History Of Interest Groups Research Paper

So the modern interest group might be defined as a voluntary association of individuals, firms, or smaller groups uniting in order to defend or fight for a common interest, with the intention of influencing and intervening in the political process, but without ambition to form a political party (exceptions not-with- standing). A number of similar terms correspond to the same definition: pressure groups, organized interests, lobbies, power groups, the German Verbande, the French syndicats, US ‘chambers,’ and many ‘institutes’ or ‘associations.’ (Functional equivalents in the non-Western world are here excluded.) As the groups’ activities are usually directed toward the political arena asking for specific legislation, allocation of benefits, and state intervention promoting their interests, the rise of state interventionism and of the modern social and welfare state since the last quarter of the nineteenth century has been closely intertwined with a secular proliferation of interest groups of different types which, on the one hand, usually reflected the characteristics of the (more or less democratic) political systems in which they originated. On the other hand, the groups’ activities have often significantly contributed to modifying and modernizing the political systems, and to establishing new rules and patterns of interaction. Their recognition and legitimation have not only been products of their performance, but have also been dependent on the general theoretical and ideological orientations of the political consensus within a given polity, which could vary from authoritarian or Rousseauist views of single or ‘particular’ interests as being categorically detrimental to the common good to more pluralistic Anglo-Saxon approaches of accepting different interest articulations as expressions of a vital civil society (Tocqueville) and of taking factions for granted as vehicles of political agency (cf. Fraenkel 1964). In order to overcome some of the implied shortcomings of legitimation, interest groups have usually tended to develop ideological mechanisms of their own to demonstrate that their particular interests serve the common good or coincide with the interests of the community.

1. Types

Interest groups have developed into a wide variety of different types. They could organize individuals, firms, associations, or public corporations (cities, states, provinces, legislatures) at a local, translocal, national, or transnational level and develop different characteristics. With regard to the contents and quality of the interests involved it could be said that, with some simplification and not accounting for the various mixes and marginal or exceptional cases, most of the groups may belong to one of the following eight types: (a) professional associations; (b) groups of business, commerce, and industry; (c) labor unions; (d) agricultural organizations; (e) single interest groups; (f ) ideological interest groups; (g) public interest groups; and (h) welfare associations.

(a) The most ‘classical’ case seems to be the one of the professional associations which have taken over many of the functions of the premodern guilds, estates, brotherhoods, or clubs, particularly in regulating the requirements and mechanisms of cooptation and access to a number of key professions, be it as a privilege of professional self-government as in the USA (American Bar Association, American Medical Association) or as a task delegated by the state as in most of the German Kammern (of lawyers, doctors, artisans). The various medical associations have become particularly differentiated with the rise of compulsory health insurance or comprehensive national health services (cf. the German Kassenarztliche Vereinigungen). The organization of less professionalized groups such as teachers or employees in trade and commerce has often followed the lines of professional associations, if they did not unionize in the labor ranks as in most Latin countries.

(b), (c) The two predominant camps of interest groups of the industrial era, the associations of industry and the labor unions, have typologically developed out of earlier commercial guilds or professional associations of craftspeople and workers. The labor unions in industry have usually been able to acquire more strength and influence since they began to overcome their traditional fragmentation along the lines of professions and crafts, and started to form broader industrial unions—in Germany since the 1890s, in the UK after World War II, in most other industrial countries during the 1920s and 1930s. In industry and labor it also made a great difference whether there evolved a coordinating peak association or confederation, or whether there were two, as in German industry before 1919 or in Spanish labor before 1939 and after 1975, or a more fragmented variety, as in the USA. In case labor relations became institutionalized, the industrial sector and its associations occasionally created separate employers’ associations with the specific objective of coordinating negotiations with the unions. Banking, insurance, and small business interests in most countries have also organized separately.

(d) Most agricultural interest groups, which came into existence from the last third of the nineteenth century on, besides voicing the interests of ‘agriculture’ against industry and the industrial world, have reflected the structures and divisions of the various crop sectors or regions in their nation’s agricultural economies, with the interests of larger producers usually dominating those of the smaller ones, a high influence of specialized production interests notwithstanding. In less developed countries or regions with a greater number of dependent small peasants and landless laborers, agricultural interests have also been organized in labor unions and social movements. In some countries (such as France) and in determined historical periods and constellations in others (such as Italy, Spain, the USA during the Populist Era, Germany and the USA around 1930 during the Great Depression) the mode of agricultural interest articulation could oscillate between interest-group politics and social protest.

Two other ‘classical’ types are constituted by groups dedicated to voicing (e) a single nonprofessional, nonproducer, and nonpublic interest—for example, the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the USA, groups advocating or fighting particular forms of exclusive or commercialized sports or entertainment, automobile associations; and (f ) by more ideologically inspired groups such as those advocating imperialism, temperance, or prohibition (Anti-Saloon League), or fighting abortion or the death penalty. A number of single interest groups claim to be contributing to the public good by improving people’s health—for example, most large sports associations—or by promoting human progress and empowerment of the underprivileged—for example, many organizations of the minorities and of women in the USA (such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the National Organization for Women).

(g) Some of these groups might also be considered to belong, at least partly, to the type of public interest groups, the most common issues of which in the USA—following more than a century of honorable precursors such the Anti-Slavery Society (1833) and the American Civil Liberties Union (1920)—since the 1970s have been environmental and consumer interests (Common Cause, Public Citizen, Consumer Federation of America; cf. McFarland 1984). In Germany and some other Central and West European countries antinuclear and pacifist issues would have to be added. At the transnational level, groups such as Greenpeace or Amnesty International would belong to this category.

(h) The heterogeneous groups which might be labeled as welfare associations often combine professional interests, particularly those of social workers, with those of public entities, mostly cities and counties, and the single and ideological interests of churches, religious communities, and other private agents in the welfare arena, which in parts might also be considered as serving the public interest. Many organized themselves early on into coordinating central or national associations of associations or corporations, such as the National Conference of Charities and Correction (1874 84) in the USA ( professional interests prevailing) or the Deutsche Verein fur Armenpflege und Wohltatigkeit (1881) in Germany (corporate interests prevailing), long before sectoral peak associations were formed.

The various forms of intergovernmental lobbying will not be considered here because they are about influence and allocation of benefits within the public sphere only. Hence, neither the National Governors’ Association or the US Conference of Mayors, nor the German Kultusministerkonferenz or the Deutsche Stadtetag will be considered as interest groups. The same applies to the often well-organized lobbies of foreign governments in Washington, DC, or to the representation of state or regional interests vis-à-vis the European Commission in Brussels, even if they seek to increase their influence by behaving like private interests. Likewise, the numerous Political Action Committees (PACs) of American interest groups, which have basically been founded for legal reasons with the specific purpose of influencing legislation, might not be considered as being a separate type of interest group, because the interests voiced by them are the same as those of their creators (cf. Cigler and Loomis 1995, Walker 1991).

Alternative typologies might differentiate between status quo defenders and agents of change, or according to whether the groups rely more on money or on numbers, on machines and bureaucrats, or on mobilization and agitation, whether they wish to influence legislators en petit comite or think they need a broad public forum (which also depends on the political system), or whether or not they need a high level of identification or have to provide a variety of services in order to secure their members’ loyalty (such as automobile associations). Among the most basic and influential differences are those between big and small interest groups, and between big and small constituencies. Smaller constituencies (such as steel or farming interests) are usually much better organized and represented than broader constituencies (such as consumers), which tend to fall victim to the mechanisms of the ‘free rider’ effect (Olson 1965, Downs 1957).

2. Constellations And Trajectories

The shapes of interest groups and of the evolving national systems of interest intermediation have been significantly influenced by particular economic, social, and political constellations, by institutional sets, and by the distinct paths and trajectories of modernization in different countries and societies. Of particular importance here are the peculiar relations and mixes of developments in the three most important dimensions of the modernization processes, which, simplified, might be labeled as bureaucratization, industrialization, and democratization. In the UK industrialization has triggered democratization, and bureaucratization came late, basically in order to cope with the social consequences of industrialization. In the USA, which followed a similar pattern, the elements of democratization were stronger from the beginning, although moderated by federalism, and more checks and balances. On the European continent bureaucratization has been the legacy of early state building under absolutism, but here the French Revolution has made the great difference. In France the bureaucratic factors combined with the different lines of democratization (notable representation or Bonapartism, with its peculiar ‘deliberative’ mechanisms), whereas in most of the German states democratization was postponed, and the characteristic patterns of modernization were dominated, down to the mid-twentieth century, by factors combined from bureaucratization and industrialization.

These different constellations have influenced the emergence and performance of interest groups with regard to their social bases and opportunity structures, their strategies and addressees, organization, modes of operation, and achievements, and their relationship with governments, parliaments, and political parties. It is important to note that of the USA and Germany—two countries which have shaped the Gestalt of modern interest groups for the twentieth century more than any others since the breakthrough of organized mass politics between 1890 and 1910—one was not democratic. In Germany the government was not accountable to parliament, and the decades of Bismarckian authoritarianism had weakened the political parties and given the (supposedly less political) interest groups better conditions to flourish than anywhere else.

3. Different Patterns Of Organization

In Germany the interest groups developed typologically in three waves:

(a) Most of the associations of the first wave, some of which dated back to the first decades of the nineteenth century, were by 1900 closely cooperating with the state bureaucracy, and had become part of privileged semiautonomous corporations, or ‘chambers,’ of agriculture, commerce, and the trades, which could no longer oppose government policies.

(b) The second wave was initiated by the protectionist groups of heavy industry (Zentral erband Deutscher Industrieller, 1876) and, though to a lesser degree, by heavy agriculture, in response to the great deflation of the 1870s whose principal addressees were bureaucrats and legislators. The same characteristics of interest representation vis-a-vis parliament and the executive, but not much mobilization, can be found in most groups of business and industry which were emerging during the same period in the industrial countries—usually divided into protectionists and free traders. In the USA from the 1880s on, a two-tiered system was emerging, with, at its peak, national associations such as the National Association of Manufacturers (1885) and the US Chamber of Commerce, and thousands of influential trade associations to represent the various branches of production. In US agriculture, however, populist protest preceded organized lobbying (see below).

(c) The groups of the third wave in Germany went beyond the previously established patterns of interest representation in that they started massive and permanent propaganda campaigns, and began to influence elections, political parties, and individual politicians. They entered the stage at a time, from the 1890s onward, when the progress of industrialization induced by new technologies combined with the extension of the political mass market, modernization of party organization, the proliferation of social Darwinism, and imperialistic rhetoric to create an ambience favoring a new type of vigorous, aggressive, and well-organized interest group working the public. Among these groups were the protectionist and interventionist Farmers’ League (Bund der Landwirte, 1893), various petty bourgeois groups of the ‘old Mittelstand’ (artisans, shopkeepers), and a number of imperialistic propaganda associations such as the Pan German and the Navy League. These groups were at the core of the politics of the New Right against liberalism and social democracy. They contributed much to the modernization and radicalization of conservative groups, which now turned ultranationalistic and racist, and to the irreconcilable right/left polarization of the social and political forces active at the end of the monarchy that was to continue during the Weimar Republic, which it helped to undermine (Puhle 1975, Ullmann 1988).

One of the models the German interest groups of the third wave decided to follow was that of ‘social democracy,’ meaning the party and the labor unions, which soon after their emergence from clandestinity under Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law in 1890 created efficient bureaucratic machines and initiated wide- ranging activities in expanding and consolidating the movement—which went far beyond the scope of what the earlier traditional crafts unions and associations of mutual assistance had achieved since the 1850s. The ‘General Commission’ of the social democratic unions, from the late 1890s on, came close to what might be called a peak association of labor, despite the existence of some smaller Catholic and liberal unions. The powerful industrial unions, particularly those of the metal workers and miners, could claim to be the most modern in the world. Their position was further enhanced by the fact that industry and the new employers’ associations, from around 1900 on, began to negotiate with them on a regular basis, usually at the regional level. Beside bureaucratic traditions, the modern unions contributed to the early emergence of institutionalized labor relations in Germany, and vice versa.

In the USA, both the organization of industrial unions, most visible in the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) and institutionalized labor relations, though much more fragmented than in Ger- many, were not achieved before the New Deal reforms of the mid-1930s (cf. Schonhoven 1987, Bok and Dunlop 1970). Most of the unions within and outside the American Federation of Labor (AFL, 1886) were organized for much longer along the lines of the traditional crafts, although not as long as the UK unions of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which nevertheless managed to dominate the Labour Party for the first two thirds of the twentieth century. The AFL and the CIO were reunited in 1955. In France, Southern Europe, and in other parts of the world there has often been more competition between unions of different ideological and political ‘colors,’ which have close ties to their respective parties.

Many European interest groups of the third wave, particularly in agriculture, also saw a model in the American Populists. It is interesting to see, however, that the sequences of different modes of organization and political performance of the agricultural interests in Germany and the USA have somehow been inverse: In Germany before 1933 the prevailing patterns went from ordinary lobbying to protest and mobilization; in the USA it has been the other way round, some limited revivals of protest in the Great Depression notwithstanding. The Populist revolts were followed by extensive and efficient lobbying techniques, as established by the American Farm Bureau Federation (1919), now also taken up by the older National Grange (1867) and National Farmers’ Union (1902). In the UK and Scandinavia, traditional sectoral lobbying has prevailed throughout. In France one could always find several different modes of operation simultaneously—lobbying in the channels of notable politics by the big producers, mostly in the north, which organized themselves in Catholic and radical groups; and protest and mobilization on the part of the smaller producers, notably the winegrowers, mostly in the south. Interest representation has hence been more fragmented, and a second tier of special product interests (associations specialisees) has been influential. Since the 1950s the coordinating function of the Federation Nationale des Syndicats d’Exploitants Agricoles has become stronger. Small peasants and laborers in the French South were eventually organized in socialist unions; in parts of Italy and Spain also in anarchist and anarchosyndicalist unions (cf. Hervieu and Lagrave 1992).

4. Systems Of Interest Intermediation

The various interest groups interact with one another, and with the legislative and executive branches of the governments, in national (occasionally also regional) systems of interest intermediation, the organization of which follows distinct patterns. These patterns depend, among other things, on the respective intensities and traditions of democratic and parliamentary government, and state interventionism. They usually oscillate between the two poles of more liberal and market-oriented pluralism, and more regulated and institutionalized corporatism, be it in the authoritarian ‘state-corporatist’ tradition (mostly of fascist extraction) or in the democratic variant of ‘societal corporatism’ or ‘neocorporatism.’

Modern corporatism was originally defined by Schmitter as:

a system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports. (Schmitter and Lehmbruch 1979, p. 13)

Among the essential prerequisites for the emergence of corporatist mechanisms or systems are usually counted the existence of peak associations, strong reformist labor movements, a propensity for state interventionism, and a readiness for interparty cooperation, if not consociationalism, in the political arena (cf. Puhle 1984, Lijphart 1984). In reality, however, this ‘pure type’ of corporatism has been as rare as its opposite, the nineteenth-century model of liberal pluralism.

The systems of interest intermediation of most developed countries seem to have evolved into one of the two most frequent ‘mixed’ patterns. One is an organized and more or less regulated pluralism, often with strong oligarchic tendencies, which usually begins with ‘regulation by the regulated,’ as in the USA during the Progressive Era. The other is a syndrome displaying corporatist mechanisms in a number of important sectors, not, however, adding up to a fullfledged corporatist system except in very few countries, such as Sweden, Austria, or The Netherlands in their ‘classical’ postwar periods. Occasionally the two patterns even seem to converge: The ‘iron triangles,’ observed in certain sectors until the late 1990s, of a pluralist pattern of interest intermediation such as the American, came close to the classical ‘tripartite’ arrangements between industry, labor (both ideally represented by peak associations), and the state in corporatist systems.

Corporatism as well as the quasicorporatist functions of the ‘iron triangles’—since the economic crisis of the 1970s—seem to have been significantly weakened by the increased tendencies toward fragmentation and segmentation, of interests and politics, under the impact of decentralization and deregulation, loss of membership, ‘new lobbyism,’ and the emergence of new public interest groups. This is particularly the case in the USA, where in the late 1980s about 18,000 associations (and 7,000 lobbyists) were registered before Congress, in comparison with around 1,350 in Germany (cf. Petracca 1992).

The degree of institutionalization of the mechanisms of interest intermediation could also vary on a sliding scale of at least four different intensities. These range from almost none (lobbying in the open political market) to codified advisory or deliberative functions of interest representation—either ad hoc, as in parliamentary hearings, or on a permanent basis, as provided by some constitutions and in the economic, social, and regional councils of the European Union—to coordinating and regulating agencies jointly organized by the interests and the state after the model of the agencies and councils established in Germany and the USA during the First World War and revitalized by the New Deal or by the (moderately neocorporatist) Konzertierte Aktion of the early 1970s in Germany. A variety of corporatist arrangements in other countries would also fit into this category. The highest level of institutionalization with compulsory participation, binding decisions, and some general jurisdiction has been reached in sectoral interest representation in councils or chambers with delegated public powers, and in the different regimes of institutionalized labor relations with ‘tripartite’ participation, in many industrial countries. In addition, in the USA and in Europe some of the newly established legal programs for the empowerment of women or minorities, although they do not recognize interest groups, have given some of the respective groups a quasipublic monitoring function.

5. Functions

Together with political parties, interest groups are the core agents of structured intermediacy indispensable to the functioning of a free society and a democratic polity. They contribute essentially to the aggregation, articulation, and representation of interests, serve as vehicles for identification, mobilization, and participation, and also as transmission belts for support and legitimation. On the whole, most modern interest groups during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have contributed to the extension and preservation of liberal democracy, and to social and political change. The existence of distinct and different organized interests has been a key prerequisite of the recognition of pluralism, for setting up channels and rules for the democratic game, and for checks and balances. Active and dynamic interest groups and nongovernmental organizations (the often idealized NGOs) have contributed to consolidating the mechanisms of civil society, and their participatory and mobilizing energies have helped to revitalize political systems in cases of crisis and stagnation.

Interest groups, however, cannot be considered to be democratic per se in their internal structure, or to defend and promote democracy under all circumstances. In many European countries during the first half of the twentieth century, interest groups, principally of industry, agriculture, and the mobilized, crisis-ridden middle classes, substantially contributed to the breakdown and destruction of democracies, and collaborated with the dictators (e.g., in Germany, Italy, and Spain), in particular by disputing the principle of parliamentary representation and the legitimacy of political parties. As, with regard to their primary political function, many tend to be somewhat ambiguous vis-a-vis the particular form of the political order, it is important that interest groups—like political parties—be held responsive and accountable to the general rules of the democratic game, that their performance in the public arena be subject to adequate control, and that, wherever necessary, efforts are made to integrate the regime of interest intermediation into the texture of democratic institutions and traditions (which may be more problematic in the case of groups acting transnationally). In dictatorial regimes, in contrast, interest groups, despite their instrumental function of organizing and occasionally mobilizing the different social sectors around the regime party or movement, in many cases by virtue of their participatory impact, have also been serving as vehicles of incremental liberalization, which eventually produces elite splits, transfers loyalties from the regime, and contributes to its demise. Recent research into the transitions from authoritarian rule and the consolidation of democracy has also demonstrated that the character of interest groups and the constellations within the ‘partial regime’ of interest intermediation have an important function for the overall process of democratic consolidation (Schmitter 1995).

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