David B. Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958)

GOVERNMENT, like all other social institutions, grows out of the relationships existing between man and man - their character, their complexity, and the disturbances to which they are subject. Although it would be erroneous to assert that this observation is subject to historical verification, it can be supported by evidence of a different sort, but of equal value. Accounts of the so-called primitive societies report the emergence of differentiated institutions, resembling our governments in their basic functions, that include all family groups within a given territory. These appear as a result of a new kind of in interaction among the persons involved or the increased frequency and persistence of a previously familiar but casual relationship. Examples of this sort would include group organization for warfare, whether for defense, pillage, or conquest. Warfare is by no means the exclusive source, however, for similar governmental institutions seem to have developed out of the necessity for ordering such relationships as those consequent upon a new technique of hunting or upon new sources of wealth.1 The most significant aspect of these data is that even in its nascent stages government functions to establish and maintain a measure of order in the relationships among groups for various purposes. What a particular government is under these circumstances, its "form" and its "methods," depends upon the character of the groups and the purposes it serves.

Observation of the changes in activity that have occurred within recent years in American government supports the validity of this view, as this and subsequent chapters will attempt to demonstrate. Groups are "a part" of American politics, as was indicated in Chapter 1, and they have always constituted an aspect of politics. In addition, they are so intimately related to the daily functioning of those constitutionalized groups--legislature, chief executives, administrative agencies, and even courts–that make up the institution of government that the latter cannot be adequately be described if these relationships are not recognized as the weft of the fabric. Unless one denies, first, that the notion of differentiations in the habitual interactions of men is synonymous with the notion of groups and, second, that government is made up of just such patterns of habitual interaction, acceptance of groups as lying at the heart of the process of government is unavoidable.

Since we are engaged in an effort to develop a conception of the political process in the United States that will account adequately for the role of groups, particularly interest groups, it will be appropriate to take account of some of the factors that have been regarded as obstacles to such a conception and that have caused such groups to be neglected in many explanations of the dynamics of government. Perhaps the most important practical reason for this neglect is that the significance of groups has only fairly recently been forced to the attention of political scientists by the tremendous growth in the number of formally organized groups in the United States within the last few decades. It is difficult and unnecessary to attempt to date the beginning of such attention, but Herring in 1929, in his groundbreaking book, Group Representation Before Congress, testified to the novelty of the observations he reported when he stated: "There has developed in this government an extra-legal machinery of as integral and of as influential a nature as the system of party government that has long been an essential part of the government...."4 Some implications of this development are not wholly compatible with some of the proverbial notions about representative government held specialists as well as laymen, as we have earlier noted. This apparent incompatibility has obstructed the inclusion of group behaviors an objective description of the governmental process.

More specifically, it is usually argued that any attempt at the interpretation of politics in terms of group patterns inevitably "leaves something out" or "destroys something essential" about the processes of "our" government. On closer examination, we find this argument suggesting that two "things" are certain to be ignored: the individual, and a sort of totally inclusive unity designated by such terms as "society" and "the state."

The argument that the individual is ignored in any interpretation of politics as based upon groups seems to assume a differentiation or conflict between "the individual" and some such collectivity as the group. Those who propose this difficulty often state or imply the view that society is a series of individual persons "each assumed to have definite independent 'existence' and isolation, each in his own locus apart from every other."5 They further assume that when this individual is a part of a group he becomes a different person in some obscure fashion, that his "complex character" experiences "a degeneration or simplification."6

Such assumptions need not present any difficulties in the development of a group interpretation of politics, because they are essentially unwarranted. They simply do not square with the kind of evidence concerning group affiliations and individual behavior that we presented in the preceding chapter. We do not, in fact, find individuals other than in groups; complete isolation in space and time is so rare as to be an almost hypothetical situation. It is equally demonstrable that the characteristics of any interest group, including the activities by which we identify it, are governed by the attitudes and the circumstances that gave rise to the interactions of which it consists. These are variable factors, and, although the role played by a particular individual may be quite different in a lynch mob from that of the same individual in a meeting of the church deacons, the attitudes and behaviors involved in both are as much a part of his personality as is his treatment of his family. "The individual" and "the group" are at most merely convenient ways of classifying behavior, two ways of approaching the same phenomena, not different things.

The persistence among nonspecialists of the notion of an inherent conflict between "the individual" and "the group " or "society" is understandable in view of the doctrines of individualism that have underlain various political and economic conflicts over the past three centuries. The notion persists also because it harmonizes with a view of the isolated and independent individual as the "cause" of complicated human events. The personification of events, quite apart from any ethical considerations, is a kind of shorthand convenient in everyday speech and, like supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, has a comforting simplicity. Explanations that take into account multiple causes, including group affiliations, are difficult. The "explanation" of a national complex like the Soviet Union wholly in terms of a Stalin or the "description" of the intricacies of the American government entirely in terms of a Roosevelt is quick and easy.

We need not reckon with such notions of personal causation except as data on the behavior of certain segments of the society. Similarly we need not accept at their face value the assertions of an inherent conflict between "the individual" and "society." The latter are merely the terms in which protests against particular social formations, such as the mercantilist system and a limited franchise, gained advantage by being clothed in the language of universals. They are not verified propositions about society in general.

It is not intended, however, that we should reject the general human values asserted in the militant doctrines of individualism. Since we have assumed the task of developing a conception of the political process in the United States that will enable us to determine the bearing of group organization upon the survival of representative democracy, we have in fact assumed the importance of those values. Far from leaving them out of account, we are primarily concerned with their place in the process of group politics.

We do not wish, moreover, to deny that individual differences exist or that there is evidence to support the notion of individuality. This assertion would be nonsense. No conception of society or of the political process would be adequate if it failed to accommodate the hard facts of personality differences. Although we shall have to deal quite explicitly with these, nevertheless, they should offer no insuperable obstacles. We have already admitted the essential facts of individuality when we have noted the infinite variations in biological inheritance and when we have pointed out that the experiences, the group experiences, of no two persons can be identical in all significant respects. It follows that the personality of any reasonably normal individual is not wholly accounted for by any single group affiliation. This proposition not only must be accepted; it must be a central element in any satisfactory explanation of the political process in group terms.

The second major difficulty allegedly inherent in any attempt at a group interpretation of the political process is that such an explanation inevitably must ignore some greater unity designated as society or the state. Thus MacIver sees such sharply different schools of political thought as the laissez-faire Spencerians, the Marxists, the pluralists, and group interpretations such as Bentley's, as being alike in one respect: "that they denied or rejected the integrating function of the state."7

Many of those who place particular emphasis upon this difficulty assume explicitly or implicitly that there is an interest of the nation as a whole, universally and invariably held and standing apart from and superior to those of the various groups included within it. This assumption is close to the popular dogmas of democratic government based on the familiar notion that if only people are free and have access to "the facts," they will all want the same thing in any political situation. It is no derogation of democratic preferences to state that such an assertion flies in the face of all that we know of the behavior of men in a complex society. Were it in fact true, not only the interest group but even the political party should properly be viewed as an abnormality. The differing experiences and perceptions of men not only encourage individuality but also, as the previous chapter has shown, inevitably result in differing attitudes and conflicting group affiliations.8 "There are," says Bentley in his discussion of this error the social whole, "always some parts of the nation to be found arrayed against other parts."9 Even in war, when a totally inclusive interest should be apparent if it is ever going to he, we always find pacifists, conscientious objectors, spies, and subversives, who reflect interests opposed to those of "the nation as a whole."

There is a political significance in assertions of a totally inclusive interest within a nation. Particularly in times of crisis, such as an international war, such claims are tremendously useful promotional device by means of which a particularly extensive group or league of groups tries to reduce or eliminate opposing interests. Such is the pain attendant upon not "belonging" to one's "own" group that if a normal person can be convinced that he is the lone dissenter to an otherwise universally accepted agreement, he usually will conform. This pressure accounts at least in part for the number of prewar pacifists who, when the United States entered World War II, accepted the draft or volunteered. Assertion of an inclusive "national" or "public interest" is an effective device in many less critical situations as well. In themselves these claims are part of the data of politics. However, they do not describe any actual or possible political situation within a complex modern nation. In developing a group interpretation of politics, therefore, we do not need to account for a totally inclusive interest, because one does not exist.

Denying the existence of an interest of the nation as a whole does not completely dispose of the difficulty raised by those who insist that a group interpretation must omit "the state." We cannot deny the obvious fact that we are examining a going political system that is supported or at least accepted by a large proportion of the society. We cannot account for such a system by adding up in some fashion the National Association of Manufacturers, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Legion, and other groups that come to mind when "lobbies" and "pressure groups" are mentioned. Even if the political parties are added to the list, the result could properly be designated as "a view which seems hardly compatible with the relative stability of the political system." 10 Were such the exclusive ingredients of the political process in the United States, the entire system would have torn itself apart long since.

If these various organized interest groups more or less consistently reconcile their differences, adjust, and accept compromises, we must acknowledge that we are dealing with a system that is not accounted for by the "sum" of the organized interest groups in the society. We must go farther to explain the operation of such ideals or traditions as constitutionalism, civil liberties, representative responsibility, and the like. These are not, however, a sort of disembodied metaphysical influence, like Mr. Justice Holmes's "brooding omnipresence." We know of the existence of such factors only from the behavior and the habitual interactions of men. If they exist in this fashion, they are interests. We can account for their operation and for the system by recognizing such interests as representing what in the preceding chapter we called potential interest groups in the "becoming" stage of activity 'It is certainly true," as Bentley has made clear, "that we must accept a . . . group of this kind as an interest group itself."ll It makes no difference that we cannot find the home office and the executive secretary of such a group. Organization in this formal sense, as we have seen, represents merely a stage or degree of interaction that may or may not be significant at any particular point in time. Its absence does not mean that these interests do not exist, that the familiar "pressure groups" do not operate as if such potential groups were organized and active, or that these interests may not move from the potential to the organized stage of activity.

It thus appears that the two major difficulties supposedly obstacles to a group interpretation of the political process are not insuperable. We can employ the fact of individuality and we can account for the existence of the state without doing violence to the evidence available from the observed behaviors of men and groups. The development of this interpretation must wait until we have examined more closely the operation of groups and government. It is important to bear in mind, however, that any complete conception of the political process must incorporate the facts of individual differences and must reckon with the inclusive system of relationships that we call the state.

For all but those who see in the growth of new groups the evil ways of individual men, it is obvious that the trend toward an increasing diversity of groups functionally attached to the institutions of government is a reflection of the characteristics and needs, to use a somewhat ambiguous term, of a complex society. This conclusion stems necessarily from the functional concept of groups presented in the preceding chapter. Not all institutions of a society necessarily become complex simultaneously or at an even rate, of course. The religious institution may be highly complicated, for example, whereas economic institutions or the family may remain relatively simple. The political institutions of any culture are a peculiarly sensitive barometer of the complexity of the society, however, owing to their special function. Since they operate to order the relationships among various groups in the society, any considerable increase in the types of such groups, or any major change in the nature of their interrelationships, will be reflected subsequently in the operation of the political system. For example, as the Tanala of Madagascar shifted from a dry-land method of rice growing to a method based on irrigation, a series of consequent changes in the culture gradually took place. Village mobility disappeared in favor of settled communities, since the constant search for fertile soil was no longer necessary; individual ownership in land emerged, since the supply of appropriate soil was sharply limited; a system of slavery was developed; and the joint family was broken up into its constituent households. Finally, as a result of these changes in relationships and interests, and with the introduction of conflicts stemming from differences in wealth, the decentralized and almost undifferentiated political institution became a centralized tribal kingship.12

Alterations in response to technological or other changes are more rapid and more noticeable in a complex society in which a larger number of institutionalized groups are closely interdependent. Changes in one institution produce compensatory changes in tangent institutions and thus, inevitably, in government. A complex civilization necessarily develops complex political arrangements. Where the patterns of interaction in the society are intricate, the patterns of political behavior must be also. These may take several forms, depending upon the circumstances. In a society like ours, whose traditions sanction the almost unregulated development of a wide variety of associations, the new patterns are likely to involve the emergence of a wide variety of groups peripheral to the formal institutions of government, supplementing and complicating their operations.

This kind of complexity seems to stem in large measure, as was suggested in Chapter 2, from the techniques employed in the culture and especially from the specialization that they involve. This situation is so familiar that it hardly needs explanation, yet its very familiarity easily leads to a neglect of its basic importance. The specialization necessary to supply a single commodity such as gasoline may provide a miniature illustration:

An oil operator brings oil to the surface of the ground; the local government prevents the theft of oil or destruction of equipment; a railroad corporation transports the oil; State and Federal Governments prevent interference with the transport of oil; a refining company maintains an organization of workers and chemical equipment to convert the oil into more useful forms; a retail distributor parcels out the resulting gasoline in small quantities to individuals requiring it; the Federal Government supplies a dependable medium of exchange which allows the oil operator, the railroad, the refining company, and the retailer to act easily in an organized fashion without being under a single administrative authority, and enforces contracts so that organizing arrangements on specific points can be more safely entered into; finally, government maintains a system of highways and byways which allow an ultimate consumer to combine the gasoline with other resources under his control in satisfying his desire for automobile travel.13

The intricacies of what are ordinarily thought of as economic behaviors by no means exhaust the picture, of course. One has only think of the specialities appearing in various kinds of amusement and recreation to realize that these characteristics pervade the society. Professionalized sports such as baseball and an increasing number of others, the motion pictures with their wide range of "experts" of all sorts, not to mention the specialists necessary to the operations of the press– all illustrate the basic fact.

These specializations are created by the various techniques with which we meet the challenges and opportunities of the physical environment, and they are allocated to individuals, at least in such simple forms as in the house-building examples discussed in Chapter 2, roughly on the basis of differences in skill. They produce a congeries of differentiated but highly interdependent groups of men whose time is spent using merely segments of the array of skills developed in the culture.14 Men are preoccupied by their skills, and these preoccupations in large measure define what the members of such groups know and perceive about the world in which they live. As has been remarked in a slightly different connection: "Machines ... make specifications, so to speak, about the character of the people who are to operate them."15 Under favorable circumstances groups form among those who share this "knowledge" and the attitude it fosters. Both the nature of the techniques utilized in the society and the interdependencies that they imply dictate the amount and kinds of interaction of this sort. Where the techniques are complex, interactions must be also.16

It is unnecessary here to attempt to trace historically the increasing diversity of groups. MacIver sees the "dawn of modern multi-group society" in the splitting of the single church in the sixteenth century the consequent struggles over religious toleration, and the demands of the middle economic classes.17 It is obvious that the process has been greatly accentuated by tremendous technological changes, well meriting the appellation "industrial revolution," which inevitably produced new contacts, new patterns of interaction, and new "foci of opposing interests." 18 A precondition of the development of a vast multiplicity of groups, itself an instance of technological change of the most dramatic sort, is the revolution in means of communication. The mass newspaper, telephone, telegraph, radio, and motion pictures, not to mention the various drastic changes in the speed of transportation, have facilitated the interactions of men and the development of groups only slightly dependent, if at all, upon face-to-face contact. This factor in the formation of groups was noted by De Tocqueville when the first-named medium had scarcely appeared on the American scene:

The revolution in communications has indeed largely rendered obsolete, as we have observed in another connection, Madison's confidence in the dispersion of the population as an obstacle to the formation of interest groups.

Among other influences greatly facilitating group formation are such major national efforts as a war mobilization or a collective attack upon the problems of an industrial depression. In recruiting the national resources for such an emergency, the Government stimulates interaction throughout the nation. It is no accident, for example that the periods of most rapid growth of trade associations in this country have included the years of World War I and the vigorous days of the ill-starred N.R.A.20 Once the habit of associated activity was established under the stimulus of government encouragement, such groups tended to persist and to invite imitation.

One of the inevitable consequences of increasing specialization and division of labor is thus the formation of groups at various stages in the growing chain of interdependent activities; but division of labor alone does not account for the proliferation of groups in our society. Groups indeed develop to carry on each of the specialties involved in a complicated operation, as in the example of the production and marketing of gasoline cited above. These institutionalized groups, furthermore, from time to time may have recourse to the political institutions in facilitating the operation of their specialties. Were this state of affairs the whole story, the complicating effects within government would be bewildering enough. Far more important, however, their numbers and their complicating effects upon politics are those interest groups designated as associations. These are in a sense, dependent groups, since they are peripheral to institutionalized groups and grow out of the tangent relations among individuals interacting in various of the latter. Their significance in the present context, however, is not limited by these characteristics. Associations are rather a major concern in the examination of political interest groups for two reasons: their generic functions and their great number in our society.

The function of the association, it will be recalled, is to stabilize the relations among their members and to order their relations as group with other groups. Thus a labor union not only will guide the interactions of workers in various departments of a plant or various plants in an industry–involving such matters as seniority, skill levels, and the like–but also will order relations between the union workers and employers in a particular plant or industry. This stabilizing function bears a close relation to the degree of specialization in the society. For institutionalized specialties, as has been suggested above, necessitate interdependence; and other segments of the population therefore entertain established expectations concerning the behavior and performance of the specialists.21 When this behavior or its consequences are not consistent with the expectations, among those affected a reaction ensues that may produce an association. Thus we have individuals in the society who specialize in moving goods and persons from place to place. Industrial locations and the forms of our sprawling cities are in part based upon the expectation that this transportation service will be effective, available when needed, and supplied at "reasonable" prices. Breakdowns, failures, and "unfair" pricing practices are likely to produce an association of shippers and travelers to "do something about it." Such efforts to achieve conformity between results and expectations, or other attempts at stabilization, almost inevitably involve at least some recourse to the institutions of government. The tremendous political importance of the association stems directly from its basic functions.

The number of such groups in our society is of equal political significance. With an increase in specialization and with the continual frustration of established expectations consequent upon rapid changes in the related techniques, the proliferation of associations is inescapable. So closely do these developments follow, in fact, that the rate of association formation may serve as an index of the stability of a society, and their number may be used as an index of its complexity. Simple societies have no associations (in the technical sense of the term); as they grow more complex, I. e., as highly differentiated institutionalized groups increase in number, societies evolve greater numbers of associations.22

An exact count of the number of associations in the United States that have some occasion to utilize the governmental processes is a virtual impossibility. In the first place, the number is constantly changing, and secondly, reliable means of identifying all such groups are not available. Various rough estimates, however, give some idea of the numbers. In 1929 Herring indicated his judgment that a "very conservative" estimate would place the number of groups maintaining representatives in Washington on a continuing basis at "well over five hundred."28 How many others confined their activities to the States and localities or operated in Washington only on a temporary basis it is impossible to know. That this number had been eclipsed within a decade is suggested by the finding of a Temporary National Economic Committee study that in 1938 there were in the country over fifteen hundred national and regional trade associations, the vast majority of which listed "governmental relations" as one of their primary activities. Comparatively few of these had permanent offices in Washington, of course. The study did not cover an estimated six thousand State and local trade associations that could be expected to engage in governmental activities locally, if not nationally.24

The Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act, which is Title III of the Legislative Reorganization Act of l946,25 gives a further basis for contemporary estimates. Under this act, generally speaking, registration is required of persons and groups who solicit, receive, or expend money to influence congressional legislation. Because of the ambiguities and loopholes in the legislation, such as the exemption of groups and individuals whose funds are not used "principally" for such purposes, a careful student of the law has concluded that it is impossible to derive from its operation an accurate estimate of the number of organizations engaging in such activity.26 An authoritative count of national associations, issued in 1949 by the United States Department of Commerce, gave informative details concerning "approximately 4,000 trade, professional, Civic, and other associations."27 It is estimated that, including local and branch chapters, there were 16,000 businessmen's organizations, 70,000 labor unions, 100,000 women's organizations, and 15,000 civic and similar organized groups of business and professional men and women. The 4,000 national groups on which this document gave detailed information were distributed as follows:

Type of Group Number of Organizations

Manufacturers 800

Distributors 300

Transportation, finance, insurance, etc. 400

Other national associations of businessmen 300

Professional and semiprofessional persons 500

Labor unions 200

Women 100

Veterans and Military 60

Commodity exchanges 60

Farmers 55

Negroes 50

Public officials 50

Fraternal 25

Sports and recreation 100

All other fields 1,000

Total 4,000

They range from the Abrasive Grain Association and the American Bible Society to the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (23,000 members) and the Zionist Organization of America. Not all of these are interest groups or associations in the technical sense of those terms, but the list gives some idea of the tremendous number of groups operating in the American scene. Moreover, the report states: "Almost all the organizations listed in this handbook engage in lobbying to varying degrees."28

Although these sources are obviously inadequate for a completely reliable reckoning, they do indicate that even a conservative estimate would count in at least four figures the number of associations active at the national governmental level alone.

The evolution of associations does not necessarily proceed at a uniform rate. When a single association is formed, it serves to stabilize the relations among the participants in the institutionalized groups involved. At the same time, however, in the performance of its function it may cause disturbances in the equilibriums of other groups or accentuate cleavages among them. These are likely to evoke associations in turn to correct the secondary disturbances. The formation of associations, therefore, tends to occur in waves.29 For example, the introduction of machine techniques or new management methods may sufficiently disturb the workers in an industry to produce a union. While it may stabilize or restore the equilibrium of the workers, the effectiveness of the union's demands may so upset the accustomed behavior of the managers or owners that they will develop an association of their own in compensation. Zeller's study of interest groups in New York and McKean's study in New Jersey both indicate the frequency with which the formation of associations stems from the disturbances created by those formed at an earlier date. Such waves are a natural consequence of what is understood as interaction in a highly complex social situation.30

The possible ramifications of such waves of association-building are limited only by the extent of the affected interactions, some of which initially appear to be rather remote. Thus the formation of labor unions, veterans' organizations, and professional associations may be followed by the establishment of parallel or, in a sense, competing associations for workers, veterans, or professional men who belong the Catholic Church, who are of the Jewish faith, or who belong to a particular nationality group. The latter have the effect of stabilizing activity within the parent institution that is threatened by the attractions of associations unaffiliated with it. In this sense, the establishment of an association is an innovation in technique that has effects in tangent institutionalized groups quite as disturbing as do changes in technology. Even the new practices of established groups may have the same effect if they invite or compel other groups to utilize the same methods. Thus Herring has pointed out that the systematic campaigns of woman suffrage organizations in the second decade of this century set the pattern of techniques for what he calls the "new lobby." This phenomenon of organization in waves, together with tho influences discussed previously that have stimulated the proliferation of groups, undoubtedly account in part for the dilution and subsequent partial eclipse of the corrupting "lobby barons" and "corporation lobbies" typical of State and national legislative halls seventy-five years ago.31 The disturbances created by such groups caused the formation of defensive groups and the modification of tactics by the former.

Not all institutionalized groups are equally sensitive to disturbances, of course. As we have already observed, such groups are characterized by a high degree of stability. Those that are particularly stable will maintain their equilibriums in the face of all but the greatest changes in their relations with other groups. Such is the case in those well-managed industrial enterprises that have successfully avoided the establishment of labor unions or that have established a long record of operation without interruption by strikes. The inertia of these groups is such, in fact, that disturbances of disaster proportions may be required to upset the established relationships within them.32

Although associations operating as political interest groups may grow out of the tangent relations among institutionalized groups of all kinds, probably the most common in recent years have been those stemming from economic institutions. So common have these groups become and so involved has government activity been with economic policy, that many writers have fallen into the error of treating economic groups as the only important interest groups.33 There are, undoubtedly, a number of reasons for the prevalence of associations growing out of economic institutions, but two that greatly illuminate the general process may be noted here. In the first place, there has been a series of disturbances and dislocations consequent upon the utopian attempt, as Polanyi calls it, to set up a completely self-regulating market system. This attempt involved a policy of treating the fictitious factors of land, labor, and capital as if they were real, ignoring the fact that they stood for human beings or influences closely affecting the welfare of humans. Application of this policy inevitably meant suffering and dislocation–unemployment, wide fluctuation in prices, waste, and so forth.34 These disturbances inevitably produced associations–of owners, of workers, of farmers–operating upon government to mitigate and control the ravages of the system through tariffs, subsidies, wage guarantees, social insurance, and the like. Protectionist demands in international trade, moreover, have had their equivalent in interstate commerce in the United States.35 As Herman Finer has observed: "The competitive system depends for its sanction on insecurity. Competitors in the real world . . . do not intend to be insecure."36

The second reason for the prevalence of associations stemming from economic institutions is the rapid and extensive change that has occurred in technical methods of industry and in the organization of industrial units. For example, it has been found that in the shoe industry there has occurred within recent years a marked development of associations.37 Organizations of owners and managers have developed as a means of aiding the adjustment of each enterprise to the vicissitudes of the national market. These have been paralleled by workers' associations (unions). Both, however, have been stimulated by the problems consequent upon the steady absorption of interdependent factories into a few large regional or national shoe manufacturing enterprises.

For the owners and managers this centralization of the shoe industry has produced a new series of problems concerning financing and marketing that their associations aid in solving. For the workers it has meant that the officials at the top of the hierarchy are total strangers whose names they may not even know. The manager of a local plant is relatively far down in the new organizational structure, and his discretion is sharply limited. He does not make many of the crucial decisions affecting his plant, but merely carries out directives issued by those at the peak of the structure. These orders may be entirely consistent with the logic of the problems directly facing the officials at the top without these officials being in any way aware of the fact that the orders seriously disturb the workers. Since there is no appreciable interaction between workers and their ultimate employers, these disturbances inevitably have produced suspicion and resentment, perhaps wholly unwarranted, of the absent authorities. Equally inevitable, compensatory and defensive interactions among workers have increased and unions have emerged as a means of stabilizing and ordering these relations. As Millis and Montgomery observe: "It is only a labor organization with the structure and the relations of the trade union that can exercise control over matters not of plant firm origin."88

In addition to and accompanying this change in the organization of shoe enterprises, the introduction of machinery has steadily narrowed to the point of elimination the craft skills upon which the industry has been based. These skills had been organized into an elaborate hierarchy and a corresponding structure of rewards had been created in which age and skill were closely correlated. This structure, especially in the context of small, locally owned factories, was not wholly inconsistent with the notions of advancement and improvement that constituted the "American dream." The expanding mechanization, as in other such industries, dissolved this structure of relationships and interactions with the result that the workers "were ready for any mass movement which would strike at those they charged, in their own minds, with the responsibility for their present unhappy conditions."39

The language of laymen and journalists includes a number of type designations for political interest groups. Everyday discussion, particularly on the editorial pages, usually uses such group classifications as business, labor, agriculture, veterans, and the like. Most academic discussion has employed similar lists. Others distinguish groups according to the number of issues in connection with which they are active. Still others use a classification that substitutes for, or adds to, the above a judgment concerning whether the group's objectives are public (unselfish, humanitarian, reform, and the like) or private (selfish, special, and so on). By using the classifications made familiar by frequent use in popular discussions, one gains something in simplicity of communication. Such simplicity may be achieved, however, at too high a cost if these terms are used uncritically. Although we shall employ such designations as farm groups, business groups, labor groups, and so on, it will be important to bear in mind some of the pitfalls that surround such usage and similar classifications.

The particular danger of a designation like "business" is that it implies a certain solidity or cohesion within the group that may not exist. When the term is used in the midst of interest group conflicts, the group leadership may wish to give this impression. The slogan "What Helps Business Helps You" was a skillful means of suggesting the existence of complete unity among businessmen, and one may take note of this tactic in the political struggle. But when a writer states that "business has been intent upon wielding economic power and, where necessary, political control for its own purposes,"40 he has be come a participant in, rather than an observer of, that struggle. "Business" may be a useful collective term for certain economic behaviors, but the individuals and groups falling under such a heading do not necessarily act as a political unit. "Business" groups are normally found on opposite sides of many political issues such as reciprocal trade legislation, farm subsidies, and minimum wage bills. Careless use of the classification thus may tend to obscure more than it explains.

A corollary of this danger is that one may ascribe an interest to certain groups on an a priori basis that may bear no relation to the attitudes held by the group. When the activity of the group is not consistent with such description, the discrepancy involves the student in the fruitless task of trying to make the evidence fit a misconception. Even where this kind of error is not made, there is a strong possibility that such classification will tend to obscure one of the essential characteristics of the process of group politics, namely, that an individual can affiliate with many potentially conflicting groups. What of the business man whose trade association seeks the aid of troops in the violent suppression of strikes and who at the same time belongs to an active society for the protection of civil liberties? If such affiliations may affect the behavior of individuals, they may equally affect the operation of the groups to which the individuals belong. To obscure this fact, as will be shown in detail in a later chapter, is to cripple one's understanding of the political process.

A further hazard in using classifications of the usual sort is that one may emphasize political relationships at a particular point in time and neglect the dynamic, changing content of a generic process. A dominant group at one point may be inactive or ineffective at another. Women's groups, often placed in a "miscellaneous" category, may be primarily sociability groups, and yet under certain circumstances–if there is a school scandal, for instance–they may become overwhelmingly influential. Over time, furthermore, the relative importance of various groups may be completely transformed by technological and cultural changes of all kinds. As their situations and experiences shift, there will be shifts in individuals' attitudes and interests, regroupings of affiliation that directly affect the relative power of groups. It was quite reasonable for Herring to observe in 1929 that scientific societies were rarely interested in governmental matters.41 The development of atomic power, the increasing recognition of the importance of basic research in all the sciences, and the increased importance of military considerations in American politics, to mention only a few changes, have combined to give organized scientists a greatly augmented political role.42 Classifications that neglect such emerging trends or that underemphasize the processes by which they take place are a serious handicap to understanding.

Such classifications, because they are likely to depend upon the names assumed by organized groups and upon certain of the obvious claims the groups make, may lead the student to mistake the self-estimate of groups for their actual significance. He may mistake a fake or dummy group for the real thing, and so become a victim of the fraud. One who tried to reconcile the Farmers' State Rights League of the early 1920's with other "farm" organizations would have been dealing in fact largely with a group of cotton mill operators who assumed this guise to work against the proposed child labor amendment to the Constitution.43 It was a group, and its activities were relevant to the inquiries of a student of politics, but its significance would not have been revealed by such classification.

Finally, efforts to distinguish among interest groups on the basis of personal preference, that is, subjective judgments as to their "public" or "private" character, may be an unavoidable part of a citizen’s functions, but they have nothing to do with the methods of scientific analysis. They contribute little to a systematic understanding of the political process by whatever methods such knowledge is pursued. The basis of such judgments cannot be reliably communicated, and the results are therefore useless in analysis.

Perhaps the most significant feature of group politics is that it is a dynamic process, a constantly changing pattern of relationships involving through the years continual shifts in relative influence. If it is this aspect that it is most important to describe or, what is the same thing, to understand, then the most significant questions are those that bear directly on this process of change–questions indicating the basis of a more meaningful classification. How do interest groups emerge? Under what circumstances to they make claims upon or through the institutions of government? In what fashions do groups operate upon the government and its subdivisions? How are various groups interrelated, either as organized groups or through the interactions of individual members? In what fashions do groups operate upon the government and its subdivisions? With what frequencies and degrees of intensity? What are the mutations of governmental institutions in response to group activity? Obviously we do not at present have the data from which to answer these questions and on which to base a functionally more useful classification of interest groups. As adequate means of measurement are developed, such data may become available. Meanwhile conventional classifications can be employed if their limitations are kept in sight.