Authors: Lipset
Summary: After defining the concept of interest groups the entry presents with empirical examples their roles, their positive and negative functions for democracy, expecially in terms of equality, and presents some proposed solutions to avoid their degeneration.
Interest groups are "organizations that try to influence the decisions of government... a manifestation of a free and open society... (that) play a vital role in democracies".
They have a vehiculation role (they express people political views through an associative form which governments pay more attention to) and an influence role (through experts' knowledge and participation to governamental process) on governments.
Even if interest groups are expression of organization freedom, there could be unease for the functioning of democracy: their interests "may not coincide with what is best for the nation as a whole" because they concern only people represented by one of these groups.
An open question about interests groups is indeed that of equality: "who gets what from government".
Not every interest is equally represented before the government and the explanations, besides that of market and economic competition rules, depend on the characteristics of the membership (the poorer the social class the less people participate to interest and political organizations), and on the nature of the interest (the less interests in common people have the less do they participate, e.g. consumers). The possibilities of successful organization of an interest group are linked to the level of members' skills and knowledge and to the nature of benefits and incentives the organization can give to them.
In order to limit degenerations due to this inequal nature of interest groups both more stringent rules for lobbysts and a strengthening of political parties can be seen as solutions to control the effects of interest groups that Madison called "factions".