An advocacy group is a group or an organization that tries to influence the government but does not hold power in the government. Advocacy groups are generally classified according to two broad typologies: their core aims (group–cause typology), and their relationship to government (insider–outsider typology).
Classification by aims
Early attempts to classify advocacy groups, first developed in the United Kingdom by J. D. Stewart in the 1950s, generally focused on who or what causes they represented.
Sectional groups
Sometimes referred to as "protectionist groups", "private interest groups" or simply "interest groups". Such groups are normally exclusive, as their membership is usually restricted to the section of society whose interests they represent: for example the British Medical Association (as those seeking to join the BMA must be medical practitioners or students training to enter the profession), or organisations such as the Law Society.
However, the most common sectional groups worldwide are financial interest groups. This includes business groups (such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Confederation of British Industry, and the Nestlé Corporation (Switzerland)), labour groups (such as NASUWT, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Trades Union Congress (United Kingdom); IG Metall (Germany); and the AFL–CIO (United States)), farm groups (such as the Irish Farmers' Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation), and professional groups (such as the American Bar Association).
Cause groups
Sometimes referred to as "promotional groups" or "public interest groups", these organisations campaign for a specific cause or objective, promoting approaches, issues or ideas that may not be of direct benefit to group members. They are invariably and explicitly non-partisan and represent a segment of society whose primary purpose is focused on promoting a particular cause or value. This therefore makes them more inclusive, as they generally try to establish wide popular support and do not implement as many restrictions on group membership. For example, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has become one of the largest and most visible UK cause groups, with over 1 million members (including 200,000 youth members), over 2,000 staff members and 13,000 volunteers nationwide.
This category is wide-ranging, including civil liberties groups such as Liberty, Amnesty International, the League Against Cruel Sports, Countryside Alliance, the Institute for Public Policy Research and Policy Exchange. Charities such as Save the Children may fall under this category, as well as churches and religious organizations (e.g., Catholic Action in Italy), veterans' groups (e.g., the Union Française des Associations d'Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre), and groups supporting the rights of people with disabilities (e.g., the Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (ONCE)), and some have even argued that organised religious groups such as the Roman Catholic Church would fall into this category.
Cause groups are generally subdivided into three further categories: sectional cause groups, attitude cause groups and political cause groups: Sectional cause groups – aims to protect a specific section of society that is distinct from its own membership. For example, although the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) works on behalf of the rights of children, the majority of its members and supporters are adults; Attitude cause groups – aim to change people's attitude on a particular issue (often to the exclusion of others). Greenpeace, for example, seeks to change attitudes on the environment, although most cause groups have a broader remit; Political cause groups – aim to achieve certain political objectives, e.g. Charter 88, now Unlock Democracy, clearly has a political objective. The Chartists in the nineteenth century are also sometimes contemporarily classified as a political cause group.
Many public interest groups operate in a single country (e.g., the Federal Association of Citizen-Action Groups for Environmental Protection in Germany). Others, such as the Sierra Club, may operate in only a few countries; however, many public interest groups have a much broader international presence, with activities in many countries (e.g., Amnesty International and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines).