The relevance of Bentley for group theory: founding father or mistaken identity?

A. F. Bentley's The Process of Government (1908) is widely accepted as an i mportant source of contemporary interest group study. This paper argues to the contrary that Bentley's arguments in this area are obscure and have con tributed little to the programme of modern interest group research. His imp ortance is as a contributor to the debate on the nature of social science a nd social science method and not as the starting-point for interest group a nalysis. The judgement about his role as a social scientist should rest on consideration of his body of work and not simply the one book. In terms of his much cited book, Bentley, it is argued, is misread. The central purpose of this article is to explore the consequences of that misinterpretation. The misreading of The Process of Government, and the unmerited assumption t hat it is directly connected to modern interest group theory, has led to a misunderstanding of that contemporary theory. In particular his use of the term 'group' is much wider in scope than is now usually followed. This mean s that his claims are not so uni-dimensional as they appear when extracted from their context. Bentley used the term in a sociological sense that incl uded informal social associations as 'groups': these are not the sort of fo rmal, collective organizations of the interest group type as identified in political science. It is argued that the major sources of ideas current in the interest group field are Truman (1951) and the case-study authors of the 1930s such as Ode gard, Childs, Herring and Schattschneider, Bentley's contribution to politi cal science is not as progenitor of interest group studies, but his emphasi s on process anticipates the policy studies movement.