After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
Explain how the Home School Legal Defense Association forced Congress to eliminate the Miller Amendment that would have required teacher certification in specific subject areas.
Review the historical evolution of interest groups in America, noting which social, economic, and political forces were prominent in group formation and proliferation.
Delineate the nature and variety of interest groups.
Explain how interest groups are both formed and maintained. Be sure to include the types of incentives that people have as motives for joining an interest group.
Discuss the implications of the free-rider problem for interest groups and the methods by which groups try to overcome this problem.
Explain and define lobbying and grassroots lobbying.
Explain pluralist theory and understand the arguments launched by its critics.
