Relations Among National Interest Groups

Abstract

T he concept system has been widely used in discussions of national and international politics, administrative organizations, and political parties, but not in discussions of interest groups. Political scientists generally treat interest groups as independent rather than interdependent entities. The total aggregation of interest groups active at the congressional level, for example, is seen as nothing more than the sum of these autonomous groups. The concepts of group coalition and group alliance, which are most frequently used in the literature to describe intergroup relations, are consistent with this premise. Coalition and alliance denote relations that are established as a result of explicit decisions by group leaders. In that frame of reference, systemic relations not produced by the calculated actions of group leaders are apt to remain unnoticed. This study explores relations among interest groups at the national level.1 Its general objectives are (1) to search for and delineate some of the patterns and dimensions of intergroup relations, and (2) to comment on the extent to which those relations are consistent with the pluralist model. The primary concerns of scholars researching the subject have been to determine the impact of groups on legislative work, or to analyze the internal dynamics of a single group. Relations among interest groups have been studied chiefly as an important but subsidiary aspect of the larger objective of explaining the passage or defeat of legislation. The only relations among interest groups that have received attention from political scientists are the group coalition or alliance, the joint committee of groups or catalytic group, and logrolling among groups.2