This is an interesting and important book, one that the author's mentor, Nelson Polsby, would be very pleased to see in print if he were still with us. Matt Grossmann is ambitious in his goal of revitalizing group theories of democratic politics, raised by James Madison in Federalist 10 in an analysis of the “problem of factions” and pioneered by Arthur Bentley (The Process of Government, 1935) and David Truman (The Governmental Process, 1951); meticulous in his collection and analysis of original data; unabashed in challenging the validity and utility of popular rational-choice and exchange-theory approaches to the study of interest groups; and skeptical of much conventional wisdom about the role and power of lobbyists and “special interests” in American governance.

Grossmann sets his sights on roughly 1,600 advocacy organizations in Washington that claim to speak on behalf of public groups or issue perspectives in national politics. This universe represents a vast array of ethnic, religious, occupational, ideological, and issue groups but explicitly excludes individual corporations, trade associations, and governmental entities. He first investigates who is represented: why some public groups have more extensive organized representation to speak in Washington on their behalf than others. In pursuing this question, he develops a theory of Behavioral Pluralism, linking characteristics of public constituencies to the development of organized representation. By aggregating measures of individual political and community participation to the group level, he finds evidence that political attentiveness and civic involvement are more powerful predictors of levels of organized representation in Washington than the size, wealth, or existence of extreme views of public constituencies.

The author then turns to the effectiveness of those public advocacy organizations. The indicators of success he uses are prominence in the public debate and involvement in the policymaking process. He asks how the characteristics of the organizations affect their ability to draw attention from the media and gain a hearing in the branches of the federal government. His dependent variables—three measures of media prominence and four measures of involvement in policymaking venues—are distributed very unevenly across the advocacy community. This leads him to examine how various attributes of the organizations (longevity, scale, ties to constituency, size of issue agenda, research expertise, external lobbying force, campaign contributions, ideological orientation) affect their relative degree of success in Washington. The fact that relatively few of these advocacy organizations become prominent players in national politics leads Grossmann to develop another theoretical construct—this one called Institutionalized Pluralism—to explain how and why some advocacy organizations acquire a standing and legitimacy that makes them obvious players in Washington.

The book is filled with interesting empirical findings and thoughtful discussions of the ways in which these results support, complement, or contrast with other scholarship on interest groups. Grossmann is respectful of many of the interest-group studies over the last decade or so and careful to place his work in the ongoing scholarship. But there is no disguising his appreciation for some of the classics of American democracy, especially their willingness to weigh in on the central questions of politics and governance, and his desire to rehabilitate and modernize scholarly approaches and perspectives often overlooked by new cohorts of political scientists. In his world, David Truman deserves much more attention and Mancur Olson a tad less.

Grossmann does not hide his annoyance with much of the critical commentary on the state of American democracy, which too often mistakes complexity and conflict for dysfunction. He acknowledges inequalities in the representation of interests but finds the rhetoric of undue influence by “special interests” unsubstantiated. He implies that the influence of hired-gun lobbyists and campaign contributions is exaggerated and the priority given by reformers to lobbying, ethics, and campaign finance reform largely misplaced. And he argues that the public interest is defined rather than frustrated by the scramble of public advocacy groups to advance their particular objectives.

This normative stance is not unreasonable and fits rather well with a serious empirical study of the representation of public groups in American democracy. The book provides an important reminder of the richness of the advocacy system and of the representation of an extraordinarily diverse set of public interests. It should be on the shelf of every student of interest groups in American democracy.

That said, Grossmann's normative case is far from dispositive. His empirical findings are not incompatible with a somewhat more alarmist assessment of the state of American politics. The author made a number of design choices which, while entirely reasonable and understandable, limit his ability to reassure critics. First, the absence of corporations and their trade associations from his universe of study limits his ability to weigh in on a huge part of economic advocacy, representation, and policymaking. This is especially telling in a post–Citizens United world. Second, his measures of influence or success relate entirely to process, not policy. Mentions in the media and involvement in the normal routines of governing institutions may be related to impact on policy, but not necessarily. The scope of the study made trying to measure impact on public policy impossible. This is not a criticism of the design but rather a caution about what can be inferred from the evidence at hand. Finally, the book is bereft of any discussion of interest groups and political parties. Yet we know (or, perhaps, we think we know) that the ideological polarization of the parties associated with many contemporary problems of American democracy has been accompanied by a growing segregation of interest groups into one party or the other. The possibility of a problematic and worrisome mix of parties and interest groups, seasoned by more than a dash of ideological zealotry and political money, is in no significant way denied by Grossmann's rich empirical findings and theoretical ruminations.

Readers of The Not-So-Special Interests will be enlightened by this impressive piece of scholarship but not necessarily reassured about the health and vitality of American democracy.