Interest Groups In American Politics

American politics is saturated with interest groups. Interest groups are single issue groups that gain influence in politics by spreading their message in order to create legislature or to influence the governing body. Interest groups are more proficient at technical issues than general issues and they have a lot of information relating to their cause which makes them an effective tool for legislators. Interest groups can gain influence using direct lobbying or indirect lobbying. Direct lobbying involves directly speaking to the governing body in order to sway an official or officials to take the side of the interest group. Indirect lobbying the most common form of indirect lobbying is using the people to send letters or call representatives.

Well run interest groups can gain a lot of money in a variety of ways such as dues and donations. It’s not how the interest groups get the money they use that is the most interesting it’s how they use the money. The most important being lobbying and campaign donations. Interest groups will often donate to representatives in order for them to gain attention from them so they can get the opportunity to meet and discuss their positions with the representatives. Though no money is every is ever donated with the idea that if an interest group gives money to a certain candidate they have to vote in a certain manner, the opportunity to spread their message makes the groups that donate large sums of money significantly more likely to succeed. “Just about any interest group you can think of has a presence in Washington-and spends money to maintain that presence”(opensecrets.org). The importance of money to interest groups is that it allows them to accomplish their goal however this doesn’t always line up with the countries democratic values and Ideas. The problem with these donations is that it makes it incredibly difficult for the lower income population to have influence on policy. Though interest groups may be providing facts to legislators their facts are biased in a way that supports their constituent’s points of view which is often very different than that of a point of view from a lower income

The large number of interest groups has had significant influence on the amount of power branches of the government have. Interest groups have split the legislative branch making it “difficult to discern policy direction in this multitude of particular purposes”(Role of Interest Groups in Government, Herring). This is a major problem because all this competition for influence has made it even more difficult to get politicians to agree and form cohesive policies that work. The lack of strong political parties has helped create this problem because with stricter parties creates lesser variance in policy and interest. This all leads to the president gaining power. In a search for more cohesive and effective policy the government has to turn to the one branch of the government that is the most consistent, the executive branch. This is a problem because it put a lot more power in the hand of a single person then was intended. The competition has led to the president gaining power which becomes less democratic because it’s only one person making all our