ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the interest-group politics of France and Germany with that of the United States; deals with the heavily institutionalized nature of the relationship between groups and governments in these two European countries; and discusses the implications of such a relationship for democracy and public policy. There is no evidence that the institutionalized contacts between government and interest-group leaders have resulted either in an irreversible interpenetration or in a form of elite management in which the various members of this elite have interchangeable values. In the US, interest groups have not been "incorporated" into the official authority structure or the political parties and hence have retained their autonomy vis-a-vis both. Such autonomy has contributed to the maintenance of a functional distinction between the "articulation structure" on the one hand and the aggregation and central decision-making structures on the other and has also contributed to keeping the US political system close to a once popular model of modernity and democracy.
