Page 267 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Comparative Politics and Government

Notes Whether it is a free or a totalitarian, a developing or a developed country, the existence and articulation
of interest groups cannot be ignored, though it may be manifest or latent, specific or diffuse, general
or particular, instrumental or affective in style. It is manifest when it is an explicit formulation of a
claim or a demand; it is latent when it takes the form of behavioural or mood cues which may be read
and transmitted into the political system; it is specific when it takes the form of a request for a particular
legislative measure and a subsidy; it is diffuse when it takes the form of a general note of dissatisfaction
or resentment; it is general when the demands are couched in general class or professional terms and
it is particular when they are put in individual or family terms; it is instrumental when it takes the form
of a bargain with consequences realistically spelled out; finally, it is affective when it takes the form of
simple expression of anger or gratitude etc.
Heywood’s Analysis of Pressure Groups and their Merits and Demerits

Distinction between Political Parties and Pressure Groups
1. Parties aim to exercise government power by winning political offices (small parties may
nevertheless use elections more to gain a platform than to win power).
2. Parties are organised bodies with a formal ‘card carrying’ membership. This distinguishes
them from broader and more diffuse social movements.
3. Parties typically adopt a broad issue focus addressing each of the major areas of government
policy (small parties, however, may have a single issue focus, thus resembling interest groups).
4. To varying degrees, parties are united by shared political preferences and a general ideological
identity.
Merits of Interest Groups
1. They strengthen representation by articulating interests and advancing views that are ignored
by political parties, and by providing a means of influencing government between elections.
2. They promote debate and discussion, thus creating a better informed and more educated
electorate, and improving the quality of public policy.
3. They broaden the scope of political participation, both by providing an alternative to
conventional party politics and by offering opportunities for grass-roots activism.
4. They check government power and, in the process, defend liberty by ensuring that the state is
balanced against a vigorous and healthy civil society.
5. They help to maintain political stability by providing a channel of communication between
government and the people, bringing outputs into withinputs.
Demerits of Interest Groups
1. They entrench political inequality by strengthening the voice of the wealthy and privileged,
those who have access to financial, educational, organisational or other resources.
2. They are socially and politically divisive, in that they are concerned with the particular, not
the general, and advance minority interests against those of society as a whole.
3. They exercise non-legitimate power, in that their leaders, unlike politicians, are not publicly
accountable and their influence bypasses the representative process.
4. They tend to make the policy process closed and more secretive by exerting influence through
negotiations and deals that are in no ways subject to public scrutiny.
5. They make societies ungovernable, in that they create an array of vested interests that are able
to block government initiatives and make policy unworkable.
Andrew Heywood: Politics, pp. 248 and 277.

Critical Appraisal

The existence and articulation of organised interest groups in every political system has been dubbed
as a sinister development, an exercise in partial as opposed to total representation and the interplay

262 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY