Interest Groups, PACs and Lobbyists
Joining or supporting a political party is not the only way to influence the political process in America. Over the past decades people have increasingly taken a more direct route – through interest groups. Interest groups are organizations which seek to influence government policy about one specific issue or a related set of issues.
Read more in Access to English: Social Studies, pp. 209-211. Then do the tasks in the textbook and on this website.
Visual Material
Going Further
Web resources
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We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim (TED talk)
(ted.com) -
Lobbying in the United States
(en.wikipedia. org) -
Lobbyists at Bottom of Honesty and Ethics List
(gallup.com) -
Audio: Constitutional rights
(bbc.co. uk) "Letter from America" recording from 1998 by the legendary BBC correspondent Alistair Cooke -
The Daily Show: Money’s Big Night
(youtube.com)