Part one of term paper
In 1965 an intellectual bomb was dropped on the field of interest groups, in the form of . In this seminal work Olson details the dynamics of group formation. The central theory is that men and women are rational, correspondingly they maximize benefits and minimize costs; because of this rationality people will not join in collective actio ...

Part two of term paper
... for collective goods (Olson).” The by-product theory has been subject to a large amount of scrutiny but has faired well. Mancur Olson’s by-product theory has withstood both theoretical and empirical tests and has shown to be an accurate model of interest group formation. Before an in-depth analysis of the by-product theory one must have a firm grasp of the assumptions underlying it, to which groups it applies, and the broad conceptual ideas the theory entails. The most important underlying ...