What Are Interest Groups? The Good, The Bad, and The Controversial

The power of people working together is one of the great strengths of democracy. When individuals unite around a shared cause, they can amplify their voices, influence decision-makers, and even reshape the future of a nation. From grassroots movements to professional associations, interest groups have been central players in American politics for centuries. At their best, they mobilize communities, bring neglected issues into the spotlight, and expand opportunities for participation beyond the voting booth.

But the story of interest groups is not without complexity. The same forces that can spark social progress can also concentrate power, distort representation, or even threaten democratic norms. Where do we draw the line between healthy advocacy and dangerous influence?

In this article, we’ll explore the many faces of interest groups—their role in ballot initiatives, their evolution into social movements, their influence through campaign finance, and the darker side of money and extremism. Along the way, you’ll hear from scholars, journalists, and advocates who have studied these dynamics up close. Their insights will help you see not just the risks interest groups pose, but also the possibilities they unlock for citizens determined to shape a more responsive democracy.

What Are Interest Groups?

Interest groups are organizations of people who share common goals and seek to influence public policy without running for elected office themselves. They represent a wide range of interests—from corporations and trade associations to social causes and professional groups. These organizations advocate by lobbying lawmakers, providing information, raising public awareness, and mobilizing voters to support their objectives and candidates.

Listen to the full episode on Village Squarecast: What’s Our problem?

When Do Interest Groups Help?

Interest Groups Using Ballot Initiatives

By design, ballot initiatives require coalitions that cross party lines to secure enough votes to win. Some campaign organizers see this process as an opportunity to build new political coalitions and break through polarization.

Jenna Spinelle, host of When the People Decide, highlights one such case: Desmond Meade—executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition—led the Amendment 4 ballot initiative to restore voting rights to nearly 1.5 million people in Florida with past felony convictions.

Jenna Spinelle: “Ballot initiatives are one tool they’re using to form new coalitions that transcend political convention, and in some cases go beyond the two-party system in the U.S. They’re proof that finding common cause can bypass the polarization that plagues American politics and deliver concrete wins to people across the country.”

Spinelle (narration): “Within a few years, Desmond became the executive director of the coalition and a leading voice in a campaign to reinstate the right to vote for formerly incarcerated citizens, just like him.”

Desmond Meade: “Me being a returning citizen and not being able to vote and not having my civil rights restored—there was a level of pain that I had that others didn’t. And because of that intimacy with the pain, there was also a level of commitment to end it that had the potential to be unmatched.”

Spinelle (narration): “After years of roadblocks and setbacks from the courts and the governor’s office, the coalition decided to take the matter directly to voters with the help of the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.”

Meade:  “I think there’s no greater indicator of citizenship than being able to vote. That’s something extremely valuable. And to think that a handful of politicians had the power to decide which American citizens could vote and which couldn’t—I thought that was way too much power for any politician to have, whether they were Democrat or Republican. It didn’t matter. Because when politicians are making those decisions, partisanship is likely to play a role in deciding who gets the vote and who doesn’t. With a citizens’ initiative—a ballot initiative—we’re going to the people instead of the politicians.”

Listen to the full episode on When the People Decide: The Invisible Third Party of Reform

Interest Groups as 501(c)(4) Corporations

Corporations can also influence policy through campaign finance, which can amplify the voices of people who might not otherwise have an advocacy group. Federal Election Commission (FEC) Chair Caroline Hunter explains the relationship between campaign finance and democratic participation.

Caroline Hunter:

“As you know, the Citizens United decision allowed corporations to run independent expenditures—essentially ads advocating for the election or defeat of a federal candidate.

People often assume that when you say ‘corporations,’ you mean ExxonMobil or some other large company. But it also includes advocacy organizations, which are often organized under the tax code as 501(c)(4) corporations. These organizations are now able to directly advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate who shares their values. I think that’s a good thing for democracy.

If they’re 501(c)(4)s, they can only do a certain amount of political work—both under Federal Election Commission rules and IRS rules. So they are limited. But now they have more ability to affect elections and participate in democracy.

I think, in some ways, you can look at it as more people participating in democracy. A lot of the money raised by certain candidates comes from small donors, and it’s often raised directly through their websites.”

Listen to the full episode on Democracy Works: The complicated relationship between campaign finance and democracy

Interest Groups as Social Movements

Part of the role of interest groups is to mobilize public opinion. They run awareness campaigns and educate voters to build support for their cause or to shape public attitudes on policy issues. These campaigns can grow into broader social movements.

Marcus Board Jr.—associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University and author of Invisible Weapons: Infiltrating Resistance and Defeating Movements—explains the nature of social movements.

Marcus Board Jr.:

 “Social movements—I usually define them either by their functioning, meaning how a movement works, or by distinguishing them from other coordinated actions. For example, they’re different from groups, factions, lobbyists, or parties.

In general, if we break it down very simply, social movements are organized groups connecting with the masses toward a particular political aim. Typically, these groups exist outside of institutional politics, but, as we know, they can also operate within those institutions.

It’s amorphous. It gives us all the space to think about all the things.

The thing about social movements is that they reveal some of the fundamental limitations and failures of U.S. democracy. They show us that we can identify groups of people for whom elected officials and institutions are explicitly disconnected.

If an elected official can say, ‘I’m not doing what those people are doing,’ it becomes an us-versus-them dynamic instead of saying, ‘These are the people we’re representing.’ That dynamic very often gets stale.

When a movement starts having some successes, you inevitably see the ebb to that flow—the pushback, the counterprotest, the counterrevolution. The challenge for movement-oriented folks is to constantly evolve: to adapt their arguments, to stay in conversation, and to create sustainable communities of people who remain engaged. Otherwise, communities can mirror that same ebb and flow in their capacity to be involved, to be committed, and to push for lasting change.”

Listen to the full episode on Politics in Question: What can social movements teach us about American politics?

When Do Interest Groups Go Too Far?

Interests Turn Into Collective Illusions

Working toward a common interest or goal can be powerful for creating change. But it’s important to pause and make sure that “common interest” is grounded in reality.

Todd Rose—co-founder and president of Populace and author of Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions—explains how people can get caught in what he calls collective illusions.

Todd Rose:

“Collective illusions are social phenomena where most people in a group go along with something they don’t privately agree with, because they incorrectly believe most others in the group support it.

As a result, entire groups can end up doing something that almost nobody actually wants.

For conformity to work, you have to know what the group thinks—otherwise, what would you be conforming to?

Here’s where it gets a little crazy: given how important group consensus is, you’d think the brain would have sophisticated mechanisms for estimating it. But it doesn’t. Instead, it relies on a ridiculous shortcut: your brain assumes the loudest voices, repeated the most often, represent the majority.

Even when you intellectually know that’s not true, this is still how your brain computes majority opinion.

We crave belonging—and there’s nothing wrong with that. But belonging can be weaponized very quickly. Politics does it all the time. And when you’re isolated into a single group, that group can have cult-like power over you.

In fact, I wrote about cults in the book to show how we sometimes can’t even challenge ideas that are clearly harmful or evil, simply because ‘this is what our group thinks.’

To avoid that identity trap, you cannot belong to just one group. This is straightforward: if you belong to at least three groups—even something simple, like a bowling league counts—you’re less vulnerable. My friend Bob Putnam has written about this too.

It doesn’t have to be a political party or something huge. Just multiple groups. The research shows the magic number is at least three. If you can even imagine yourself in another identity, the pressure to conform to something you don’t believe doesn’t sting nearly as much.”

Listen to the full episode on Village Squarecast: Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

Interest Groups as Dark Money in Politics

Earlier, we discussed the benefits of corporations being able to participate in democracy. But the way that participation happens often raises questions about motives and the extent of corporate influence in politics.

Jeff Clements—author of Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy from Big Money and Global Corporations—first outlines the challenges of dark money in American politics. 

Jeff Clements:‍

“There was no such thing as a corporate free-speech right to spend unlimited money in elections. There was no right for billionaires to spend as much money as they wanted to buy elections or influence foreign governments.

Now we see massive spending in American elections through super PACs, LLCs, and even directly through social media companies. So either our Constitution was secretly amended when nobody was looking, or we’ve gone deeply wrong. I think we’ve gone deeply wrong—because the Constitution wasn’t amended. The Supreme Court simply invented a new right that has nothing to do with the principles of American constitutional law or government.

The idea that if you have billions of dollars, you have a constitutional right to use it as free speech to buy influence in our elections—this is counter to everything the Constitution is supposed to protect and everything a free and equal citizenry should stand for.

The Court started down this road years ago, even before Citizens United, when it created the notion that corporations have a right to speak. That’s why we now see all kinds of corporate influence. I witnessed it firsthand in my career in the attorney general’s office, when global tobacco companies claimed a free-speech right to market addictive nicotine cigarettes to children. It was a slippery slope. Before long, corporations and billionaires were arguing: if money is speech, then we have a right to spend it to influence elections, too.

Most for-profit corporations exist for one reason: profit. If they don’t focus on profit, they go out of business. So every decision goes through that lens.

Human decisions—about who to vote for, who to support, what to prioritize in life—are far more complex. Even if feeding your family is the most important thing, you’re still weighing the future, your community, moral values, trade-offs between risk and safety, questions about food, air, land, and water. Humans are remarkably good at processing these complex issues and deciding what feels like the right path forward. We might get it wrong, but we can course-correct. We adapt.

Corporations don’t do that. There is no moral calculus. So why are they different from people? That’s the key distinction. Corporations are tools—like gasoline or shovels. They’re things humans use to conduct activity, whether business, nonprofit, or otherwise. They’re useful tools. But when we confuse them with human beings—when we treat them as entities with rights equal to people—we head down a very dangerous road.”

Listen to the full episode on Future Hindsight: Getting Dark Money Out of Politics: Jeff Clements

On PACs

To understand this further, the team at the Campaign Legal Center breaks down political action committees (PACs) in simple terms, and Clements explains how they are used as tools to funnel dark money into elections.

Trevor Potter:  “It’s a group of individuals who get together to raise and spend money to elect or defeat a candidate—sometimes by contributing directly to them, and sometimes by independently running television ads about the candidate or an issue the PAC is focused on.”

Simone Leeper: “PACs can spend money on ads promoting a candidate or issue, but there are limits on who can donate and how much. For example, PACs can’t receive corporate donations, and individuals can’t donate more than $5,000 per year to a particular PAC. At least, that was true for traditional PACs as originally created by Congress. But in 2010, a Supreme Court decision upended all of that, and a new entity burst onto the scene: the super PAC.”

Stephen Colbert: “What’s a super PAC? Is that like a PAC that got bitten by a radioactive lobbyist?”

Trevor Potter:  “Well, you’ll remember there was a furor last year over the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case.”

Colbert:  “Oh right—the one that said corporations are people, people have free speech, and therefore money is speech, so corporations can give unlimited money to political issues?”

Potter: “Exactly. Following that, the Federal Election Commission created what they call an independent expenditure–only committee—commonly known as a super PAC.”

Colbert: “Trevor, I’ve got all these individual Americans giving me money, but none of the big corporate money. That’s why I have a super PAC. Why wouldn’t a corporation donate?”

Potter: “Well, they’d be nervous about giving in a way that makes their name public. Their shareholders or customers might object.”

Colbert:  “Okay, so that’s where a (c)(4) comes in. A corporation or individual can give to a (c)(4) and nobody knows they did it, right?”

Potter: “That’s right.”

Leeper:  “A 501(c)(4) is a particular type of nonprofit organization that doesn’t have to disclose its donors.”

Colbert: “Can I take this (c)(4) money and then donate it to my super PAC?”

Potter: “You can.”

Leeper: “In recent years, many 501(c)(4)s have been created specifically to receive donations from wealthy special interests and funnel that money into super PACs.”

Colbert: “So I can take secret donations from my (c)(4) and give them to my supposedly transparent super PAC?”

Potter: “And it’ll show up as a donation from your (c)(4).”

Leeper: “Super PACs do have to disclose if they receive a donation from a 501(c)(4), but the actual human donors who gave to the 501(c)(4) in the first place can remain anonymous.”

Colbert: “What’s the difference between that and money laundering?”

Potter: “It’s hard to say.”

Listen to the full episode on Democracy Decoded: Cracks in the System

Dark Money

Jeff Clements:

“Dark money is the phrase we use for secret money in politics. Billions of dollars are now flowing into elections, mostly from a relatively small, elite donor class: extremely wealthy individuals, big corporations, a few large unions, but primarily powerful, wealthy interests.

And many of these interests don’t want the public to know they’re buying influence and elections. If there’s a way to hide the source of the money, they’ll use it. That’s dark money.

Because of the Supreme Court’s reckless decision, we could have regulated this. We could have required disclosure and tracked the flow of money. But now, since the Court treats corporate spending as free speech, it’s very easy to set up a few different vehicles or tools to hide where the money comes from.

So let’s say I’m a billionaire with global business interests. I don’t care about America—I care about my business model. I might not even be American. But the U.S. Senate is important to protect my interests. If I want to buy a couple of Senate elections, I don’t want people to know I’m putting in hundreds of millions of dollars.

So I set up a corporation in Delaware. I move money through a few subsidiaries. It ends up in something called American Company for America in Delaware. That company donates to Americans for Apple Pie, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which then donates to Americans for America. I’m making up these names, of course, but by the time the money reaches a campaign, nobody knows where it originated.

All you see are the toxic, divisive ads that make you hate your fellow Americans or so disgusted you don’t vote. Those are the two main strategies: suppress the opposition or mobilize your side. And nobody knows where the money came from. Someone knows—the original donor, maybe a few operatives along the way—but to the public, it’s invisible.

That’s dark money. And both major parties use it. Sometimes it’s disconnected from the parties, but both Republicans and Democrats now have embedded dark money operations working closely with campaigns.”

Listen to the full episode on Future Hindsight: Getting Dark Money Out of Politics: Jeff Clements

Interest Groups as Extremists

What happens when a common interest is held so adamantly—or when that shared interest is simply hatred of others? Investigative producer for Bad Watchdog, Maren Machles, walks us through examples of extremist groups taking collective action to change policy in antidemocratic ways.

ABC News anchor: “We begin tonight with the deadly chaos in El Paso. The mass shooting at a Walmart shopping center.”

Maren: “On August 3, 2019, a gunman entered a Walmart shopping center in El Paso, Texas, and opened fire.”

ABC News anchor: “From a young woman who was shopping with her mother and her son, telling me how it all started and that the gunman looked like he was, quote, “on a mission.”

WFAA anchor: “One of the deadliest attacks targeting Latinos in modern U.S. history.”

Maren: “He killed 23 people.”

TODAY reporter: “The man calmly told police, “I’m the shooter.” In a newly released arrest affidavit, he spelled out his racist motive, telling officers, in his words, that he was targeting Mexicans.”

WFAA reporter: “A four-page manifesto allegedly written by [the shooter] appeared online. “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

Maren: “The ideas and language in this terrorist manifesto — this talk about “invasion” and “replacement” — are common enough among the far right that they have a name: the “Great Replacement Theory.” This conspiracy theory is rooted in white supremacy, white nationalism, and antisemitism. It claims that “elites” or “Jews” are plotting to replace white people — sometimes specifically white voters — with people of color. It undergirds much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States and in Europe.”

ABC News reporter: “Twenty minutes before walking into the Walmart, the shooter posted a document online laced with white supremacist language,” expressing opposition to race mixing and urging migrants to return to their home countries.

Maren: “The shooting in El Paso was not an isolated incident. Similar terrorist attacks and plots by far-right violent extremists have become increasingly common in the United States.

Later that month, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and FBI Director Christopher Wray were asked to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee about national security threats. Wolf declined to testify, but here is Director Wray describing how the FBI has addressed this threat over the years.”

Christopher Wray: “We’re also working around the clock to prevent attacks by domestic terrorists who are inspired by one or more extremist ideologies to commit violent acts. In recent years, we’ve been laser focused on threats from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists. They too are often radicalized online and mobilized quickly to carry out their violent plans. Within that category, I would say the largest portion — I can’t give you a percentage, but the largest chunk — are individuals motivated by some form of white supremacist ideology. And just for clarification, this year the lethal attacks we’ve seen have been from anti-government or anti-authority types. But if you look back over the last few years, it’s been racially motivated violent extremists who carried out the most lethal attacks here at home.”

Daryl Johnson: “You know, it was just totally unreal seeing the level of violence and unification among all these different hate and anti-government groups coming together to try to overthrow the election.”

Maren: “It wasn’t just the Proud Boys who were there that day. Many others took part in the insurrection, including the Oath Keepers. Here is testimony from one of the final hearings of the January 6th Committee’s investigation into the events of that day, where Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland called out both groups and explained their involvement.”

Jamie Raskin: “The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers are two key groups that responded immediately to President Trump’s call. The Proud Boys are a far-right street-fighting group that glorifies violence and white supremacy. The Oath Keepers are extremists who promote a wide range of conspiracy theories and sought to act as a private paramilitary force for Donald Trump. In the weeks leading up to the attack, leaders in both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers worked with Trump allies. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes called for Donald Trump to invoke martial law, promising bloodshed if he did not.”

Listen to the full episode on Bad Watchdog: Season 2, Episode 6: "The Real Threat"

The Double-Edged Sword of Interest Groups

Interest groups are neither heroes nor villains—they are tools. On the positive side, they give ordinary citizens a way to magnify their voices, pool resources, and push for change that might otherwise be ignored. From labor unions fighting for fair wages to grassroots movements expanding civil rights, organized groups have helped shape some of the most important reforms in American history. In this sense, they embody the democratic ideal that power belongs not only to the few, but to the many.

Yet the darker side is just as real. When interest groups are dominated by wealthy elites or extreme ideologies, they can drown out the voices of everyday people. Moneyed influence can warp representation, ensuring policies favor donors rather than voters. And in the most dangerous cases, extremist groups can weaponize collective action to undermine democratic institutions altogether.

The tension between these two realities reveals a simple truth: interest groups are a reflection of democracy itself. They show us both its promise and its vulnerability. A healthy democracy requires constant vigilance—ensuring that the benefits of collective action are harnessed to expand participation and protect rights, while guarding against the ways organized power can corrode fairness and fuel division.

In the end, the story of interest groups is the story of democracy: messy, contested, and deeply consequential. Whether they strengthen or weaken our system depends not only on the groups themselves, but on how citizens, lawmakers, and institutions choose to respond.