Interest Groups and their Influence John Simpson U.S. Government POL 110 Professor Patricia Eaton Strayer University May 29th, 2013 Influence of Interest Groups Interest groups have played a big role in politics since their beginning in the 1770s and they have continued to grow throughout our history. An interest group is “an organization of people who have the same general interests or goals that they use to try and influence the making of policies for the public [ CITATION Wil091 \l 1033 ]. They have become more popular since the 1970s and have taken up roots and planted themselves in Washington D.C. Interest groups must not be confused with the social movements that helped encourage the attention of extensive sections of our society. These movements are a further stress-free connection of associations that will spawn interest between otherwise unassociated populace on broad-ranging issues of a common concern. Some well-known movements are those of civil rights, labor, women and the environment. Interest groups have a more scarcely focused agenda and are dependent on the structured followers of loosely mobilized citizens inside a larger social movement. An example is the United Auto Workers which is a group within the United States and Canada that took over majority of the control of the North American labor movement which began in the 1930’s. Correspondingly, when the U.S. civil rights movement peaked in the 1960s, there were several African ...
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