week 9 - interest groups and social movements Flashcards
(16 cards)
What is an interest group?
An interest group is any organized group that seeks to promote a particular policy or set of policies by influencing politics and policymakers.
Examples include business associations, trade unions, and advocacy groups like Greenpeace. (Clark, Golder & Golder 2025)
What is a social movement?
A social movement is a large, informal grouping of individuals and/or organizations aiming to promote or resist social or political change.
Social movements focus on broad societal issues, such as the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street. (Clark, Golder & Golder 2025)
How do interest groups influence policy?
Interest groups influence policy through issue framing, writing legislation, informing and advising legislators, mobilizing members, funding elections, and sometimes by buying access to policymakers.
(Clark, Golder & Golder 2025; Kalla & Broockman 2016)
Are interest groups good or bad for democracy?
Interest groups can be good for democracy by providing expertise and advocacy for those most affected by policies. However, they can also be bad by enabling concentrated, wealthy interests to dominate policymaking, disadvantaging diffuse public interests.
(Clark, Golder & Golder 2025)
What is Mancur Olson’s Logic of Collective Action?
Olson (1965) argued that individuals are less likely to contribute to collective goods because of the free rider problem: people benefit from the good whether or not they help provide it. The formula is: R=(B×P)−C where R = reward for participating, B = benefit, P = probability of making a difference, C = cost.
Large groups struggle more with collective action because P is low and C is high. (Olson 1965)
What is the free rider problem?
The free rider problem occurs when individuals benefit from a public good without contributing to its provision, leading to under-provision of public goods.
This is especially problematic in large groups, where individual contributions seem insignificant. (Olson 1965)
What is the ‘tyranny of the small’ in interest group politics?
Small, concentrated groups (like big sugar producers) are more effective at lobbying because their individual benefits are large and coordination is easier.
Large, diffuse groups (like consumers) face high coordination costs and low individual benefits, so they are less influential. (Olson 1965; Clark, Golder & Golder 2025)
Example: US Sugar Program and interest group power
The US sugar subsidy program persists because a small number of large producers receive huge benefits and lobby effectively, while the cost to each consumer is small and diffuse, so consumers do not organize to oppose it.
(Lecture example; Olson 1965)
What factors explain which countries subsidize agriculture?
Thies & Porche (2007) found that agricultural subsidies are influenced by the size of the agricultural sector, economic shocks, comparative advantage, and political factors like veto players and federalism.
(Thies & Porche 2007)
What is Kuran’s threshold model of mass mobilization?
Kuran (1991) argued that people have different ‘revolutionary thresholds’ for joining protests. As more people protest, the cost of joining falls, leading to potential ‘revolutionary bandwagons’ where small changes can trigger mass mobilization.
(Kuran 1991)
How does information technology affect collective action?
Studies show that increased access to information (e.g., via cell phones) lowers coordination costs and can increase political mobilization and protest participation.
(Manacorda & Tesei 2020; Pierskalla & Hollenbach 2013)
What is the main difference between interest groups and social movements?
Interest groups are usually formal organizations focused on influencing specific policies, while social movements are broader, less formal, and aim for large-scale social or political change.
(Clark, Golder & Golder 2025)
Example: Black Lives Matter (BLM) as a social movement
BLM is a social movement that successfully raised public awareness and shifted elite and public opinion on racial justice, partly by using disruptive protest to ‘seed’ new issues on the political agenda.
(Wasow 2020)
Example: Occupy Wall Street (OWS) as a social movement
OWS drew attention to economic inequality and the power of financial elites. While it changed public discourse, it struggled to achieve concrete policy change due to lack of formal organization and clear goals.
(Lecture example; Clark, Golder & Golder 2025)
Why are public goods under-provided by governments?
Public goods are under-provided because individuals have little incentive to contribute (free rider problem), and interest groups representing concentrated interests are more effective at lobbying for private or club goods.
(Olson 1965; Clark, Golder & Golder 2025)
Pierskalla & Hollenbach (2013) found that increased cell phone coverage in Africa had what effect on political violence?
Increased cell phone coverage facilitated organized violent collective action by improving communication and coordination among political groups.
Their research, conducted across Africa using 10,000 spatially disaggregated grid cells, showed that cell phone coverage in 2007 correlated with increased conflict events in 2008.
