Page 323 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Comparative Politics and Government

Notes of a pressure group is so limited that its role in the politics of the country varies from one point of
time to another. Thus, a group maintains the peculiar life of being in as well as out of politics as per
the involvement of its specific interest. It may be found that by no means all organised groups, or
even a majority of them, normally have the slightest concern in what the government is up to, but at
any point of time they might be so concerned and might wish to try to influence the official policy.
Though a subtle line of distinction between the two can be drawn, it should be borne in mind that the
relationship between the pressure groups and political parties has become quite inextricable. While
the former perform the job of interest articulation, the latter perform the fuction of interest aggregation.
Thus, both act like twins in giving representation to the interests of the people with this line of
difference that while the latter provide the main representation, the former the auxiliary one. In other
words, while the political parties provide territorial representation, the pressure groups do the same
for the sake of functional representation. The relationship between the two has become so close that,
in practice, “functional representation exists side by side with territorial representation.”
General Characteristics: In Britain there are literally thousands of pressure groups of varying size,
structure, functions and influence from the Confederation of British Industries and the TUC on the
one hand to local, social and cultural groups on the other although, as a political study, our concern
is primarily with those principal organisations that seek to affect public policy as long as they do so.
The groups are, moreover, by no means a new phenomenon although detailed academic interest in
the politics of pressure groups is of a comparatively recent past. The Convention of Royal Burghs in
Scotland which can be traced back to the fourteenth century is generally regarded as the oldest
surviving organized group in Britain. In the eighteenth century there emerged a good number of
political associations that agitated for the democratisation of the Parliament. The name of the
Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade formed in 1807 was a much successful body. The
Anti-Corn Law League was an outstandingly successful pressure group of this period. A new
development took place after the middle of the last century when several organisations, big and
small, allied themselves with the leading political parties – Whigs or Liberals and Tories or
Conservatives. However, the emergence of the Labour Party has a significance of its own as it grew
out like “a combination of various pressure groups from the trade union and socialist movements.”
One of the dominant facts of the British political system today is that pressure groups have become ‘a
growing force’. However, certain broad features can be discerned in this regard:
1. Since Britain has a full-fledged democratic set-up, there is no limit on the size and working of
the pressure groups. As a result, numerous are the pressure groups right from business
organisations to labour and professional unions.
2. Britain is a unitary state with a stable bi-party system. As there is the concentration of central
authority in the hands of the government situated at London, pressure groups are bound to
direct their activities towards the machinery of a single central government. Here the nature of
pressure group politics becomes basically different from that of its American counterpart where
federalism has affected not only the governmental but also the non-governmental spheres of
life. Moreover, as Britain is known for having a stable bi-party system, most of the groups live
in clandestine relationship with one of the major political parties.
3. British pressure groups scrupulously observe the norms of democracy and constitutionalism.
Hardly we hear about the role of anomic organizations that emerge like spontaneous outfits to
vitiate the normal atmosphere of the country.
What is really impressive about the nature of the politics of pressure groups in Britain is that their
number and nature are not of an astonishingly complex variety and that their political behaviour
does not smack of an irresponsible way of doing things for the sake of protecting and promoting
their specific interests. Unlike their counterparts operating in other democratic political systems like
those of America and France, British pressure groups “today are more concerned with details and
administration and are perhaps more powerful and successful (if vocal) as a result.”
Structure and Organisation: A major illustration of the British pressure groups can be presented on
the basis of their general structure and organisation, kind and nature of the interests they represent,
the weight of authority they seek to exercise, the methods they want to employ and the like. Broadly

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