---
title: What are Interest Groups?
description: explores the role of interest groups in Montana’s local governance, highlighting how individuals and organizations influence policy through interest articulation. It examines group types, their impact on decision-making, and the balance municipal officials must strike among competing interests.
---

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November 5, 2025

# What are Interest Groups?

## Interest Groups in Local Politics: Articulating Public Needs and Influencing Policy in Montana Municipalities

Interest groups are generally made up by individuals who act for the benefit of larger groups of people and who are linked by common concerns, values, and preferences. These individuals act in concert to influence the decisions of government to advance shared interests. In Montana’s local political arena, the term would include such diverse entities as a neighborhood advisory council, the parent-teacher association, trade unions, a main street business association, or Chamber of Commerce. Montana Municipal Officials Handbook 175. Some observers of the Montana political scene have argued that interest groups are a problem that complicates the search for solutions to the many difficult policy issues confronting Montana government at both the state and local level. Others believe that these groups provide an effective method of what Wiseman (1966) calls “interest articulation,” defined as the process by which members of the public express their needs to a local government. Interest articulation can range from personal contact with government officials to the development of formal interest groups. Interest articulation can have different outcomes in different situations and can include lobbying, peaceful protest, phone calls, and letters to policymakers. According to Almond (1958) there are generally four types of interest groups:  
1\. Anomic groups that are often spontaneous groups with a collective response to a particular  
frustration.  
2\. Non-associational groups that are rarely well-organized and their activity is dependent upon the issue at hand.  
3\. Institutional groups that are formal and have some political or social function in addition to the particular interest.  
4\. Associational groups that are formed specifically to represent an issue of a particular group.  
In general, political influence in Montana’s local politics is fairly widely dispersed among competing interest groups and is not concentrated in political parties nor in narrowly based political, social or economic elites. While there are, no doubt, a few exceptions to this general proposition, especially where the prevailing political party or a corporate giant holds sway, the elected officials in most of Montana’s municipal governments are obliged to sort out the competing interests brought to the governing body by a wide range of groups and individuals, each seeking its own best interests. Regardless, interest groups provide local governments with two purposes; they can either serve as a restraint with a type of veto power over an action or decision, or they can provide an amplifying effect and provide legitimacy to policy decisions.

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