Lobbying involves persuasion—using reports, protests, informal meetings, or other techniques to convince an elected official or bureaucrat to help enact a law, craft a regulation, or do something else that a group wants. Interest groups are organizations of people who share common political interests and aim to influence public policy by electioneering and lobbying. Interest groups and political parties share the goal of changing what government does, but there are three critical differences:
Political parties run candidates for office and coordinate activities of elected officials. While interest groups also electioneer, they do not run candidates.
Major political parties hold certain legal advantages over interest groups when it comes to influencing policy, such as guaranteed positions on electoral ballots.
The elected members of political parties have a direct influence over government activity because they
propose, debate, and vote on policies. Interest groups have an indirect influence: they must either persuade elected officials to support their point of view or help elect candidates who already share their goals.
Pluralism refers to the idea that Americans exercise political power through participation in interest groups rather than as individuals. Thus, interest groups are America's fundamental political actors. America has also been described as an interest group state, a government in which most policy decisions are determined by the influence of interest groups.
Interest groups can be divided into three categories based on the types of concerns that drive their lobbying efforts: economic groups, citizen groups, and single-issue groups.
Economic groups seek public policies that will provide monetary benefits to their members. Labor organizations fall under this category.
Citizen groups seek change in spending, regulations, or
government programs concerning a wide range of policies [also known as public interest groups]. Issues of interest may vary from legislation that defines marriage between a man and a woman to the elimination of estate taxes.
Single-issue groups form around a narrowly focused goal, seeking change on a single topic, government program, or piece of legislation. For example, the National Right to Life campaign lobbies for regulations on abortion rights.
Historically, economic interest groups outnumbered citizen groups and single-issue groups. While the number of all types of interest groups has increased in recent years, the increase in citizen groups has far outpaced the growth in economic groups. This may be attributed to the increased role of the government in citizens' everyday lives.
There are two main models of interest group structure: centralized groups and confederations.
Centralized groups are interest groups with a
headquarters, usually in Washington, DC, as well as members and field offices throughout the country. In general, these groups' lobbying decisions are made at headquarters by the group leaders. Most well-known organizations like the AARP and the NRA are centralized groups.
Confederations are interest groups made up of several independent, local organizations that provide much of their funding and hold most of the power.
Both structures have advantages and disadvantages. A centralized organization controls all of the group's resources and can deploy them efficiently, but it can be challenging to find out what members want. A confederation has the advantage of maintaining independent chapters at state and local levels, so it is easier for the national headquarters to learn what members want. Conflict, however, is more rampant in confederations because when chapters send funds to headquarters, they can specify how the funds must be used.
"Any candidate using Facebook can put a campaign message promising one thing in front of one group of voters while simultaneously running an ad with a completely opposite message in front of a different group of voters. The ads themselves are not posted anywhere for the general public to see [this is what's known as 'dark advertising'], and chances are, no one will ever be the wiser. That undermines the very idea of a 'marketplace of ideas,' says Ann Ravel, a former member of the Federal Election Commission who has long advocated stricter regulations on digital campaigning. 'The way to have a robust democracy is for people to hear all these ideas and make decisions and discuss," Ravel said. 'With microtargeting, that is not happening.'" Julia Carrie Wong, "'It Might Work Too Well:' the Dark Art of Political Advertising Online," The Guardian, March 19, 2018.
Which of the following scenarios reflects the most direct effect of the practice described in the passage on the electoral process?