Public Interest Groups Research Paper

The political landscape in America is diverse and complicated. More often than not there are a lot of players interested and playing a part in the election of an official among other political functions. An example of such players would be interest groups and political parties. Whereas the functions and roles of the political parties are more or less understood by the general public, interest groups seem to be less understood. This paper seeks to illuminate the role of the public interest groups versus the role of political parties against the backdrop of the American political system.
An interest group is a collection of citizens that have the shared goal of effecting change in the government . It must be noted that the people in this group are brought together by a common interest. These groups may represent businesses, labour unions and even social groups . On the other hand a political party is group of people who have the sole purpose of electing government officials. It is expected that these individuals will work in the interests of the …show more content…
Especially political parties as they are more than just a collective of people with a common interest. According to political science there are basically three descriptions that illustrate how a political party is defied: Party-as-electorate which is the citizens registered or not who identify with the party; party-as-organization which is the institutions within the party that carry out administrative functional and party-in-government which is the elected and appointed officials affiliated to the party that are in government . However at the end of the day the political parties operate primarily on a political plane. America has two main political parties and as such this forces the citizens to align themselves with either. This means that the policies and procedures of the party have to appeal to the people in one way or another. This means that the description is rather