Pressure politics 107problem solved. At the other extreme there are those organisations that ex-
hibit a formidable degree of stability, homogeneity of purpose and expertise,
which makes them more significant elements in the process of policy-making
than the great political parties. The National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Rifle Association (NRA)
are examples of the latter type of organisation, and are continually involved
in political situations. Between these extremes there is a bewildering variety
of organisations with differing aims which may from time to time become in-
volved in political decisions and which are therefore potentially participants
in the political process.
The list of such organisations is endless, and their concerns are equally
various. Many of them are to be identified with an interest only in the very
broadest sense, for example, the League of Women Voters or the National
Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. Nor do groups have
to be associated with economic interests in order to be effective, as the Marx-
ist analysis would suggest. Perhaps the most famous of all interest groups
was the Anti-Saloon League, which played an important part in bringing
about the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the manufac-
ture or sale of alcohol in the United States. Religious denominations, many
with representatives in Washington, maintain organisations to keep an eye
upon governmental affairs that interest them; such are the National Council
of Churches of Christ, the Board of Temperance of the Methodist Church,
and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Christian Coali-
tion of America is the national organization of conservative Christians; the
American Israeli Public Affairs Committee concerns itself with American
policy in the Middle East, and exercises an influence on government out of
proportion to the Jewish population; the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil
Rights and Elections is an umbrella organization representing fifteen Mus-
lim associations. Associations of ex-servicemen such as the American Legion
or the Veterans of Foreign Wars concern themselves both with pensions and
with wider political issues such as the activities of the United Nations and
its impact upon American interests. Professional associations such as the
American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Bar Association
(ABA) exercise very considerable influence over the areas of government ac-
tion in which they can claim a special expertise. The activities of the AMA
in combating President Clinton’s proposals for health care reform, together
with the Health Insurers Association of America (HIAA), represents perhaps
the best known interest group campaign of recent times, in which the HIAA
and the AMA used every tactic available to highly organised interest groups
to influence public opinion and members of Congress. Other professional
bodies, such as the American Federation of Teachers, represent the concern
of their members with salaries and conditions of work. In the field of civil
rights there is a bewildering variety of groups, ranging from the NAACP
and the Congress of Racial Equality to the Nation of Islam, whose leader,
Louis Farrakhan, in 1995 mounted a demonstration in Washington, ‘The