Page 259 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Comparative Politics and Government

Notes Keeping this in view, it is noted that the study of pressure group politics must be made within the
general framework of man’s diverse interests and issues coming out of their interaction, inter-relation
and interpenetration. As J.D.B. Miller says: “The individual is then a universe of interests; their orbits
intersect, their influences upon him vary with time and circumstances. It is the exceptional man (in a
developed society) who serves only a single interest all the time”.
It follows that the individuals live in a ‘multiverse’ of interests. They have many interests and struggle
for their protection, furtherance and realisation. A social whole is a ‘vast complex of gathered union’
some of which are clearly organised bodies, while others are amorphous collections of individuals
having ephemeral existence or appearing only at certain times. As a member or supporter of a political
party, an individual may agree to reduce his independence to the position of a cog in the machinery
of a political organisation, yet he may keep himself free to move in and join other’para-political’
organisations called pressure or interest groups for the protection and promotion of his interests.
These basic divisions are inevitable and permanent, but the social system manages to accommodate
them and keep them in some sort of balance, though uneasy, as the situation of balance changes its
pattern from time to time. Through the interpenetration and interplay of various conflicting interests,
people, in the main, “learn to live with one another, through a sense of interdependence, through a
sense of what is possible, and through the intervention of the forces of law and order”.
It may now be possible to frame a simple definition of the term ‘pressure group’. It is employed “to
describe any collection of persons with common objectives who seek their realisation through political
action to influence public policy. Still more simply, an interest group is any that wants something
from the government”. Prof. Maclver says: “When a number of men united for the defence,
maintenance or enhancement of any more or less enduring position or advantage which they possess
alike in common, the term ‘interest’ is applied both to the group so united and to the cause which
unites them. In the sense, the term is most frequently used in the plural, implying either that various
similar groups or advantages combine to form a coherent complex, as in the term vested interests or
that the uniting interest is maintained against an opposing one, as in the expressions conflict of
interest or balance of interests. Interests so understood usually have an economic-political character.
A pressure group has been defined as “an organised aggregate which seeks to influence the context
of governmental decisions without attempting to place its members in formal governmental capacities”.
Thus, the important aspects of the pressure group activity “are that pressure groups are firmly part
of the political process and that they attempt to reinforce or change the direction of government
policy, but donot wish, as pressure groups, to become the government. They range from powerful
employer organisations and trade unions operating at the national level to small and relatively weak
local civic groups trying to improve local amenities”. A peculiarly American interpretation of the
term ‘pressure groups’ has been given by Henry A. Turner who says: “By definition, pressure groups
are non-partisan organisations which attempt to influence some phase of public policy. They do not
themselves draft party programmes or nominate candidates for public office. Pressure associations
do, however, appear before the resolutions committees of the political parties to urge the endorsement
of their programme as planks in the parties’ platforms. They often attempt to secure the endorsement
of both major parties and thus remove their programme from the arena of partisan controversy.
Many groups are also active in the nomination and election of party members to public offices”.
Pressure groups play their part in every political society. It would be worthwhile to enumerate their
characteristic features to highlight their different dimensions and areas of operation in order to
understand the working of a modern political system from a micro-angle of vision. An enquiry in
this regard starts with the presupposition that practical or applied politics is a matter of continual
tension, of unstable equilibrium between various conflicting interests of the people. Any attempt in
the direction of considering as to how these interests take their shape to emerge in the form of political
forces having their definite impact upon the nature and working of a political system naturally becomes
a matter of great significance. Keeping in mind the picture of organised groups operating in a political
system, the characteristic features of pressure groups may be enumerated thus:

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