INTEREST GROUPS BETWEEN AUTONOMOUS AND NATIONAL INTEREST

Abstract

Whether approached from an empirical or theoretical scientific point of view, the concept of interest groups covers a reality that is extremely difficult to understand and define. Although the formation of interest groups is a phenomenon that is common to all societies and the term is constantly used in the public debate in the form of “interest groups”, “pressure groups” or “lobbies”, it shows various sociological, ideological and economic heterogeneous aspects. Interest groups can take many different forms (unions, professional, religious organizations, associations, collective movements, etc.). An interest group, to be considered as such, must rely on a permanent organization, which distinguishes it, for example, from a one-time protest movement or social movement. Analyzing interest groups means discovering the logic of the construction of these collectives and their causes, their modes of existence and their means of existence, also studying the repertoires and modalities of action that “they implement the constraints and possibilities shaped by the spaces in which they are inserted.