1 Presthus, Robert, Elite Accommodation in Canadian Politics (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Presthus, Robert, Elites and the Policy Process (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Kwavnick, David, Organized Labour and Pressure Politics (Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Lang, R. W., The Politics of Drugs (Toronto: Saxon House, 1974)Google Scholar; Stanbury, W. T., Business Interests and the Reform of Canadian Competition Policy, 1971–1975 (Toronto: Carswell Methuen, 1977)Google Scholar; Pross, A. Paul, “Canadian Pressure Groups in the 1970's; their role and their relations with the public service,” Canadian Public Administration 17 (1975), 121–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pross, A. Paul (ed.), Pressure Group Behaviour in Canadian Politics (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1975)Google Scholar. Pressure Group Behaviour contains a more complete bibliography.

2 The analysis of the CAC which follows is based largely on the results of a seven-month study; see this author's “The Consumer Movement in Canada” (monograph; Ottawa: Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, May, 1977Google Scholar). During the study 1 interviewed 22 government officials, CAC representatives, and members of other organizations and examined the files of the DCCA, the CAC, and other groups. To protect the confidentiality of those interviewed, no one has been quoted directly in this article. A list of those interviewed appears in the appendix to the study cited above.

3 For other definitions, see Schluck, Peter H., “Public Interest Groups and the Policy Process,” Public Administration Review 37 (1977), 133Google Scholar; and Berry, Jefferey M., Lobbying for the People: The Political Behavior of Public Interest Groups (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 7Google Scholar.

4 It might be argued that there is no necessary competition between public interest groups and government agencies in representing the public, since each has a different function: government agencies exercise power, while public interest groups seek to influence those who exercise power. In practice, however, this distinction may become blurred: some government officials within the department of consumer and corporate affairs, for example, assume that it is their duty both to govern consumer affairs and to advocate consumer rights within the government as a whole.

5 As suggested earlier, some of the problems experienced by public interest groups may be shared by private interest groups which must aggregate different interests. But, as John Meisel points out, many corporations intervene directly to protect their own interests; public interest groups are often in an adversary relationship towards such corporations, and not merely towards the business associations which represent them. The strength of public interest groups must therefore be measured against the strength of the entire private-enterprise sector—and not simply against the power of private interest groups. See Meisel, John, “Elite Accommodation in Canadian Politics,” The Canadian Forum 54 (May-June, 1974), 44–46Google Scholar; and Fournier, Pierre, The Quebec Establishment (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1976)Google Scholar. I am grateful for the comments of an assessor for this JOURNAL on the aggregation function of interest groups.

6 Nadel, Mark V., The Politics of Consumer Protection (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), 219ffGoogle Scholar.; I have modified Nadel's definition of differential benefits slightly. The distinction I have suggested between the kinds of benefits sought by general and constituency groups is an approximate one; there are enormous difficulties in defining “the public interest.” See, for example, Friedrich, Carl J. (ed.), The Public Interest: Nomos V (Chicago: Atherton Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

7 See Olson, Mancur Jr., The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Games (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 1–53Google Scholar, 132–66.

8 On this and the following, see Dawson, Helen Jones, “The Consumers' Association of Canada,” Canadian Public Administration 6 (1963), 92–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brechin, Maryon, “Consumer Protection,” Encyclopedia Canadiana (1970), 94–98Google Scholar; Leighton, David S. R., “Consumerism in Canada,” in Leighton, David S. R. and Thompson, Donald M. (eds.), Canadian Marketing: Problems and Prospects (Toronto: Wiley, 1973), 3–12Google Scholar; Mrs. Slimmon, D. H., “Through the Years,” The Canadian Consumer 2 (July-August 1972), 127–39Google Scholar; Plumptre, Beryl A., “Consumers; Their Relations with Marketing and Government,” Toronto: York University, 1977Google Scholar (unpublished address); anonymous, “CAC—A History of Accomplishments” (pamphlet; n.p., 1957); the CAC Annual Reports: and Berry, Lobbying for the People.

9 Presthus, Elite Accommodation, 7ff.

10 Slimmon, “Through the Years,” 134–35.

11 Plumptre, Beryl, “President's Address,” CAC Annual Report, 1964Google Scholar.

12 CAC Bulletin 73 (December, 1957)Google Scholar.

13 Clarke, G. C., “The Role of the Organized Consumer in Changing Times,” CAC Annual Report, 1969Google Scholar.

14 Skinner, H. A., “The Image of the Consumers' Association of Canada and What Must Be Done to Improve It,” CAC Annual Report, 1969Google Scholar.

15 CAC Bulletin 73 (December, 1957)Google Scholar.

16 See Peter Aucoin, “Pressure Groups and Recent Changes in the Policy Process,” in Pross(ed.), Pressure Group Behaviour, 174–92; Press. “Canadian Pressure Groups” and Loney, Martin, “A Political Economy of Citizen Participation,” in Panitch, Leo (ed.), The Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Power (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1977), 446–70Google Scholar.

17 “Submission to the Textile and Clothing Board of Canada,” Consumers' Association of Canada, December 6, 1976, 4Google Scholar.

18 Gray, John T., “Report of the Canadian Transport Commission,” March 15, 1976Google Scholar. Other studies which document the past and present difficulties of the CAC include: Nakatsu, Constance A., “The Attitude of Government and Industry Toward the Consumers' Association of Canada,” (unpublished M.S. Thesis, University of Guelph, 1972)Google Scholar: Richardson, Carol West, “Responses to Consumerism in Canada: Case Studies of Governmental, Voluntary and Business Responses,” (unpublished M.A. Thesis, Carleton University, 1976)Google Scholar: Macrae, Penny and Scotton, Anne. “Consumers' Association of Canada: In-Action or Inaction” (unpublished undergraduate paper, Carleton University, 1976)Google Scholar; Michele Marois and Claude Masse, “Rapport d'une enquête sur l'Efficacité et des lois et des Organismes de consommation” (typewritten manuscript, Faculté de Droit de l'Université de Montréal, 1976); and Dawson. “The Consumers' Association of Canada.”.

19 There is a tendency on the pan of many students of interest groups to emphasize the value of relatively stable, conventional, hierarchical organizations, and to argue that most interest groups either conform to prevailing norms or are ineffective. Thus Kwavnick talks of how new interest groups are won over to “the existing social order... or, at worst, to an only slightly modified version of the social order” (Organized Labour, 6). Constituency groups, however, which usually represent people otherwise outside an established economic structure, often have an interest in drastically changing the rules of the game—since through the use of massive publicity, protests and disruptions, and other unorthodox tactics they may arouse support among people difficult to organize effectively by other means. See Pross, “Pressure Groups: Adaptive Instruments of Political Communication,” in Pressure Group Behaviour, 120. For a critique of interest-group liberalism, see Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy and the Crisis of Public Authority (New York: Norton, 1969), 68–97ffGoogle Scholar.

20 Lowi, End of Liberalism, 101ff.

21 See White, Orion, “The Dialectical Organization,” Public Administration Review 29 (1969), 32–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Berry, Lobbying for the People, 63–64.

22 Two studies which tried to measure the effectiveness of consumer groups are found in Nadel, The Politics of Consumer Protection, pp. 206–07, and the Marois and Masse “Rapport” cited above. Both conclude that such groups as the Consumers' Union and the Quebec branch of the CAC were less effective than the newer, more militant consumer organizations—like those organizations directed by Ralph Nader in the US and groups like the APA, IPIC, and ACEF in Quebec. At the time of these studies, Consumers' Union and the Quebec branch of the CAC more nearly resembled a “general” organization, while the other organizations were close to the “constituency” model.

23 See Paglin, Max De and Shor, Edgar, “Regulatory Agency Responses to the Development of Public Participation,” Public Administration Review 38 (1977), 140–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Just before this study was completed (July, 1978), the CAC announced its intention of seeking financial aid from corporations, unions, and other private sources. The new policy is apparently designed to compensate for reduced government support; but whether CAC can oppose corporate interests while depending on them financially remains to be seen.