of the public have always played an important role in shaping public policy and the direction of the nation.

What is Public Opinion?

"Public opinion" is the distribution of opinions and attitudes held by the public. Individuals hold a wide variety of opinions. By measuring these opinions at the individual level and aggregating them, the proportions of the population with particular beliefs and preferences can be determined. When measuring public opinion, pollsters are not only concerned with the content of public opinion, i.e. what it is that people think and believe, but also with the stability of people's opinions over time. It is also useful to know how strongly the public holds particular opinions and the direction those opinions seem to be moving. The content, stability, intensity and direction of public opinion are all important indicators of what the public wants and expects out of its government and political leaders. While popular opinion is not the only factor that determines public policy, it is generally the most important one. The role of public opinion in a representative democracy is further discussed below.

Measuring Public Opinion

Public opinion is not measured by asking every individual in the population questions about his or her opinions. In a nation of 270 million people, doing so would be impossible. Instead, pollsters ask a small group of individuals a set of questions and then generalize from their findings about that group to the larger population. Choosing a group of individuals out of a population that is representative of the entire population and then accurately measuring the opinions of those individuals is technical and complex.

Sampling

A group of people selected out of a population to be asked questions on a survey is called a "sample". For the results of a survey to be accurate, the sample must be similar to the broader population in terms of race, age, sex, education, income and other important characteristics. If the sample is not representative of the population, the opinions of those in the sample cannot be generalized to the larger group.

How big does a sample need to be? The answer might surprise you. First, sample size depends much more on the amount of diversity in a population than it does the size of that population. For example, if every individual in a one million person population holds the exact same opinions, a sample size of one would be sufficient to accurately gauge the opinions of the group. In contrast, if every person in a group of one thousand people held very different opinions on a subject or subjects, a sample size of one thousand might be required to accurately measure the group's attitudes. (Technically, if every member of a population is surveyed, there is no "sample" or "sampling" involved, just the population.) A sample must be large enough, then, to reflect all of the significant variations in opinions and attitudes throughout the population. So how big is big enough? For small populations, say of five hundred or less, a researcher is generally better off simply surveying the entire group. In contrast, a sample of five hundred is generally sufficient to measure the opinions of a population of 100,000 people. In fact, as population size increases, the proportion of a population required to comprise an acceptable sample decreases. Repeated experimentation with varying sample sizes and extensive statistical and probability analysis has led to the conclusion that a relatively small, randomly drawn sample of 1,200 or 1,500 individuals can be highly representative of a population of more than 250 million people. In fact, increasing sample sizes to 5,000 or even 100,000 does not substantially improve the accuracy of the results.

In theory, selecting a random sample is straightforward. First, a researcher must decide what group of people he or she is interested in learning about. For example, if someone is interested in predicting how people will vote in an upcoming election, the relevant population consists of those individuals who are going to vote. Similarly, if one wants to measure the opinions of homeowners, the population consists of people who own homes. Once a population is defined, the next task is to select a representative sample. The most effective way to do this is to randomly select individuals from a list of every individual in the population. In most cases, however, it is difficult or impossible to obtain a list of everyone in the relevant population. For instance, in the previous voting example, the list of those who actually vote will not be determined until election day. In such cases, researchers must do their best to randomly select people who are highly likely to be in the population.

In practice, most public opinion surveys are conducted by telephone. Using specialized computer software, random telephone numbers are dialed and interviewers attempt to complete interviews with persons in those households. To promote the randomness of the sampling process, interviewers may also be instructed by the computer program to ask for either a male or female respondent. Another less-frequently used sampling technique involves randomly selecting addresses in a neighborhood or area and then having interviewers personally visit the homes at those addresses. A more commonly used but more problematic technique is to mail surveys to randomly selected individuals or households. 

Scientific v. Nonscientific Sampling

When a random, representative sample is drawn from a population, the procedure is deemed "scientific" sampling. When the procedures of scientific sampling are not followed, however, the people in the sample are very unlikely to be representative of the broader population. For example, Washington's informal "mingling" polls mentioned above did not produce samples that reflected the general opinions and views of the people. Similarly, the "call-in-your-vote" polls that often appear on television news programs or the "instant" polls conducted on Internet web sites do not draw randomly selected individuals. Indeed, these polls are almost completely worthless in terms of their generalizability to any recognizable larger population.

One of the most famous public opinion polling blunders resulted from relying on a sample that was not representative of the population. Several days before the 1948 presidential election, pollsters predicted that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry Truman by as much as fifteen percentage points. The Chicago Tribune was so confident in the prediction that it ran the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" on the front page of an election night newspaper. (In the photo above, Truman is showing the paper to a crowd of supporters.) It was Truman, though, not Dewey, who won by 4.5 percent. What had gone wrong? The errors in prediction were at least partly due to poor sampling--the pollsters had asked all eligible voters who they would vote for on election day. Truman supporters turned out to vote in much larger numbers than Dewey supporters, however, making the voting population very different from the samples the pollsters had been questioning.

Despite some early setbacks (see the box on sampling above), pollsters have become very skilled at drawing representative samples. However, the single most difficult sampling problem is not drawing a representative sample, but rather securing completed interviews with each selected individual. For a variety of reasons, many of the people selected to be in a sample will not answer the questions on a survey--they may be too busy, too disinterested, or they may simply be unavailable. If the people who refuse to complete the survey share similar characteristics, such as working at the same time of day or having similarly hostile attitudes toward public opinion surveys, their absence from the sample will diminish the survey's generalizability. Unless all kinds of people are included in the sample, even those who don't like to answer surveys, the sample will not be a representative cross-section of the entire population.

Asking Questions

Assuming that every member of a random sample is willing and available to answer the questions on a survey, pollsters must still design valid and reliable questions and then ask them of each individual in the sample. If the questions that are asked are not carefully written and presented consistently, the results may be inaccurate even with a good sample. Several problems associated with survey questionnaire design and interviewing must be anticipated and accounted for to make the results as accurate as possible.

Pollsters must exercise caution in writing questions because the way a question is worded can influence how individuals respond to it. Leading questions, loaded phrases, poorly worded questions, providing responses is a particular order or even the order in which questions are asked can all effect the responses that are given.

For example, if a researcher was interested in measuring public support for a state governor or member of Congress, he or she might simply ask: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way [insert the politician's name] is handling his/her job as [insert title of office]?" Altering this question in any way might change the results of the survey. Pollsters have discovered that even including titles such as "Governor", "Senator", "Congressman", or "President" tends to slightly increase the approval ratings of politicians. Using descriptive words, such as "successful" or "hard-working", can alter the results even more. Asking the question as it stands immediately after asking a question that casts the individual in potentially positive or negative light can also alter individual responses. For example, if a researcher asked respondents what they would think of a politician if they found out he or she was having an affair and then asked the "approve or disapprove" question, the results would be less favorable for the politician than if the question had been asked in isolation.

The accuracy of individual responses to survey questions can also be influenced by unwillingness (because of evasiveness) or inability (because of a lack of information or poor memory) to answer questions accurately. Respondents may also give "socially desirable" answers instead of accurate ones when asked about such positively viewed activities as voting or donating to charities or negatively viewed activities such as criminal behavior or discrimination. The appearance and tone of voice of the interviewer can also influence the way people respond to survey questions.

How to Read Poll Information

Despite all of the difficulties associated with accurately measuring public opinion, skilled and conscientious survey researchers are still able to conduct public opinion polls that yield valid and reliable results. As a consumer of the news and of public opinion polls, you should, however, look at public opinion poll results with a critical eye. Was the sample selected randomly? What was the response rate of individuals in the sample? What kinds of questions were asked? In what order?

In most cases, you will not be provided with enough information to answer all of these questions. A growing number of news outlets, however, are using the Internet to disseminate detailed information about the surveys they conduct, often publishing the entire survey questionnaire online for readers to see for themselves. In almost every case though, what is reported about a poll is the sample size, the dates the poll was conducted and the "margin of error" for the poll.

A poll's "margin of error" is a statistical statement of the amount of confidence the survey researcher has in the results of his or her poll. Most public opinion polls have a margin of error between plus or minus seven and plus or minus three percentage points. What this means is that the percentages of individuals in the sample who chose each response to any given question could be off either direction by the magnitude of the reported margin of error. 

In the example to the right, the results of Survey A show that Candidate Fred is supported by 55% of the voters while Candidate Wilma is supported by 45%. The margin of error for Survey A is plus or minus 5%. This means that each candidate's support could be as much as five percentage points higher or lower in the population than it was measured in the sample. In this case, adding five points to Candidate Wilma's total and correspondingly subtracting five points from Candidate Fred's would put each candidate's support at 50%. Survey B, taken a month after Survey A, shows that Candidate Wilma is now supported by 60% of the voters while Candidate Fred has dropped to 40%. With a margin of error of plus or minus 4%, the lowest Wilma's support in the population is likely to be is 56%, while Fred's likely high is 44%. Even adjusting for the margin of error in Survey B, Wilma enjoys a clear lead over Fred. Based only on the results of Survey A, however, the race is too close to call because the difference between the two candidates is within the margin of error.

Public Opinion and Democracy

As was noted at the outset, public opinion has always been an important influence in American politics. Indeed, even the Federalists sought to build public support for the Constitution during the debates on ratification so the delegates to state ratifying conventions would feel compelled to cast votes in support of the document. That is not to say, however, that the Federalists trusted the opinions of the people. On the contrary, the representative system created by the Constitution reflects their fears about government by majority opinion. In particular, the Senate, with its members originally chosen by state legislators, not directly by the people, was designed to insulate public policy decisions from the opinions of the people. Indeed, James Madison declared in The Federalist No. 63:

[The Senate] may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?

In no uncertain terms, the Framers of the Constitution anticipated that the opinions of the people would influence the decisions made by political leaders, but they also hoped that the representatives of the people would not simply mimic the passions of the majority at any given moment. Indeed, the process of representation, as it is practiced by most members of Congress, is a much more careful and considered exercise than reading opinion polls and voting accordingly (see "Congressional Representation").

Should the opinions of the people be trusted? An abundance of survey evidence suggests that the people, on the whole, display an astonishing lack of information about the political system, its processes and about particular policy problems and issues. If public opinion is so poorly informed, would it not be easily manipulated? That is at least one reason the Framers favored republican, i.e. representative, government over democracy. By requiring the representatives of the people to periodically face reelection, they provided a mechanism for keeping them accountable for their decisions. In between elections, however, members of Congress could cast votes in Washington and then go back home and explain them. In a republic, there are bound to be differences of opinion between the people and their elected representatives. The Framers appear to have hoped such differences would arise regularly. When such differences exist, though, it is the responsibility of each representative to explain to the people back home why he or she has cast a vote that was contrary to the will of the people. If the explanation is inadequate or unconvincing, the people can choose to send a new representative to Washington.

2.3. Media

Media Influence on Laws and Government

Read this section, which explains the ways in which the media influences government and politics. Citizens absorb political information through television, radio, and internet on a daily basis, which can impact their thinking about politics. Unlike the U.S., some countries do not enjoy a free media; instead, the government controls what messages citizens receive from the media. A censored or government-controlled media can significantly influence the political process.

How Mass Media Forms Public Opinion

As described in the last section, the "media" is considered an important agent of political socialization, as it can teach people certain political beliefs or values. Besides the socializing role, the media also serves as a "watchdog", drawing attention to government corruption or mistakes, which promotes government transparency and accountability. The media can also serve an agenda-setting role. By covering some news stories and not others, the media has the power to shape what people will think or talk about. Similarly, by "framing" a story from a particular perspective, the media often influences both public opinion and influence government leaders.

Media can have an important effect on public opinion in several ways.

Learning Objectives

Explain the different ways that the mass media forms public opinion

Key Points

• Mass media frame the details of the story.

• Mass media communicate the social desirability of certain ideas.

• Mass media sets the news agenda, which shapes the public's views on what is newsworthy and important.

• Increasing scandal coverage, as well as profit-motivated sensationalist media coverage, has resulted in young people holding more negative, distrustful views of government than previous generations.

Terms

• framing: the construction and presentation of a fact or issue "framed" from a particular perspective

• mass media: The mass media are media technologies like broadcast media and print media that are designed to reach a large audience by mass communication.

Mass media effects on public opinion

Media can have an important effect on public opinion in several ways.

1. Setting the news agenda, which shapes the public's views on what is newsworthy and important

2. Framing the details of a story

3. Communicating the social desirability of certain kinds of ideas

The formation of public opinion starts with agenda-setting by major media outlets throughout the world. This agenda-setting dictates what is newsworthy and how and when it will be reported. The media agenda is set by a variety of different environmental and network factors that determines which stories will be newsworthy.

Another key component in the formation of public opinion is framing. Framing is when a story or piece of news is portrayed in a particular way and is meant to sway the consumers' attitude one way or the other. Most political issues are heavily framed in order to persuade voters to vote for a particular candidate. For example, if Candidate X once voted on a bill that raised income taxes on the middle class, a framing headline would read "Candidate X Doesn't Care About the Middle Class". This puts Candidate X in a negative frame to the newsreader.

Social desirability is another key component of the formation of public opinion. Social desirability is the idea that people in general will form their opinions based on what they believe is the popular opinion. Based on media agenda setting and media framing, most often a particular opinion gets repeated throughout various news mediums and social networking sites until it creates a false vision where the perceived truth is actually very far away from the actual truth.

Public opinion can be influenced by public relations and political media. Additionally, mass media utilizes a wide variety of advertising techniques to get their message out and change the minds of people. Since the 1950s, television has been the main medium for molding public opinion, though the internet is becoming increasingly important in this realm.

Source: Jonathan Mott,http://web.archive.org/web/20090227135829/http://www.thisnation.com/index.html 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Interest Groups in American System

Individuals can influence government and create change, but coming together in groups offers even greater opportunities. Interest groups are one important form of group participation in politics. After you complete this article, you should be familiar with the following topics: economic interest groups, societal interest groups, ideological interest groups, and public interest groups. Pay particularly close attention to the section on "interest groups and elections", as this explores the power of interest groups to directly affect the political process.

Learning Objectives

After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What are interest groups?

2. What are the main types of interest groups?

3. What are the most important elements of interest groups?

4. What incentives encourage interest group membership?

5. How do interest groups recruit members?

6. How do the media portray unions and union activity?

7. How do interest groups influence elections?

Interest groups are intermediaries linking people to government, and lobbyists work for them. These groups make demands on government and try to influence public policies in their favor. Their most important difference from political parties is that they do not seek elective office. Interest groups can be single entities, join associations, and have individual members. The University of Texas at Austin is an educational institution. Its main purposes are teaching and research. Like other educational institutions, it is an interest group when it tries to influence government policies. These policies include government funding for facilities and student grants, loans, and work-study. It may also try to influence laws and court decisions applying to research, admissions, gender equality in intercollegiate sports, and student records. It may ask members of Congress to earmark funds for some of its projects, thereby bypassing the normal competition with other universities for funds based on merit.

Single entities often join forces in associations. Associations represent their interests and make demands on government on their behalf. The University of Texas belongs to the Association of American Universities. General Electric (GE) belongs to over eighty trade associations, each representing a different industry such as mining, aerospace, and home appliances.

Many interest groups have individuals as members. People join labor unions and professional organizations (e.g., associations for lawyers or political scientists) that claim to represent their interests.

Types of Interest Groups

Interest groups can be divided into five types: economic, societal, ideological, public interest, and governmental.

Economic Interest Groups

The major economic interest groups represent businesses, labor unions, and professions. Business interest groups consist of industries, corporations, and trade associations. Unions usually represent individual trades, such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Most unions belong to an association, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

Economic interest groups represent every aspect of our economy, including agriculture, the arts, automobiles, banking, beverages, construction, defense, education, energy, finance, food, health, housing, insurance, law, media, medicine, pharmaceuticals, sports, telecommunications, transportation, travel, and utilities. These groups cover from head (i.e., the Headwear Institute of America) to toe (i.e., the American Podiatric Medical Association) and from soup (i.e., the Campbell Soup Company) to nuts (i.e., the Peanut Butter and Nut Processors Association).

Societal Interest Groups

Societal interest groups focus on interests based on people's characteristics, such as age, gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as religion and sexual preference. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is one of the oldest societal interest groups in the United States.

Ideological Interest Groups

Ideological interest groups promote a reactionary, conservative, liberal, or radical political philosophy through research and advocacy. Interest groups that take stands on such controversial issues as abortion and gun control are considered ideological, although some might argue that they are actually public interest groups.

Public Interest Groups

Public interest groups work for widely accepted concepts of the common good, such as the family, human rights, and consumers. Although their goals are usually popular, some of their specific positions (e.g., environmental groups opposing offshore drilling for oil) may be controversial and challenged.

Government Interest Groups

Government interest groups consist of local, state, and foreign governments. They seek to influence the relevant policies and expenditures of the federal government.

Life Stages of Interest Groups

Interest groups commonly experience a life cycle of creation (or birth), growth and change (or evolution), and sometimes death.

Creation

As the United States has become more complex with new technologies, products, services, businesses, and professions, the US government has become more involved in the economy and society. People with common interests organize to solicit support and solutions to their problems from government. Policies enacted in response to the efforts of these groups affect other people, who then form groups to seek government intervention for themselves. These groups may give rise to additional groups.

Some interest groups are created in reaction to an event or a perceived grievance. The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) was founded in 1973 in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision earlier that year legalizing abortion. However, groups may form long after the reasons for establishing them are obvious. The NAACP was not founded until 1909 even though segregation of and discrimination against black people had existed for many years.

Listen to oral arguments in Roe v. Wade here.

Interest group entrepreneurs usually are important in the creation of groups. Often they are responding to events in their lives. After a drunk driver killed one of her daughters, Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1980. She thereby identified latent interests: people who could be grouped together and organized to pursue what she made them realize was a shared goal, punishing and getting drunk drivers off the road. She was helped by widespread media coverage that brought public attention to her loss and cause.

Evolution and Demise

Interest groups can change over time. The National Rifle Association (NRA) started out as a sports organization in the late nineteenth century dedicated to improving its members' marksmanship. It became an advocate for law and order in the 1960s, until its official support for the 1968 Gun Control Act brought dissension in its ranks. Since the election of new leaders in 1977, the NRA has focused on the Second Amendment right to bear arms, opposing legislation restricting the sale or distribution of guns and ammunition.

Interest groups can also die. They may run out of funds. Their issues may lose popularity or become irrelevant. Slavery no longer exists in the United States and thus neither does the American Anti-Slavery Society.

How Interest Groups Are Organized

Interest groups have leaders and staff. They control the group, decide its policy objectives, and recruit and represent members.

Leaders and Staff

Leaders and top staff usually run the interest group. They do so because they command its resources and information flow and have the experience and expertise to deal with public policies that are often complex and technical. Almost a century ago, Robert Michels identified this control by an organization's leaders and staff and called it "the iron law of oligarchy".

This oligarchy, or rule by the few, applies to single-entity interest groups and to most associations. Their leaders are appointed or elected and select the staff. Even in many membership organizations, the people who belong do not elect the leaders and have little input when the leaders decide policy objectives. Their participation is limited to sending in dues, expressing opinions and, if membership is voluntary, leaving when dissatisfied.

Voluntary Membership

People join membership interest groups voluntarily or because they have no choice.

When membership is voluntary, interest groups must recruit and try to retain members. Members help fund the group's activities, legitimize its objectives, and add credibility to the media.

Some people may not realize or accept that they have shared interests with others on a particular issue. For example, many young adults download music from the Internet, but few of them have joined the Future of Music Coalition, which is developing ways to do this legally. Others may be unwilling to court conflict by joining a group representing oppressed minorities or espousing controversial or unpopular views even when they agree with the group's views.

People do not need to join an interest group voluntarily when they can benefit from its activities without becoming a member. This is the problem of collective goods. Laws successfully lobbied for by environmental organizations that lead to cleaner air and water benefit members and nonmembers alike. However, the latter get a free ride.

There are three types of incentives that, alone or in combination, may overcome this free-rider problem. A purposive incentive leads people voluntarily to join and contribute money to a group because they want to help the group achieve its goals. Membership in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) increased by one hundred thousand in the eighteen months following the 9/11 attacks as the group raised concerns that the government's anti-terrorism campaign was harming civil liberties. In addition, people may join groups, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, because of a solidarity incentive. The motivation to join the group stems from the pleasure of interacting with like-minded individuals and the gratification of publicly expressing one's beliefs.

People may also join groups to obtain material incentives available only to members. AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, has around thirty-five million members. It obtains this huge number by charging a nominal annual membership fee and offering such material incentives as health insurance and reduced prices for prescription drugs. The group's magazine is sent to members and includes tax advice, travel and vacation information, and discounts.

Recruitment

One way interest groups recruit members is through media coverage. The appealingly named Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is a consumer organization that focuses on food and nutrition issues, produces quality research, and has media savvy. It is a valuable source of expertise and information for journalists. The frequent and favorable news coverage it receives brings the group and its activities to the public's attention and encourages people to support and join it.

News coverage of an interest group does not always have to be favorable to attract members. Oftentimes, stories about the NRA in major newspapers are negative. Presenting this negative coverage as bias and hostility against and attacks on gun owners, the group's leaders transform it into purposive and solidarity incentives. They use e-mail "to power membership mobilization, fundraising, single-issue voting and the other actions-in-solidarity that contribute to [their] success".

Groups also make personalized appeals to recruit members and solicit financial contributions. Names of people who might be sympathetic to a group are obtained by purchasing mailing lists from magazines, other groups, and political parties. Recruitment letters and e-mails often feature scare statements, such as a claim that Social Security is in jeopardy.

Interest groups recruit members, publicize their activities, and pursue their policy objectives through the new media. The Save Our Environment Action Center consists of twenty national environmental groups pooling their databases of supporters and establishing a website. Through this network, people can receive informational newsletters via e-mail, sign petitions, and contact their representatives.

Required Membership

Employment in most automobile plants requires that workers are members of the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW). Workers fought to establish unions to improve their wages, working conditions, and job opportunities. One way of achieving these objectives was to require all workers at a plant to be union members. But union membership has plummeted as the United States has moved from a manufacturing to a service economy and employers have effectively discouraged unionization. Many jobs do not have unions for workers to join whether they want to or not. Today only about 12 percent of workers belong to a union compared to a high of 35.5 percent in 1945. Only 7 percent of private-sector workers belong to a union. A majority of union members now work for the government.

Media Depictions of Unions

One reason for the decline of unions is their mainly negative portrayal in the mass media. There are hardly any labor-beat reporters in the news media, so union officials are infrequently used as sources and are consequently unable to frame union news to their advantage.

Strikes are the union action most often shown in the news. These are usually framed not as legitimate collective tactics to improve wages and working conditions, but as hurting or inconveniencing consumers by disrupting services (e.g., suspending classes in elementary and high schools) and causing the cancellation of events (e.g., professional sporting games).

Unions are rare in movies. Norma Rae (1979), Matewan (1987), and the documentary Harlan County, USA (1977), favorably portray workers' struggles to organize and strike for better working conditions, wages, and security, against exploiting employers. But in the classic union film, the Academy Award-winning On the Waterfront (1954), the union is corrupt, violent, and linked to organized crime; the union leaders exploit members to enrich themselves.

Representation

Groups claim to represent the interests of their members or constituents, but these interests may conflict. In an extensive study, Dara Z. Strolovitch found that civil rights organizations prioritized the interests of their middle-class members over the interests of the poor and working class. For example, they pushed for affirmative action rather than welfare and antipoverty policies.

A problem for AARP is that, aside from being fifty or over, its members may have little in common. In 1988, AARP supported legislation setting up a catastrophic health insurance plan in Medicare to provide insurance for elderly people faced with huge medical bills for major illnesses. After the plan went into effect, many seniors objected to the increase in their Medicare premiums and an annual surtax of as high as $800. Their complaints were widely covered in the media. Congress repealed the program the next year.

Even when members share a group's general goals they may reject some of its policy proposals or tactics. In 2009, Apple quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the chamber opposed global-warming legislation.

Interest Groups and Elections

Interest groups become involved in elections to influence policymakers. They may contribute funds, make independent expenditures, advocate issues, and mobilize voters. Wealthy groups help pay for the presidential nominating conventions and the presidential inauguration. They give funds to political parties because "by helping party leaders retain or regain control of the House or Senate, policymaking rewards . . . follow".

Endorsing Candidates

Interest groups may endorse candidates for office and, if they have the resources, mobilize members and sympathizers to work and vote for them. President Bill Clinton blamed the NRA for Al Gore losing the 2000 presidential election because it influenced voters in several states, including Arkansas, West Virginia, and Gore's home state of Tennessee. Had any of these states gone for Gore, he would have won the election.

Interest groups can promote candidates through television and radio advertisements. During the 2004 presidential election, the NRA ran a thirty-minute infomercial in battleground states favoring President George W. Bush and calling his opponent "the most anti-gun presidential nominee in United States history". In 2008, the NRA issued ads endorsing Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin.

Endorsements do carry risks. If the endorsed candidate loses, the unendorsed winner is likely to be unsympathetic to the group. Thus relatively few interest groups endorse presidential candidates and most endorsements are based on ideology.

Funding Candidates

Made possible by the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), political action committees (PACs) are a means for organizations, including interest groups, to raise funds and contribute to candidates in federal elections. Approximately one-third of the funds received by candidates for the House of Representatives and one-fifth of funds for Senate candidates come from PACs.

However, in January 2010 the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. The court majority justified the decision on the grounds of the First Amendment's free speech clause. The dissenters argued that allowing unlimited spending by corporations on political advertising would corrupt democracy.

Many interest groups value candidates' power above their ideology or voting record. Most PAC funds, especially from corporations, go to incumbents. Chairs and members of congressional committees and subcommittees who make policies relevant to the group are particularly favored. The case of Enron, although extreme, graphically reveals such funding. Of the 248 members of Congress on committees that investigated the 2002 accounting scandals and collapse of the giant corporation, 212 had received campaign contributions from Enron or its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen.

Some interest groups do fund candidates on the basis of ideology and policy preference. Ideological and public interest groups base support on candidates' views even if their defeat is likely. Pro-life organizations mainly support Republicans; pro-choice organizations mainly support Democrats.

The interest group–candidate relationship is a two-way street. Many candidates actively solicit support from interest groups on the basis of an existing or the promise of a future relationship. Candidates obtain some of the funds necessary for their campaigns from interest groups; the groups who give them money get the opportunity to make their case to sympathetic legislators. A businessman defending his company's PAC is quoted as saying, "Talking to politicians is fine, but with a little money they hear you better".

Much better. The Center for Responsive Politics shows correlations between campaign contributions and congressional voting. After the House of Representatives voted 220–215 in 2003 to pass the Medicare drug bill, the organization reported that "lawmakers who voted to approve the legislation have raised an average of roughly twice as much since 1999 from individuals and PACs associated with health insurers, HMOs [Health Maintenance Organizations] and pharmaceutical manufacturers as those who voted against the bill".Center for Responsive Politics, "Money and Medicare: Campaign Contributions Correlate with Vote", OpenSecrets Blog, November 24, 2003.

Key Takeaways

Interest groups are diverse in membership and purpose. They are created, may evolve in composition and goals, and sometimes die out. Interest group entrepreneurs may be integral to the creation of interest groups. Different types of incentives encourage interest group membership, and organizations use various methods to recruit new members. The media are particularly critical of labor unions. Interest groups try to influence elections in order to advance their policy objectives.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License

Interest Group and American Politics

Most people agree that interest groups significantly influence the government. However, some believe that interest groups are beneficial to democracy, while others think interest groups are harmful. The views of the former typically stem from the theory of "pluralism", which is described in this article. We will read about the potential for interest groups to be harmful in the next article.

Learning Objectives

After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What factors determine an interest group's success?

2. What are the levels of influence that interest groups can possess in their relations with policymakers?

3. What is pluralism?

4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of business interest groups?

In the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt argue that the activities of interest groups, notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, are one reason why, since World War II, the United States has provided more direct economic and military support to Israel than any other ally and pursues a policy of preserving and enhancing Israel's security. This raises the question of why interest groups succeed or fail to achieve their policy objectives.

Why Interest Groups Are (or Are Not) Successful

The main factors determining an interest group's effectiveness are its assets, objectives, alliances, the visibility of its involvement in policy decisions, and its responses to political change and crises, plus, of course, the media's depiction of it.

Assets

Successful interest groups have prestige, respected leadership, political skills, and ample finances. The Business Roundtable, composed of the chief executives of the two hundred leading corporations, has them all and thus has access to and influence on policymakers. Monetary assets allow groups to contribute to political campaigns through their political action committees (PACs).

The status and distribution of an interest group's members also contribute to its success. Automobile dealers are influential and live, as do their employees, in congressional districts across the country. After President Barack Obama proposed putting automobile loans under the oversight of a new federal consumer authority aimed at protecting borrowers from abusive lender, the dealers' lobbying arm, the National Automobile Dealers Association, organized opposition, including trips to Washington for some of the eighteen thousand dealers to meet and plead their case with their legislators. Congress exempted auto dealers from the regulation.

Objectives

The ease or difficulty of achieving a group's goals can determine its success. Preventing legislation from being enacted is usually easier than passing it. In a comprehensive study of interest group activities during the last two years of the Clinton administration and the first two years of the George W. Bush administration, researchers found that although some advocates succeed eventually in changing policy, "[t]he vast bulk of lobbying in Washington has to do not with the creation of new programs, but rather with the adjustment of existing programs or with the maintenance of programs just as they are".

Moreover, legislation enacted over the opposition of powerful interest groups tends to be watered down. Or the political costs of its passage are so heavy that its proponents in the presidential administration and Congress are discouraged from challenging the groups again.

Alliances

Interest groups sometimes cooperate with other groups to help them achieve a policy objective they could not accomplish alone. A coalition expands resources, broadens expertise, and adds to the credibility of the policy objectives. Alliances are often of natural allies such as the National Restaurant Association, the American Nursery and Landscape Association, and the National Council of Agricultural Employers, who united to oppose restrictions on immigration and penalties on businesses that employ illegal immigrants. But they can be made up of strange bedfellows, as when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Rifle Association (NRA) allied to oppose the U.S. Department of Justice putting raw, unsubstantiated data into a national computer network. For the ACLU, it was a violation of people's right to privacy; for the NRA, it was a move toward denying people the right to bear arms.

Visibility of Policy Involvement

Interest groups are often most successful when their activities are unreported by the media, uncriticized by most policymakers, and hidden from the public. Opposition to a group's activities is difficult when they are not visible. As one lobbyist observed, "A lobby is like a night flower, it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun".

In what are called iron triangles, or subgovernments, policy on a subject is often made by a relatively few people from Congress, the bureaucracy, and interest groups. A classic iron triangle has been veterans' affairs policy. Members of Congress chairing the relevant committees and subcommittees and their aides, key agency administrators from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and representatives from interest groups such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) have interacted and dominated policymaking. This policymaking has taken place with low visibility and very little opposition to the benefits provided for veterans. In general, the news media pay little attention to iron triangles in the absence of conflict and controversy, and interest groups are likely to achieve many of their objectives.

Political Change and Crises

Whether interest groups defend what they have or go on the offense to gain new benefits often depends on who is in control of the government. Some interest groups' goals are supported or opposed far more by one political party than another. A new president or a change in party control of Congress usually benefits some groups while putting others at a disadvantage. The Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election put a brake on new regulation of business by Congress, reduced funds for regulators to hire staff and enforce regulation, and limited investigations of industry practices.

Crises, especially ones extensively depicted by the media, often involve politicians and interest groups trying to achieve or prevent policy changes. Looking to exploit the horrific BP (British Petroleum) oil spill of 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico (which was widely covered in the media and replete with images of the oil-infested waters and oil-coated beaches and wildlife), environmentalists and their congressional allies worked for "measures to extend bans on new offshore drilling, strengthen safety and environmental safeguards, and raise to $10 billion or more the cap on civil liability for an oil producer in a spill". Opposing them were the oil and gas industry, which, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, spent $174.8 million on lobbying in 2009, and its allies in Congress from such oil states as Texas and Louisiana.

Relations between Interest Groups and Policymakers

When viewed overall, there is a hierarchy in the influence of relations between interest groups and policymakers.

• At the top, the interest group makes policy. This is uncommon.

• More common, the group maintains close political relations with policymakers.

• The group has an unchallengeable veto status over some governmental decisions, for example, over a presidential appointment.

• The group receives some attention from policymakers but mainly has a pressure relationship with them.

• The group has only a potential reprisal relationship with policymakers; it can threaten to oppose a member of Congress at the next election.

• At the bottom of the ladder, rejected by policymakers, the group is left to agitate and resist; its public demonstrations usually signify its inability to achieve its objectives by less visible means.

The relationships between interest groups and policymakers vary depending on the administration in power. Energy companies had a close political support and referral relationship with the George W. Bush administration but primarily a pressure relationship with the Obama administration. Relationships also vary by subject. For example, a Democratic president's choice to head the U.S. Department of Labor may have to be acceptable to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), but the union organization has little influence over other cabinet appointments.

Who Benefits from Interest Groups?

In Federalist No. 10, James Madison warns of the dangers of factions: "[A] number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community". Madison believed that factions were inevitable because their causes were "sown in the nature of man".

Madison's factions are not exactly today's interest groups. Indeed, interest groups, by representing diverse segments of society, offset one of Madison's concerns – the domination of the majority. Nonetheless, his warning raises important questions about the effects of interest groups.

Pluralism: Competition among Groups

Briefly stated, pluralism is the theory that competition among interest groups produces compromise and balance among competing policy preferences. For pluralists, the abundance of interest groups, the competition between them, and their representation of interests in society are inherent in American democracy. Bargaining between groups and ever-changing group alliances achieve a desirable dispersion of power or at least an acceptable balancing of the various interests in society.

Pluralists acknowledge that some groups might dominate areas where their interests are paramount. But they believe two factors rectify this situation. In overlapping membership, people belonging to several interest groups encourage negotiation and compromise. And underrepresented people will in time establish groups to assert their interests.

The Advantage of Business

An argument against pluralism is that business has an advantage over other segments of society, particularly the poor and the working class. These Americans lack disposable income and political skills to organize. The issues that concern them are often absent from the policy agenda. Business sponsors political advertisements, gives campaign contributions through PACs, donates to political parties, hires law and public relations firms, and funds research advocacy groups promoting free-market economics. A corporation can deploy multiple lobbyists and obtain access to various policymakers by joining several trade groups, belonging to business associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and using its CEO and other personnel from headquarters to lobby.

Business and trade associations make up approximately 70 percent of the organizations with representation in Washington, DC. Add interest groups representing professionals, and they account for approximately 85 percent of total spending on lobbying. The figure is for 1996.

Quite often a policy appears only to affect specific corporations or industries and therefore does not receive much media or public attention. The Walt Disney Company's copyright on Mickey Mouse was due to expire in 2003 and those on Pluto, Goofy, and Donald Duck would expire soon after. In 2000, after lobbying and well-placed campaign contributions by Disney, Congress extended all copyrights for twenty more years.

Business is not monolithic. Interests conflict between and among industries, individual corporations, and organizations representing professionals. Large businesses can have different objectives than small businesses. The interests of manufacturers, distributors, and retailers can clash. Moreover, even when business is united, its demands are not necessarily gratified immediately and absolutely, especially when the issue is visible and the demands provoke opposition.

Negative Depictions of Business

The media often depict business interest groups negatively, which can limit the groups' influence. Witness, for example, stories about the dubious dealings and bankruptcy of corporations such as Enron, the trials of corporate leaders who have pillaged their companies, and the huge salaries and bonuses paid in financial and related business sectors.

Corporations and their executives are commonly the villains in popular films including RoboCop (1987), Wall Street (1987), The Naked Gun 2 and ½: The Smell of Fear (1991), and the documentaries of Michael Moore, particularly Roger and Me (1989). Television news stories oftentimes portray the big business sector as buying access and favors with lavish campaign contributions and other indulgences, wielding undue influence on the policy process, and pursuing its interests at the expense of the national interest. Newspapers similarly frame business interest groups and their lobbyists as involved in dubious activities and exercising power for private greed. Typical is the New York Times' headline: "Vague Law and Hard Lobbying Add Up to Billions for Big Oil".

These stories could frame business interest groups more positively. They could point out that business lobbyists favor essential and deserving objectives, present information and valid arguments to policymakers, and make their proposals in a political arena (i.e., Congress) in competition with other groups. However, the negative view of business is incarnated in the enduring image of the chairman of the seven leading tobacco companies testifying before Congress.

Big Tobacco Testifies Before Congress

On April 14, 1994, the chief executives of the leading tobacco companies stood up, raised their right hands, and swore before members of the subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce that nicotine was not addictive. The photograph of this moment, prominently featured in the U.S. and foreign media, has become an enduring image of business executives who place the interests and profits of their corporations above the public interest even if it requires them to engage in self-deception, defy common sense about the dangers of their products, and give deceptive testimony under oath.

Had one sat through the several hours of hearings, watched them on television, or read the transcript, the executives would have come across as less defiant and more reasonable. They agreed to give Congress unpublished research documents, acknowledged that cigarettes may cause various health problems including cancer and heart disease, and admitted that they would prefer that their children not smoke. But the photo and its brief explanatory caption, not the complicated hearings, are the enduring image.

Why does this image of venal, almost criminal, tobacco executives endure? Simply put, television news' continuing coverage of the litigation by state attorneys general against the tobacco companies required vivid video to illustrate and dramatize an otherwise bland story. What better choice than the footage of the seven tobacco executives? Thus the image circulated over and over again on the nightly news and is widely available on the Internet years later.

Key Takeaways

Numerous factors determine the success or failure of interest groups in achieving their policy objectives. These include their assets, objectives, alliances, visibility of their involvement in policy decisions, responses to political change and crises, and depictions in the media. Relatedly, there is a hierarchy of interest groups' relations with policymakers. Pluralists regard interest groups as essential to American democracy; critics, however, believe that business interest groups are too dominant. Business interest groups have several advantages enabling them to achieve their policy objectives but also several disadvantages, including negative media depictions.

Most people agree that interest groups significantly influence the government. However, some believe that interest groups are beneficial to democracy, while others think interest groups are harmful. The views of the former typically stem from the theory of "pluralism", which is described in this article. We will read about the potential for interest groups to be harmful in the next article.