Negative Effects Of Interest Groups

Register to read the introduction… Major proponents of interest group activity within the European Union claim that interest groups have a great potential of helping to diminish the (real or perceived) democratic deficit amongst the Union and its citizens (Eising 2008). The capacity of the interest groups to represent the will of the citizens is a positive quality of interest group activity that cannot be understated. As most citizens have a primary priority for tending to the details of their everyday lives, activities and interests such as families, jobs and education consume the majority of a citizen’s time. After these necessary priorities are taken attended to, citizens have little time remaining for political activism. Even if citizens have a desire to participate, every day life for many people causes a time and energy drain that leaves no desire for additional activity. Interest groups maintain the capacity to speak for citizens who have these other main priorities ensuring that their opinions and interest are represented within the European Union. This utility goes a long way towards reducing the democratic deficit of the Union. Although the public may not have time or energy to direct their interests to their representatives, so long as they know that there is a group or …show more content…
Interest groups that present large industries, in particular, have the unfair advantage of being able to use financial incentives to lure members of the European Union to address their prominent issues (Moravcsik 1998, Eisling 2011). These incentives tend to come in the form of campaign contributions but it seems there is always a fine line between this and bribery. Because of this, interest groups with larger sums of money have a disproportionate influence in shaping policy decisions. It is simply undemocratic for smaller groups to be at such a large disadvantage simply due to lack of funding (Grande 1996, Eisling 2011). While attempts at regulation have been made to minimize the chances of this occurring as much as possible, there is no way to completely avoid the phenomenon so long as interest groups are competing for influence on policy issues. This is a necessary evil that will have to which many sceptics will have to …show more content…
I will do this in order to provide an example of the potential collateral effects that continued trends of interest group activity may have on the Union’s legislative process. While there are about 3,000 recognized interest groups that attempt to lobby the European Union in Brussels, this is nothing compared to the 60,000 interest groups formally recognized by the United States government (Kirchner 2011). As a student studying the American Political System, I believe it is important to discuss and examine the effects that strong levels of interest intermediation can potentially have upon a relatively similar federalist-governmental structure. A phenomenon in the United States System exists that has come to be known as the Iron Triangle. The Iron Triangle is an extremely strong and influential relationship that exists between interest groups, Congress (the US legislative institution) and governmental bureaucrats (Peters