Chgnt B3 THE INTEREST-GROUP SYSTEM:ORGANIZING FOR INFLUENCE The flaw in the pldralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class bias. -E.E.Schattschneider fi如天 ntil Candy Lightner came along in May 1980,they had not thought of themselves as a group,even though they had something tragically important in common-the death of children or other family members in traffic accidents caused by drunk drivers.Lightner taught them to view themselves as a political lobby and gave them a name-Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Perhaps no other small group in recent times has pressed its view so forcefully as MADD.Its intense grass-roots campaign resulted in a 1984 law that withholds federal highway funds from states with a legal drinking age under twenty-one.Through appearances on television news shows,letters to key members of Congress,and personal appeals to President Ronald Reagan, MADD won a campaign that at first appeared unlikely to succeed because of opposition by powerful restaurant and liquor lobbies.Since then,MADD has pressured state legislatures and local law-enforcement officials to toughen penalties for people convicted of driving while intoxicated. MADD is one of thousands of organizations known as interest groups.An interest group is a set of individuals who are organized to promote a shared political interest..Also called a“"faction'”or"pressure_group”or“special interest,"an interest group is characterized by its formalized organization and by its pursuit of poliey goals that stem from its members'shared interest.Thus college students as a whole do not constitute an interest group,because they are E.E.Schattschneider,The Semisovereign People:A Realist's View of Democracy in America (New York:Holt,Rinehart and Winston,1960),35. 296