| Chapter 2: | The NGA as a Public Interest Group |
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“traditional” interest groups in terms of organization, methods, and public perceptions. As the NGA is indeed a unique lobbying organization, it is important to note that the NGA will not fit neatly into standard conceptualizations of how interest groups work and operate because its memberships and goals are different from what are usually perceived to be the case for interest groups.
The National Governors Association
as a Public Interest Group
The NGA, along with its public interest group counterparts, use many of the same tactics and strategies that are employed by other interest groups. However, the aims of public interest groups are somewhat different than the aims of other interest groups. As Cammisa notes, public interest groups seek “a collective good which will not materially benefit only the members or activists” (1995, 24). Thus, though public interest groups are lobbying for policies that are favorable to them, they also work to secure policies that benefit their constituents, and they typically work for policies that are beneficial to a state or locality. While this definition can potentially be used to describe many different interest groups, this term will be used in this book to describe governmental lobbying organizations.
Anne Marie Cammisa has provided the most recent extensive look at the contemporary NGA and other public interest groups, and her work provides an excellent starting point for this project. In her account of intergovernmental lobbying, Cammisa lays out the ways in which the NGA and other public interest groups compare to “traditional” interest groups. According to Cammisa, there are seven concepts that can be used to think about interest groups: access, classification, formation, techniques, membership and group resources, coalitions and policy subsystems, and