ABSTRACT

There is a pervasive belief in this country that interest groups are out of control. They have grown in number and influence while rank-and-file Americans have become disempowered. This view has prevailed for most of the last 30 years and is echoed constantly in the press. In 1986, Time told us that “at times the halls of power are so glutted with special pleaders that government itself seems to be gagging.”1 In 2006, Hendrik Hertzberg argued in The New Yorker that the Abramoff scandal was not an isolated instance; rather, “it’s simply the currently most visible excrescence of a truly national scandal: the fearful domination of private money over the public interest.”2