Population Dynamics and Representation

The study of interest group populations has come a long way since the early enumerations by Bentley (1908), Odegard (1928), Herring (1929), Schattschneider (1935), and other pre-World War Two scholars. E. E. Schattschneider (1960), of course, focused our attention on the class and occupational bias in the interest group system with his observation that the group system is heavily tilted to over-represent those who are the wealthiest and therefore might be thought to need government assistance the least. Other scholars tended to focus, as Schattschneider did, on the perils of the interest group system and its heavy corporate character — often veering into concerns over bribery and corruption. Schattschneider’s assessment, based on his idea of conflict expansion, was that the two-party system and electoral politics were the solution to the problem of the class bias in the group system, which he saw as inevitably tilted toward the rich. His work argued that the party system could be the solution to this problem, and his work then focused on how conflict expansion processes typically favored the underdog and that the government often came to the side of the disadvantaged. Schattschneider’s insights about conflict expansion and the role of government go a long way in explaining why different social and economic groups have different appreciations of government intervention into the private economy.