Special interests groups have the common attribute of sufficient wealth to spend enough funds and wield enough power to influence significantly election campaign results and to influence elected officials, staffers and bureaucrats to act in their favor. There are many types, for example: business associations, corporate trade groups, marketing associations; domestic corporations, domestic limited partnerships; foreign private corporations, foreign government-owned corporations; foreign and domestic criminal organizations; guilds, labor unions, professional associations; multi-national corporations; political actions committees (PACs); political parties; private organizations, informally-collaborative wealthy persons, individual super-rich families; social issue associations, common interest organizations, nonprofit corporations; sovereign foreign nations, covert foreign government organizations; temporary special-project coalitions.
Our Founders' Warning: “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.” (Thomas Jefferson)