hey there and welcome back to heimlich's history now i've been going through unit 5 of the ap government curriculum and in this video it's time to talk about interest groups and their influence on public policy so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked iron triangle style well then let's get to it here's what we're trying to do in this video explain the benefits and potential problems of interest group influence on elections and policy making and secondly explain how variation in types and resources of interest groups affects their ability to influence elections in policy making so we talked about interest groups low those many months ago in unit 2. so i reckon a definition is an order because let's be honest you probably forgot by now what they are an interest group is a group of people who gather around a policy issue in order to persuade policymakers to pass legislation favorable to the group there's an interest group for dang near everything there's the nra for people who are excited about guns there's the naacp for people who want to fight for black rights there's peta for people who want to fight for animal rights and there are more generalized groups like the aarp which advocates for the varied interests of retired people and i can go on and on but the point is these are usually very narrow interest not necessarily but a lot of times they are very narrow in their interest and now let's talk about the four major reasons that interest groups exist first interest groups educate voters and office holders on the interest group's chosen issue you could take all the individual interests americans care about and put them on a scale it would weigh a metric butt load although we're on the street it is rapidly approaching two metric buttloads the point is there are way more issues that people care about than the voting population or elected officials could possibly research and develop expertise on but do you know who can become experts on those individual issues i hope you said interest groups because that's you know literally what this whole video is about yes it's interest groups one of their main jobs is to educate like for example did you know that there's an interest group for balloon enthusiasts oh yes there is in fact in 2012 the balloon council spent 60 000 to educate the public on the helium crisis in america now part of that money was spent to educate the public and the other part was spent to do the next thing i want to tell you about the second thing interest groups do is engage in lobbying which just means that they hold meetings with policymakers to try to influence them to pass legislation in their favor and just for poops and giggles let's keep talking about the balloon lobby because you know it makes me happy after the helium crisis passed i i know you think i'm making this up this is real okay this is real after the helium crisis passed balloon sellers were filling their balloons to their heart's content and a few states started passing anti-balloon laws these were mainly environmental regulations like in case you didn't know when a balloon gets released into the sky it doesn't go to heaven to adorn the throne of god world without end no they usually end up in the ocean and a few years ago environmentalists started finding birds tangled up in balloon strings and dead whales with balloon trash in their stomach and so states started passing anti-balloon laws well at the balloon council furious at this example of gross government overreach lobbied state legislatures hard and you know what they were successful there are only five states now that have anti-balloon laws on the books thanks to the tireless lobbying efforts of the balloon lobby anyway because many interest groups form around a single issue these lobbyists are often policy experts who can help policymakers understand the impact of certain legislation okay so let's leave the balloon council behind and talk about the third thing interest groups do and that is draft legislation so because interest groups are experts in their areas many of them hire staff to draft policy proposals for legislators to consider like if you want a bill that upholds the rights of balloon enthusiasts everywhere here's what it would look like oh i said i would stop but it is just too tasty it is too tasty there is a balloon lobby all right maybe a better known interest group like the national rifle association is a better example their policy experts and staffers could draft a bill protecting gun rights and present it to sympathetic legislators in hopes that they will introduce it and have it passed okay the fourth thing interest groups do is to mobilize their members to apply pressure on and work with legislators and government agencies so the interest group might ask its members to email their representatives when a bill comes up for a vote or maybe they plan a demonstration of some kind in order to get some media attention okay now that we've seen what interest groups are and what they aim to do let's look at one of the major ways that they do their work if you remember back to unit 2 i told you that interest groups were one point on what's known as an iron triangle this is a term to describe the strong mutually beneficial relationship between interest groups congressional committees and government agencies members of congressional committees are especially helped by interest groups who both provide them with policy information and provide no small of campaign donations if the representative is sympathetic to the group's goals and interest groups can also become part of issue networks which is when many different interest groups and even entities outside of interest groups come together to achieve a short-term policy goal for example a couple years ago there was a big push from a lot of different groups that had come together into an informal issue network to oppose government subsidies of tobacco farmers there have been policies granting tobacco farmers federal funds since the 1930s and over the last decade there was a growing movement to shut that down okay so those are issue networks now let's turn the corner and talk about the factors that could either hinder or help an interest group achieve its goal first an interest group's activity can be influenced by inequality of political and economic resources because one of the most significant things an interest group can do for policymakers is to help fund their campaigns then policymakers are much more incentivized to take meetings with the well-funded interest groups for example big groups like the nra and the aarp have buttloads of scratch and so everyone wants to hear from them the same reality also has an effect on the second factor influencing the efficacy of interest groups namely unequal access to decision makers again the interest groups with small amounts of funding and smaller memberships will have a harder time bending the ear of a policy maker the third factor influencing how well interest groups can do their jobs is the free writer problem this is when a larger group benefits from the efforts of the interest group than our members of the group like the members are paying the bills but their proposed legislation might help a lot more people than those in the group think about the aarp again which lobbies on behalf of retired persons now clearly not every retired person in america is a member of that group but if the aarp is successful in lobbying and getting favorable legislation passed then who benefits from all that it's all retired people so there are a lot more people benefiting from that legislation than the ones who actually did the work of getting it passed and that is the free rider problem okay thanks for watching click right here to grab a few packet which is going to help you get an a in your class and a five on your exam in may and if this video helped you and you want me to keep making them then by 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