Public Interest Groups

Overview

In 1787 when the United States Constitution was in the process of being ratified, James Madison was adamant about the dangers of factions and the threat they posed to democracy. In Federalist No. 10, Madison defined factions as citizens "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." Since the underlying cause of factions was the unequal distribution of property, the cause could not be removed. Thus, Madison argued, it was necessary to control the effects of the "mischiefs of factions." Efforts to control factions led to the formation over time of public interest groups, also known as pressure groups, advocacy groups, and special interest groups, competing interests that operate as a check on one another as they battle for control. Group activities may involve trying to get legislation passed, blocking detrimental legislation, writing draft legislation, or conducting publicity campaigns. Some observers believe that the role of public interest groups has become increasingly significant in the face of Congresses gridlocked by partisan impasse. A single piece of legislation may involve input from as many as five separate interest groups. There are strict laws concerning politicians' interaction with lobbyists, the behavior of lobbyists, and employment of former legislators as lobbyists. Public interest groups tend to be private, informal, informative, persuasive, and self-serving.

Historically, public interest groups have played a significant role in American politics, promoting such issues as temperance and abolition. The first record of organized lobbying was found in New York in 1829. However, it was not until the late nineteenth century that public interest groups were considered an essential element of the political process. In 1789, when Congress met at Federal Hall in New York City for its first session, the first lobbyists, representing the banking industry, were in attendance. Early public interest groups surfaced to protect the interests of corporations, monopolies, railroads, and weapons manufacturers. In 1850, scandal erupted over the bribing of public officials to influence votes on tariff legislation. In response, Congress conducted the first of many investigations into interest group tactics. The Gilded Age that followed has been identified as the Golden Age of lobbyists. The names of lobbyists William Chandler and Sam Ward became widely known. Newspapers were rife with stories of bribery and jobs being exchanged for contracts and land grants.

In 1872 during the building of the first transcontinental railroad, the Credit Mobilier scandal brought national attention to the behavior of lobbyists when it was discovered that lobbyists had exchanged stock in railroad companies for votes. Four years later, the House of Representatives passed legislation mandating registration of lobbyists. Beginning with Georgia in 1877, states successfully passed legislation requirements. It was not until 1946, however, that Congress passed the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act that called for registration of all lobbyists engaged in influencing federal government officials.

In the 1970s, public interest groups flourished with the establishment of Ralph Nader's Public Interest Research Group and groups motivated by the Watergate scandal to demand government accountability. In 1978, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act, which banned public officials from being employed by lobbying firms for at least a year after leaving office. In 1995, Congress passed the Lobbying Disclosure Act, identifying lobbyists as anyone who earned more than $2,500 over a three-month period from lobbying. The act also regulated contact between lobbyists and executive and congressional staffs. That same year, Republicans founded the K Street Project to coordinate conservative lobbying efforts. Social media has proved to be a fertile ground for the activities of public interest groups, and it has allowed them to target those who are receptive to their interests.

In 2003, a newspaper in Alexandria, Louisiana, broke the news that the Coushatta Tribe had paid lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a public relations firm $16 million for lobbying activities. Three years later, Abramoff was sentenced to six years in a federal prison on conviction of mail fraud, conspiracy to bribe public officials, and tax evasion. He subsequently became an advocate for tighter lobbying restrictions. Former politicians are regularly employed by lobbying firms with whom they worked while in office. W. J. "Billy" Tauz, a Republican from Louisiana, became president of the Big Pharma organization, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Since 1999 when he left Congress, former house speaker Newt Congress has reportedly been paid $1.6 million from Freddie Mac, a government-backed housing organization that frequently lobbied him while he was working as a politician.

The legal right of corporate public interest groups to exist has been hotly debated, but most scholars agree that citizens have a constitutional right to form public interest groups. That right is protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Scholars also acknowledge that public interest groups have continued to play an essential role in the governing process by providing information and analysis to legislators involved in decision-making and by monitoring government agencies. The courts have often been called upon to decide upon the legality of public interest groups. In 1875 in Trist v. Child,the Supreme Court condemned lobbyists; but by the mid-twentieth century, the pendulum had swung the other way. The right of lobbyists to exercise the right of petition was upheld in both United States v. Rumely(1953) and United States v. Harriss(1954).

Despite the popularity of some public interest groups, lobbyists are generally unpopular with the public. In a 2013 poll, of twenty-two professions ranked on honesty and ethics, the lowest ranked profession was lobbyist. That lack of popularity has led lobbyists to relabel themselves as "strategic advisers." In 2013, the American League of Lobbyists changed its name to the Association of Government Relations Professionals. Public attitudes on public interest groups have been inconsistent and are often dependent on the type of group under discussion. Studies have revealed that Americans are more likely to contribute financially to an interest group that they believe supports their interest than to a political party, which represents diverse interests (Holyoke, 2014).

Jane Johnston (2016) suggests that early interest groups were most likely to be community-oriented. As they gained in power, they took on other responsibilities, identifying issues; mobilizing political support; forming alliances; engaging in bargaining, negotiating, and accommodating; accumulating and expanding political favors; and enlarging their organizations. Public interest groups may represent such diverse interests as education, business, agriculture, the environment, the elderly, children, labor, religion, public employees, professions, women or minority rights, and immigrant rights. Foreign governments also employ lobbyists to influence American politicians. Interest groups may operate as single-issue groups, broad interest groups, corporate interest groups, public interest groups, sectional interest groups, or cause-motivated interest groups. The cause-interest group may be devoted to providing a voice for a particular group such as the disabled, asylum seekers, or addicts. Some scholars maintain that since 1994, public interest groups have increasingly become the tools of large corporations, banks, and major financial institutions.

Further Insights

Some of the largest public interest groups are the National Rifle Association, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the American Medical Association, the American Association of Retired Persons, and Americans for Prosperity (a conservative group controlled by the Koch brothers). The National Rifle Association, which was founded by former Union soldiers in the post-Civil War years, has close ties to a number of politicians, particularly Republicans, and has been instrumental in blocking most federal efforts at gun control. After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day, 2018, in which seventeen people were killed, Parkland students banded together to fight the powerful NRA and promote the March for Our Lives that took place on March 24 in Washington, DC. The march was attended by more than 200,000, and smaller rallies took place throughout the country. States, including Florida, began passing gun control bills. The March for Our Lives took place a second time on June 11, 2022, after the mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket and the Robb Elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Together, interest groups that represent powerful drug companies have been labeled Big Pharma, and that group has been associated with such tactics as employing front groups, engaging in direct consumer marketing, disease mongering, buying researchers, and paying celebrities to promote products (Johnston, 2016). Public interest groups may be highly partisan, even when their names do not identify them as such. For example, the Heritage Foundation, which began as a think tank, evolved into a conservative lobbying group. The United States Chamber of Commerce spends millions of dollars supporting Republican candidates and trying to defeat Democratic candidates.

The bottom line for lobbyists is that their chief concern is protecting the interests of the groups they represent; and each group establishes its own agenda, identifying and analyzing issues and problems and deciding on a course of action. In addition to lobbyists, members of a public interest group may be composed of advocates, grassroots activists, civil organizations, and stakeholder groups. A lobbyist representing corporate interests is motivated by profits and benefits for their employers, and they are motivated to use lobbying dollars effectively. Lobbyists involved in passage of the 2004 American Jobs Creation Action received a return of $220 on every one dollar spent (Holyoke, 2014).

In direct opposition to corporate lobbyists, a lobbyist for an environmental group is more concerned with protecting the environment. Ideally, the two groups are checked through competition with one another. In reality, the playing field for the two lobbyists is uneven because the resources of the two groups are extremely different. In the first case, the lobbyist may have access to enormous funds and a large staff, including experts, providing information about relevant issues. In the second, the lobbyist may have limited funds, and support may be provided by a small staff or by volunteers. Quinton Gee (2016) argues that the legal right of the citizen group to exist is protected by the First Amendment, but the right of the corporate group is not because the right of petition is nontransferable within the democratic process. Since the 1990s, scholars have generated a large body of scholarship on public interest groups and lobbying.

Between 1996 and 2006, the number of lobbyists headquartered in Washington, DC climbed from 10,000 to 26,013. Within two years, that number had grown to 35,000. By 2017, there were 11,502 lobbyists based in the capital city, where they tend to cluster on K Street. That number is considered to be much higher in reality because many lobbyists prefer to remain unregistered, as flying under the radar allows them to operate more freely.

Tens of thousands of lobbyists also operate at the state and local level. On the average, lobbyists for public interest groups spend $6 billion a year in the process of exerting influence. In 2021, the sectors with the largest outlays were the Pharmaceuticals/Health Products sector ($356.6 million), the Insurance sector ($152.9 million), the Electric Utilities sector ($112.2). In comparison, s defense interest groups spent $98.9 million during the same year.

Questions of conflicts between free speech and public interest group strategies surfaced in the 1990s when employers began pressuring employees to take certain political positions. Since 2000, the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC) has regularly pressured businesses to engage in this practice. The tactic proved successful in 2014 when Conoco, Philips, BP, and Exxon Mobil used mandatory meetings, signs posted at work, e-mails, and website promotions to influence votes. In 2018, during debate on Donald Trump's new tax bill, some business owners pressured their employees to call members of Congress and express support for the bill, and United Postal Service (UPS) hosted town halls for Republican politicians. In a telephone poll of 1,032 employees, one in four respondents reported hearing about political issues from their employers, and a poll of 500 business leaders found similar results.

Discourse

Competition among public interest groups may be fierce at times, but lobbyists are strongly influenced by one another. They may also form alliances when agendas converge. For example, the Coalition on Smoking or Health (Con-SORH), which is composed of the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and the American Cancer Society, has targeted large tobacco companies. Reasons for cooperation among public interest groups include the advantages of sharing costs and/or resources and the need to cover broad areas of common interest. Examples include the American Medical Association and the American Banking Association as well as groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. The Refugee Council of Australia is composed of two hundred separate groups. Interest groups may also work directly in opposition to one another. In West Virginia, for example the interests of coal miners and coal burners come into constant conflict with the interests of environmentalists. In Louisiana, protecting marine life may destroy the ability of shrimpers to earn a living.

Religious groups, including Priests for Life, Catholics against Capital Punishment, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the American Jewish Congress, have also formed public interest groups and employed lobbyists. In 1900, the Christian Science Church established the first religious public interest group headquarters in Washington, DC. The Seventh-Day Adventists followed suit the next year. By 1910, there were 10 such groups; by 2010, there were 214. In 2019, religious groups were spending an average of $4.55 million a year on protecting their interests. The Supreme Court has upheld the legal right of religious lobbying in cases such as Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC(2012) and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.(2014).

Political scientist Robert Alexander argues that since the 1970s, there has been a trend toward bypassing the input of interest groups and those of political consultants and political marketing firms to allow the people to vote directly on controversial issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion access, legalization of marijuana, public healthcare, minimum-wage increases, government control, and stem cell research. Alexander notes that more state initiatives were placed on ballots in the 2000s than at any other time in American history. In a study of voters in California (80%), Michigan (82%), and South Carolina (76%), Alexander learned that respondents believed that elements of direct democracy such as initiatives and referenda were likely to be influenced by special interest groups that intentionally misled voters.

Public interest groups operate in most countries, but rules governing them vary according to type of government. Florian Weiler and Matthias Brändli (2015) compared European public interest groups, discovering that interest groups promoting the public interests were more likely to be integrated into policy structures in countries that provided elements of direct democracy. For example, the presence of effective interest groups were evident in Switzerland where frequent referendums on government actions took place. In Germany, however, the rarity of referendums indicated a lack of integration. Public interest groups, which were most common at the national levels, were divided into two groups that chose targets based on particular goals. Insiders, which consisted of political parties and government officials, were targeted when it was necessary to influence legislation. Outsiders, which referred to the media and members of the general public, became important when it was necessary to mobilize members.

Bibliography

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Johnston, J. (2016). Public relations and the public interest.New York: Routledge.

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Scott, J. C. (2013). Social processes in lobbyist agenda development: A longitudinal network analysis of interest groups and legislation. Policy Studies Journal, 41(4), 609–636.

Weiler, F., & Brändli, M. (2015). Inside versus outside lobbying: How the institutional framework shapes the lobbying behavior of interest groups. European Journal of Political Research, 54(4), 745–766.