Interest groups are one of the most influential—and controversial—forces in a democracy. They are how citizens, organizations, movements, and industries attempt to shape public policy outside of elections, by organizing around shared concerns and advocating for change. At their best, interest groups amplify voices that might otherwise be ignored, bring expertise into policymaking, and help translate public needs into sustained political action. They provide pathways for participation between elections, allowing democracy to be something people practice continuously—not just every few years at the ballot box.
But interest groups also reveal democracy’s deepest tensions. Power is not evenly distributed, and groups with money, access, and professional lobbying operations often wield influence far beyond their share of the public. Court decisions like Citizens United accelerated this imbalance, enabling the rise of dark money, opaque political spending, and donor-driven agendas that many voters can’t see or challenge. When advocacy becomes indistinguishable from influence-buying, trust erodes, participation declines, and democracy risks drifting away from the people it is meant to serve.
In this collection of podcasts, journalists, scholars, reformers, activists, and government watchdogs unpack the complex ecosystem of interest groups in American politics. You’ll hear how ballot initiatives and grassroots coalitions can function as an “invisible third party,” bypassing partisan gridlock to enact widely supported reforms. These episodes explore the relationship between campaign finance and political polarization, the mechanics of dark money and coordinated spending, and the legal frameworks that allow—or restrain—special interests. You’ll also hear how social movements differ from traditional interest groups, how group identity can distort public perception through collective illusions, and how advocacy can either protect democracy or quietly undermine it.
Together, these episodes expose a central democratic dilemma: interest groups are essential to representation, but dangerous when unaccountable. A healthy democracy depends on whether power organized through groups reflects human voices rather than financial muscle alone. Understanding how interest groups operate—how they mobilize, influence, distort, and sometimes redeem the system—is key to understanding who really governs, and whether democracy remains a tool of the many or a privilege of the few.
By design, ballot initiatives require coalitions that cross party lines to secure the votes needed to win. Some campaign organizers view this rule as an opportunity to create new political coalitions and break through polarization.
The polarization that exists in U.S. politics has some voters questioning the integrity of our two-party system—whose interests are the politicians really representing? Ballot initiative organizers claim that they are building new coalitions that transcend party lines, and unite voters on their values, not their partisan affiliations. In doing so, they echo progressive reformers of the past, who created big changes and prompted observers to call their work part of an “invisible third party of reform.”
Ballot initiatives that are largely popular with everyday citizens, like Medicaid expansion and voting rights restoration, but that are seen by politicians as too progressive for bipartisan support, are finally reaching voters at the ballot box. In this episode, we examine how the current era of political reformers ushers in alternatives to stalled legislation by going beyond party lines and bringing the issues straight to voters, and asking the question, what do ballot initiatives say about the kind of political system we want in the U.S.?
Listen to the full episode on When the People Decide: The Invisible Third Party of Reform
In the United States, voting is a very private act. You step into the booth alone and, for a lot of people, it’s considered taboo to tell someone who you voted for. Campaign donations, however, are a different story.
The Federal Election Commission, an independent regulatory agency established after Watergate, collects donor infomration from candidates, makes it available to the public, and enforces federal campaign finance laws. Anyone can go online and look up records to see who gave money to a particular candidate — to a point, anyway.
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that political spending was protected under the First Amendment. The decision opened the door to “dark money” groups that allow corporations and other organizations to give to a Political Action Committee (PAC) that in turn backs a candidate. Much of this spending is not publicly disclosed and it added up to more than $500 million in the 2018 midterms.
FEC Chair Caroline Hunter joins us this week to explore the relationship between campaign finance and democracy. Hunter has been on the commission since 2008 and has seen the impact of the Citizens United ruling firsthand. She makes an interesting connection between PACs and political polarization — and how it all ties back to democratic participation.
Caroline is a Penn State alumna and, prior to joining the FEC, she worked for the Republican National Committee. The FEC is a bipartisan commission with three Republicans and three Democrats, though two positions are currently vacant. Caroline talks about how that bipartisan nature might expand to other parts of the government and who reads FEC filings.
Listen to the full episode on Democracy Works: The complicated relationship between campaign finance and democracy
In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Julia considers social movements and political parties with Marcus Board Jr. Board is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University. His research engages social movements, radical Black feminist theories of power, and public opinion. He is the author of Invisible Weapons: Infiltrating Resistance and Defeating Movements (Oxford University Press, 2022). Board most recently co-authored a chapter on social movements and political parties in the American Political Science Association’s Presidential Task Force on Political Parties report, “More Than Red and Blue: Political Parties and American Democracy” (July 2023).
What is a social movement? How do they differ from political parties and interest groups? Can social movements benefit from joining forces with political parties? What are the implications for political parties when social movements try to transform our political institutions? And what can gumbo teach us about grappling with complicated political questions? These are some of the questions Marcus and Julia ask in this week’s episode.
Listen to the full episode on Politics in Question: What can social movements teach us about American politics?
At the core of the deep societal divisions we navigate every day is an assumption that we share little with “those people” with whom we share a country—a belief that leaves us on dangerous ground as a nation. But author and entrepreneur Dr. Todd Rose says we’ve got that all wrong. According to Dr. Rose, not only do we agree more often than we think but we’re making terrible assumptions about what the people on our own side of the aisle think—then acting on those incorrect assumptions in a way that accelerates the divisions. Born of our highly social nature and hardwiring in our DNA, we so desperately want to protect our status and reputation inside our groups so we conform with what we think our group thinks—finding ourselves inside a “collective illusion” that is not only destabilizing society, it’s making us personally miserable.
Dr. Rose offers his compelling and revelatory insights about human forces that are far too easily ignored in his most recent book: “Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions.” We think his work is just so important that we’re delighted to bring him to Tallahassee to meet you (and we’ll be hosting book clubs to dive into “Collective Illusions” through the year). We don’t think you’ll ever see the world quite the same way again (trust us, that’ll be a good thing). Learn more about Dr. Rose below.
Pick up a copy of Collective Illusions by swinging by Midtown Reader today (or order it online from them, keeping it local).
Todd Rose is the co-founder and president of Populace, a think tank committed to ensuring that all people have the opportunity to pursue fulfilling lives in a thriving society. Prior to Populace, he was a faculty member at Harvard University where he founded the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality and directed the Mind, Brain, and Education program. Todd is the best selling author of Collective Illusions, Dark Horse, and The End of Average.
Listen to the full episode on Village Squarecast: Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions
Jeff Clements serves as President of American Promise, an organization that is focused on repairing the constitutional foundation to renew freedom for all Americans, to support effective and honest government and an equal shot at the American dream. He is the author of Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy from Big Money and Global Corporations. We discuss ratifying a constitutional amendment that would rid American politics of dark money.
Once the Supreme Court decided that corporations have free speech rights to spend unlimited money in elections, our politics were effectively captured by the donor class. Wealthy people and corporations deploy their power by, for example, funding toxic, divisive ads that are so hateful that many Americans don’t want to vote. This is one strategy to win elections, but even the candidates are losing control. We need to pass laws to limit the powers of money and lift up the power of the human voice for a functioning democratic system.
Listen to the full episode on Future Hindsight: Getting Dark Money Out of Politics: Jeff Clements
Joined by Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, host Simone Leeper breaks down the basics of America’s campaign finance system. At the root of their discussion is an examination of how illegal coordinated campaign spending occurs, and why it has not been properly addressed.
Trevor speaks about his appearances on the Colbert Report and discusses what has changed (or not changed) in campaign finance over the past ten years. He also reveals his fears that the current lack of transparency and outsized spending by special interests on our elections is leading to the disillusionment of American voters who feel they're not being heard - that their voices don't matter because somebody with a lot of money is able to simply buy the results they want.
Listen to the full episode on Democracy Decoded: Cracks in the System
For the past few episodes, Maren has explored the reality of immigration detention, uplifting the conditions in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) centers where thousands are held under the presumption that they may be threats to national security. In the season finale of Bad Watchdog, we return to where we started, with the DHS’s counterterrorism mission. Maren breaks down the current landscape of terrorism in the United States, where the most dangerous threat isn’t posed by those who’ve crossed our borders illegally, but by homegrown, far-right, violent extremists. And, as Maren learns, domestic violent extremism isn’t just a problem across the country — it’s a problem in DHS’s own ranks as well.
Domestic terrorism experts Daryl Johnson and Alejandro Buetel walk Maren through the rise of far-right violent extremism in the U.S. and interrogate whether DHS is taking the threat seriously. Maren discusses both shortfalls and potential solutions for how DHS could address far-right violent extremism with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty’s Spencer Reynolds. POGO Senior Investigator Nick Schwellenbach shares his investigation into just how many Oath Keepers are or were employed at DHS. And Maren connects with people who are working to make this broken system more humane, including activists Arely Westley and Berto Hernandez, Las Americas Director of Cross-Border Strategies Crystal Sandoval, former POGO Senior Researcher Freddy Martinez, and POGO Senior Paralegal Lance Sims.
Listen to the full episode on Bad Watchdog: Season 2, Episode 6: "The Real Threat"
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