The Pros And Cons Of Interest Groups

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a) According to the hyperpluralist theory, interest groups maintain a vast amount of power and they are detrimental towards democracy. This is because there are too many groups fighting for their own individual interests, which means that only small groups of people are able to reap the economic and societal benefits. A wide variety and countless amounts of interest groups can cause demosclerosis in the government. An example of this would be the mohair subsidy that the Mohair Council of American continues to pursue. The National Rifle Association is another example. It is very popular, wealthy, and is able to shove stricter gun control laws back. These interest groups cause the government to become unproductive as it attempts to please the narrow views of these interest groups as opposed to the views of the public. This causes contradiction and confusion in terms of policies. b) A way that Madison thought that the effects of factions could be controlled was through maintaining equality and switching to a more republican form of government. Through a republic, a selected official could control factions by focusing on the view of the overall public as opposed to views imposed by interest groups. The United States is an example of a …show more content…

Organized interest groups are able to work together and have a greater chance of hearing from the government about their concerns. A strategy that interest groups use is forming parties on the basis of shared values. This way, these groups are able to publicize their concerns to a larger audience and have more people become interested in supporting their issues. An example of this would be Green parties in Western Europe representing the concerns of interest groups that are composed of environmentalists. This allows more people to become involved and they are able to draw more