Ethnic interest group

An ethnic interest group or ethnic lobby, according to Thomas Ambrosio, is an advocacy group (often a foreign policy interest group) established along cultural, ethnic, religious or racial lines by an ethnic group for the purposes of directly or indirectly influencing the foreign policy of their resident country in support of the homeland and/or ethnic kin abroad with which they identify.

According to Ambrosio, "like other societal interest groups, ethnic identity groups establish formal organizations devoted to promoting group cohesiveness and addressing group concerns." While many formal organizations established by ethnic identity groups are apolitical, others are created explicitly for political purposes. In general, groups who seek to influence government policy on domestic or foreign issues are referred to as advocacy groups. Those interest groups established by ethnic identity groups are referred as to ethnic interest groups.

According to Thomas Ambrosio, most ethnic identity groups have connections inside their host country. These connections can be derived from membership in a diaspora, with ethnic kin in their historical homeland (e.g. Anglo-Saxon Americans and Britain, Italian-Americans and Italy, Armenian-Americans and Armenia, Arab-Americans and the Middle East) or scattered among many countries (e.g. Jewish-Americans, Palestinian-Americans), or based on perceived similarities with others even though they may share little or no common ancestry (e.g. White Southerners and Afrikaners in South Africa, African-Americans and black South Africans, Muslims worldwide.) Because of the concern of the ethnic groups for "kin" in foreign states, many ethnic interest groups focus on influencing the foreign policy of their host countries to benefit there foreign "kin" and thus act as foreign policy interest groups.

The influence of ethnic groups on the foreign policy of many states, including that of the United States, is "a reality", although these ethnic groups must "compete for influence with a plethora of other special interest groups and institutional interests." According to a literature review of the topic conducted by Patrick J. Haney and Walt Vanderbush, the primary factors that determine the relative strength of influence of an ethnic interest group are:

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