Group pluralism
Arriving at political decisions involves complex processes that vary according to the issues, the circumstances at the time the decisions are being taken, and many other institutional and personal factors. Three major sources can be determined from which the eventual solutions to problems are generated:
the institutional machinery of government itself, the party system, and inter- ested groups. Most decisions will involve all three of these structures in some degree or another, but as we have already seen the role of political parties in terms of policy formation is relatively weak, and a vacuum is created to be filled by the complex structure of interest groups. This separation of the functions of selecting leaders, and of initiating and influencing policy, gives to the American political system its peculiar flavour and complexity, which will become fully apparent only when we look at the behaviour of Congress- men and Senators and their relationship with the president and the adminis- tration. Party politics and pressure politics criss-cross and merge to produce an ever-changing pattern of legislative and executive behaviour.
But how do we distinguish between the party system and the structure of interest groups? After all, many of the persons involved in one of these pat- terns of behaviour will be involved in the other as well. Formally, the differ- ence between political party and interest group is that the former organisa- tion nominates candidates for public office, and the latter does not. If a group attempts to put up its own candidates for election, it becomes a political party and subject to all the legal provisions that in the United States regulate the operations of political parties. Yet this relatively straightforward distinction does not mean that in practice a sharp, clear line can be drawn between the two forms of political organisation. Holders of elective office, wearing a party label, may be very closely associated with particular interest groups, and al- though such groups do not formally nominate candidates they may publicly endorse a particular party or its candidate, contribute to campaign funds and either secretly or openly work to elect or defeat particular individuals. The membership of party and group may overlap to the point where a particular
group may be little more than one ‘wing’ of a political party; on the other hand, a group may be at pains to remain aloof from both parties in order to be able to appeal to them both on an equal basis. Thus interest groups may be seen either as alternatives to the political parties or as complementary to them. The complexity of the American party system gives added signifi- cance to this characteristic of interest groups, for a particular group may be identified more closely with a political party at state or local level than at the federal level, or have a closer relationship to the presidential party than to the congressional party. A group of individuals may emerge and re-emerge in different guises at different times, as the occasion demands. Thus, although for analytical purposes it is useful to describe the party system and the struc- ture of interest groups as if they were quite distinct entities, the realities of political life are more complex.
This blurring of the distinction between parties and interest groups is par- alleled at the other end of the spectrum by the way in which the structure of interest groups merges into the machinery of government itself. Thus some groups, the American Farm Bureau Federation, for instance, achieved a posi- tion that made them almost an essential party to any government action af- fecting their interests: groups formally outside the government can become appendages to it. In the same way, parts of the government machine itself may behave like interest groups in order to safeguard their own position.
Thus for many years the Air Force was a powerful interest group exercising influence on Congressmen in opposition to the policy of the Defense Depart- ment and other branches of the armed services. The National Guard, a part- time reserve military organisation, was extremely successful in obtaining its aims through traditional interest group methods, particularly through the efforts of the National Guard Association.
Bearing these complexities in mind, it is true to say that the importance of interest groups in the American political system has given rise to a theory of politics in which the interaction of groups becomes the essence of demo- cratic government. Group pluralism is perhaps the American theory of poli- tics, finding its roots in James Madison’s theory of the Constitution in 1787, and providing an alternative both to the Marxist class theory of politics and to the nineteenth-century individualistic theories of democracy. This theory of government is based upon the assumption that individuals as such can have little or no impact upon the way in which decisions are taken. The group is the significant unit of the political system. In a free society innumerable groups will form and re-form to express the diverse and changing interests of their members. Such groups are not a threat to the traditional channels of government action but a necessary complement to them. The groups perform the functions of supplying information about the enormous range of complex activities in which government becomes involved, and of giving expression to a range of opinions of far greater diversity than the normal representative machinery of government could cope with.
Two things are necessary for the successful operation of this type of
political system. First, there must be a broad consensus of agreement about the basis and aims of the society so that no group will attempt to force its views upon the rest to the point where civil war might ensue. As we have seen, this consensus is one of the characteristic features of the American ide- ological scene. Second, there must be a set of political mechanisms through which inter-group bargaining can be conducted in such a way that some sort of equilibrium can be attained between the competing demands. Perhaps the first requirement of this system of government is that it should be flexible.
The pattern of demands is continually changing as new economic, social and military developments take place, and a stable political system must be able to accommodate them. Changing group aspirations, such as those of blacks and other minority groups today, will disturb the established distribution of authority or wealth, and a new position of equilibrium, a new compromise, must be attained, a new bargain struck. This flexibility, the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, is one of the outstanding characteristics of the American political system, in contradiction to the oft-laboured clichés about the inflexibility of the American constitution.
This description of the working of the political system undoubtedly over- emphasises the pluralistic features of American government, certainly fail- ing to give sufficient weight to the policy-making functions of the presidency.
Nevertheless, it is by no means negligible as an explanation of the general working of American politics. As we shall see, on many issues the Congress of the United States becomes something of a marketplace in which the pres- sures of party, constituency and interested groups, including in the last cat- egory departments of the federal administration, are assessed, balanced and reconciled to produce compromises that seem in the eyes of the members of the legislature to be as satisfactory as possible to the interests involved.
Given the diversity of American society, these interests can be effectively represented only by a wide variety of competing groups with overlapping membership. This last consideration, the way in which the membership of different groups overlaps, is an important factor in the operation of group bargaining, making the processes of the reconciliation of competing demands far easier than if the groups concerned were ossified into completely distinct and separate sections of the community.
The flexibility of the political system flows to a considerable extent, there- fore, from the way in which interest groups work the cumbrous machinery of American government. The constitutional devices of federalism and the separation of powers, which together serve to decentralise both the govern- ment and the parties geographically, and to disintegrate them vertically, cre- ate the conditions in which interest groups can flourish and indeed become essential to the operation of government. Interest groups, unlike political parties, are not bound to particular geographical constituencies. They can organise themselves across states or sections, or across the whole nation.
They can adopt a unitary or a federal structure, as circumstances demand. A retail drug-store owner in a small Southern town can ally himself with fellow
drug-store owners in New York City or Los Angeles to achieve common aims even if his views on all matters other than retail prices are completely at odds with those of other members of his profession. Interest groups thrive upon the fragmented character of the government system. A group that is frustrated at one level or in one department of the government can quickly switch its efforts to another level, or to another point of access, in order to try to get its views adopted. Thus it could well be argued that it is interest groups rather than political parties that bring into some sort of coordinated relationship the various branches of the government – federal, state and lo- cal – although it could also be argued, with equal justification, that it is the conflicting demands of interest groups operating through different levels and branches of the government that generate the sharp conflicts that arise between the parts of the government machine.
However, this description does not give full expression to the complexity of group politics. It suggests that there are clearly identifiable groups in the population each with its common interest, but this is not really the case. How does one define or designate an ‘interest’? The black community might seem to be a group with an obvious interest in common, and yet that community is represented by a wide range of organisations, some more militant than others, with differing aims, varying from the desire to integrate blacks fully into American life to the intention to set up a separate black state or states.
Similarly, there are sharp divisions of opinion within the business community or between labour unions, or within a group of professional people such as schoolteachers, about the way in which their aims should be pursued. Thus we must turn our attention from the existence of different groups of people in the community at large who can be labelled as economically, racially or socially similar in interest to the actual organisations, in their enormous number and variety, that figure on the political scene.
Interest groups and organisation
We have seen that the existence of a distinct group in the electorate, such as the black community, may be an important factor in the outcome of political battles at election time. But politics is a continuing process, in which inter- ested groups may wish to be involved at every stage of government activity, and in order to achieve this they must be organised. Thus, the importance of the black community does not lie simply in its potential voting power, but also in the numerous organisations that capitalise upon that potential by bringing pressure to bear upon government agencies to further the black interest as they see it. The associations and organisations that come into ex- istence to express new demands or to defend old positions vary considerably in the form and durability of their organisational life. Some are ephemeral operations which come into existence in response to a particular stimulus, say the threat of government regulation of the affairs of a particular sec- tion of the community, and expire as soon as a decision has been taken or a
problem solved. At the other extreme there are those organisations that ex- hibit a formidable degree of stability, homogeneity of purpose and expertise, which makes them more significant elements in the process of policy-making than the great political parties. The National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Rifle Association (NRA) are examples of the latter type of organisation, and are continually involved in political situations. Between these extremes there is a bewildering variety of organisations with differing aims which may from time to time become in- volved in political decisions and which are therefore potentially participants in the political process.
The list of such organisations is endless, and their concerns are equally various. Many of them are to be identified with an interest only in the very broadest sense, for example, the League of Women Voters or the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. Nor do groups have to be associated with economic interests in order to be effective, as the Marx- ist analysis would suggest. Perhaps the most famous of all interest groups was the Anti-Saloon League, which played an important part in bringing about the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the manufac- ture or sale of alcohol in the United States. Religious denominations, many with representatives in Washington, maintain organisations to keep an eye upon governmental affairs that interest them; such are the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Board of Temperance of the Methodist Church, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Christian Coali- tion of America is the national organization of conservative Christians; the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee concerns itself with American policy in the Middle East, and exercises an influence on government out of proportion to the Jewish population; the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections is an umbrella organization representing fifteen Mus- lim associations. Associations of ex-servicemen such as the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars concern themselves both with pensions and with wider political issues such as the activities of the United Nations and its impact upon American interests. Professional associations such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Bar Association (ABA) exercise very considerable influence over the areas of government ac- tion in which they can claim a special expertise. The activities of the AMA in combating President Clinton’s proposals for health care reform, together with the Health Insurers Association of America (HIAA), represents perhaps the best known interest group campaign of recent times, in which the HIAA and the AMA used every tactic available to highly organised interest groups to influence public opinion and members of Congress. Other professional bodies, such as the American Federation of Teachers, represent the concern of their members with salaries and conditions of work. In the field of civil rights there is a bewildering variety of groups, ranging from the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality to the Nation of Islam, whose leader, Louis Farrakhan, in 1995 mounted a demonstration in Washington, ‘The
Million Man March’. The official estimate of attendance was 875,000 black men. And then, almost as appendages of the great political parties, there are those groups whose interest is ideological rather than economic or social; the Americans for Democratic Action on the one hand or the John Birch Society on the other. There is thus a great spectrum of groups with differing degrees of political involvement, with different organisational biases and using differ- ent techniques in the search for influence upon government. But there are four major complexes of interest groups that demand more detailed atten- tion: the representatives of business, of labour and of agriculture, and ‘cause groups’ claiming to represent the public interest.
Business interest groups
Business and politics are inextricably interwoven. Great decisions of national policy on matters of foreign affairs or defence will have an immediate ef- fect upon the business community. The decisions of the federal government on space programmes, aircraft production and the methods of prosecuting foreign aid programmes or military operations involve the expenditure of billions of dollars for contracts with American firms. The war in Iraq and the subsequent need for rebuilding that country’s infrastructure initiated a scramble for government contracts, and considerable criticism of the way in which they were allocated and controlled. The tax policy of federal and state governments is of immediate interest to every business corporation in the country as well as to a host of small businessmen. Business interests may seek to promote or to prevent government action, to gain a competitive advantage over other businesses, or to defend themselves against legislation promoted by labour unions to improve wage rates or working conditions. The United States at the end of the nineteenth century pioneered attempts to deal with the monopolistic tendencies of modern industry, and to legislate against restrictive pricing agreements. The Wagner and Taft–Hartley Acts embody a comprehensive scheme of government control of collective bar- gaining, and the federal government sets a minimum wage and maximum working hours for all workers engaged in interstate commerce (a definition that has been expanded by the Supreme Court to include a high percentage of all American workers). An impressive range of federal agencies, the inde- pendent regulatory commissions, enforce legislation regulating many areas of business activity. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is charged with the promotion of free and fair competition by controlling false and mislead- ing advertising and other business practices. As early as 1887 the Interstate Commerce Commission was established to regulate the rates and operations of railways, and later to take over the regulation of interstate trucking com- panies; it was abolished in 1995 as a result of moves to deregulate industry.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Energy Regulation Commission, the Federal Trade Commission – all exercise extensive authority over businesses engaged in
their field of interest, and there are many other federal agencies engaged in the regulation of business activity. The fifty states also have a wide variety of regulatory functions, and the concentration of some types of business in a few states, for example the insurance business in the Northeast, renders the activities of these states particularly important in certain fields. State and local regulation of road hauliers has been of particular importance in the past because of the great variety of state laws concerning the taxation of road transport and the standards that hauliers must meet in the construction and operation of their vehicles. Local businesses are subjected to an enormous variety of state and local regulations covering, for instance, health regula- tions on the production of milk.
There is, therefore, enormous scope for business groups to interest them- selves in, and to become involved in, the legislative and administrative op- erations of government. Furthermore, the large volume of legislation on the statute books that involves business operations, in a country where legislation is subject to judicial review by the courts in order to test its constitutional validity, means that businesses are quite frequently involved in litigation to determine the extent of their rights and obligations under the law, right up to the level of the Supreme Court of the United States. The size and power of some of the corporations that thus come into contact with the government is awesome – a few of them seem even to rival the government itself in the size of their operations and the extent of their influence. Giants such as General Motors or the American Telephone and Telegraph Company conduct their own relations with the government, using all the paraphernalia of modern public relations techniques.
The business community in general is represented in its contact with government agencies by associations that specialise in representing their members’ interests. A few of these, in particular the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, and the Business Roundtable, are nation-wide organisations claiming to speak for the business community as a whole. But each branch of industry and commerce has its own trade association to represent its interest. By 1961 there were 1,800 national trade associations in the United States, 11,000 state, regional and local associations, and 5,000 local chambers of commerce. In 2004 there were 34,000 trade associations listed at state and national level. The more in- clusive an association attempts to be, the less likely it is to be able to develop clear policy positions, except on a very few matters of common interest, or to exercise leadership in business affairs; and when an association does take a stand on a matter of importance the views of the leadership may be quite unrepresentative of the membership of the association. Thus the larger and more inclusive the group becomes, the more likely it is to suffer from the same disabilities as those that beset the political parties themselves.
The operation of inter-group bargaining and the divisions within the busi- ness community are illustrated by the way in which the battles over retail price maintenance and the control over the production of natural gas were