Interest Groups Essay (Essay 5)

    Interest groups are the foundation of political grassroots efforts. Defined as " a formally organized association that seeks to influence public policy," influence is spread widely through numerous groups. Interest groups use many techniques for lobbying votes and persuading voters such as  litigation, Campaign Contributions, Grassroots lobbying, and Mass Mobilization.

    Litigation, in simple terms, is the process of taking legal action against someone or something through a lawsuit. The in instance of interest groups, litigation would be used to prove a point. For example, the Sierra Club is interested in energy. If a large energy company attempted to buy national preserve land for energy reasons, the Sierra club could take legal action against the company to preserve energy and to prove a point while trying to persuade voters to help their cause. This is a lengthy measure to take on, but other ways, such as grassroots lobbying, are a little easier.

    Grassroots lobbying is quite common because interest groups depend on the support of people to become active and popular. Lobbyists want to influence national policy making. Grassroots lobbying has the same goal, but an entire group of people are in support of one law instead of one lobbyist. It costs a lot of money to lobby, which makes it important to have numerous and large campaign contributions in order to fund goals.

    Campaign contributions can come from PAC's or from private donors. If it were an election, there would be strict guidelines for amounts of dollars given to a politician, but interest groups are different. They get money from grassroots support, PAC's, and anyone else who will donate. Usually, there is a treasurer responsible for the monetary aspect of an interest group. The secretary is a key component in a successful group.

    Mass mobilization is used because of the effective ways of spreading awareness to others. Going back to the Sierra Club, mass mobilization would get the attention of politicians by peaceful protest of energy companies. This is an easier way to get a message across and is the most useful out of the prior techniques because it uses man-power, not money.

Interest groups are the basis of representing the people. Without them, senators and state representatives would have a much harder job. The techniques used by the groups are useful to some and less common to others. Either way, interest groups provide interesting incite on what the people truly want.