Ainsworth, Scott H. Analyzing Interest Groups: Group Influence on People and Policies. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. An analysis of interest groups and their activities using a theoretical approach.
Baumgartner, Frank R., Jeffrey M. Berry, Marie Hojnacki, David C. Kimball, and Beth L. Leech. Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. An account showing that because the entrenched Washington system favors the status quo, 60 percent of lobbying campaigns fail to change policy.
Berry, Jeffrey M., and Clyde Wilcox. The Interest Group Society. New York: Longman, 2008. A leading text providing basic information about most aspects of interest groups.
Cigler, Allan J., and Burdett A. Loomis, eds. Interest Group Politics, 7th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006. An informative and wide-ranging collection of research on interest groups in American politics.
Dahl, Robert A. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. The leading statement of the pluralist position and the democratic role of interest groups.
Olson, Mancur, Jr. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. An influential study using an economic approach to groups’ organization, membership, and effectiveness.
Schattschneider, Elmer E. The Semi-Sovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960. A powerful critique of pluralism and American democracy.
Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and John T. Tierney. Organized Interests and American Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. A comprehensive account of Washington-based interest groups in the early 1980s.
Truman, David B. The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, 2nd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971 (originally published 1951). This book revived the study of interest groups as central to US politics and raised many subjects, concepts, and questions that are still important.
