ABSTRACT
In the first edition of the Handbook of the Politics of Education, Opfer, Young, and Fusarelli (2008) point out that the number of interest groups and the amount they spend on lobbying has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Yet, despite this proliferation of interest groups and their activity, Opfer and colleagues contend that interest groups remain an understudied subfield of the politics of education. They also find that the paucity of scholarship that examines interest groups in education policy typically utilizes an inclusive definition of interest groups, a characterization, according to Opfer and her colleagues, that largely relies on Thomas and Hrebenar’s (1992) definition that considers an interest group as “any association of individuals, whether formally organized or not, that attempts to influence public policy” (as cited in Opfer et al., 2008, p. 197). Opfer and colleagues argue that this use of an inclusive definition conceals important conceptual problems related to our understanding and, hence, study of interest groups, notably organizational, activity, and distinctional ambiguity.
