Introduction
An interest group is a group of individuals who share common objectives, and whose aim is to influence policymakers. Institutional interest groups represent other organizations, with agendas that fit the needs of the organizations they serve. Examples include the American Cotton Manufacturers (which represents the generally congruous southern textile mills) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which represents the multitude of wants of American businesses).
Membership interest groups are organizations that represent individuals for social, business, labor, or charitable purposes in order to achieve civil or political goals. Examples include the NAACP (African-American interests), the Sierra Club (environmental interests), the NRA (Second Amendment interests), and Common Cause (interests in an increase in voter turnout and knowledge). Membership includes a group of people that join an interest group and unite under one cause. Members may or may not have an opinion on some of the issues the staff pursues. Similarly, staff are the leaders. With the membership united under one cause, the staff has the ability to pursue other issues that the membership may disagree on because members will remain in the group because they are united by the primary cause.
NRA Headquarters
The headquarters of the NRA, an interest group, located in Fairfax Virginia, USA.
Benefits and Incentives
A general theory is that individuals must be enticed with some type of benefit to join an interest group. Known as the free rider problem, it refers to the difficulty of obtaining members when the benefits are reaped without membership. For instance, an interest group dedicated to improving farming standards will fight for the general goal of improving farming for all farmers, even those who are not members of the particular interest group. Thus, there is no real incentive to join an interest group and pay dues if the farmer will still receive that benefit even if they do not become a member. Interest groups must receive dues and contributions from members in order to accomplish their agendas. While every individual in the world would benefit from a cleaner environment, an environmental protection interest group does not, in turn, receive financial help from every individual in the world.
Selective material benefits are sometimes given in order to address the free rider problem. Interest groups give material benefits like travel discounts, free meals at certain restaurants, or free subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, or journals. Many trade and professional interest groups give these benefits to members.
A selective solidary benefit is another type of benefit offered to members of an interest group. These incentives involve benefits like socializing, congeniality, the sense of group membership and identification, the status resulting from membership, fun and conviviality, the maintenance of social distinctions, and so on. A solidary incentive is one in which the rewards for participation are social and created out of the act of association.
An expressive incentive can be another basic benefit to members of an interest group. People who join an interest group because of expressive benefits join to express an ideological or moral value they believe in. Such values include free speech, civil rights, economic justice, or political equality. To obtain these types of benefits, members simply pay dues or donate time or money to get a feeling of satisfaction from expressing a political value. Even if the interest group does not achieve its goals, members merely want to be able to say they helped out in the process of trying to obtain the goals, which is the expressive incentive. Interest groups that rely on expressive benefits include environmental groups and groups who claim to lobby for the public interest.
Collective Action
Mancur Lloyd Olson, a leading American economist, sought to understand the logical basis of interest group membership and participation. The reigning political theories of his day granted groups an almost primordial status. Some appealed to a natural human instinct for herding, others ascribed the formation of groups to kinship rooted in the process of modernization. Olson offered a radically different account of the logical basis of organized collective action. In his first book, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965), he theorized that "only a separate and ‘selective' incentive will stimulate a rational individual in a latent group to act in a group-oriented way." Olsen's work laid the foundation for understanding how members of a large group will not act in the group's common interest unless motivated by personal gains.