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In this Top Twenty Commentaries section of the Centennial Issues of the journal, the author reviews the highly cited article Diffusion of Innovations Among the American States(1969) by Jack L. Walker. A personal narrative traces the relationship of the reviewer to Jack Walker, Walkers combative & provocative Critique of the Elitist Theory, & Origins & Maintenance that aimed at group mobilization. The article Diffusion is asserted to have launched an entirely new field of research, & attracted considerable attention from other disciplines. The later concern with "knowledge communities" is exemplified as typical of his approach to political science. Walker's unique creativity is related to his assignment to supervise an internship in the state capital, giving him time between meetings to develop an entirely new research paradigm, & the loss to the discipline by the car crash is acknowledged. References. J. Harwell

Examines strength, history, and characteristics of the groups, focusing on how relations with state agencies affect their tactics and organizational maintenance strategies.

This article compares the strength, history, and characteristics of public interest groups in the United States and France. French and American public interest groups differ dramatically in their resources, popular support, and in their relations with state agencies. French groups, dependent on a more powerful central state bureaucracy, are often able to achieve their goals by having them adopted by state elites. American organizations, faced with a more diffuse public sector, seek broader access and use a greater diversity of means of influence. They are often less influential, but paradoxically are stronger organizationally because they are forced to be independent from the state. The differing relations with the state explain the different tactics and organizational maintenance strategies pursued by public interest groups in the two countries. Tight links bind the development of a nation's interest‐group system with that of its constitutional structures. An explanation of a national interest‐group system must include consideration of the institutional context within which it operates.