Chapter 10: Pressure Groups and Social Movements §

(F) Day of the week: Thursday Class: IS307 Created Time: June 17, 2021 1:04 PM Database: Class Notes Database Date: June 17, 2021 Days Till Date: Passed Last Edited Time: January 21, 2022 4:24 PM Type: Reading Notes, Study Group URL: https://tinyurl.com/yhv9csed

C10 Reflection Paper

What are voluntary organizations or pressure groups? §

• voluntary organization and association club and social movement are called pressure groups, consist of:

  • trade unions

  • charities

  • churches

  • arts, science, leisure clubs

  • community associations

  • Social movement

  • interest groups: professional and business organisations/associations

  • clubs: social clubs, youth clubs, sports clubs

  • Groups: environmental groups, women’s groups. consumer groups, active groups, peaceful groups, active groups, social groups, …

  • stratra (plural) / stratum (singular): one of the parts or layers into which something is separated

what do voluntary organization and association club and social movement do?

• organise individuals into groups, and then link these groups with the political system by
  • express or voice the social and political interests or demands of their members
  • defend their interests in the political arena
• try to influence the public by putting pressure on government
• hold government accountable and make them responsive to popular demands
• play a direct role in the consultative machinery of government
• play a crucial role in democratic politics by organizing, integrating and stabilizing society: even if they are not politically active, groups help to create a peaceful, integrated and stable social order in which democratic government can operate effectively
• play special role in politics as mediating organisations or agencies in a two-way process that links society and government.
  • act as ‘input’ agencies in the political system: express the demands and concerns of individuals
  • act as ‘output’ agencies: help to implement public policy

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Why social groups are form? what factor that foster social group to exist?

• because Modern government is often big government with activities that extend into almost every corner of life and have an impact on the daily lives of citizens in many different ways.

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What are their goal in forming an organisation?

• to defend their interests
• to influence government policies that affect them

What are the 3 types of pressure groups? §

Pressure groups: Private and voluntary organisations that try to influence or control government policies but do not want to become the government. ‘Pressure groups’ is a general term to cover interest groups and cause groups.

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Interest groups Sometimes know as ‘sectional’ groups, interest groups are the type of pressure group that represent occupational interests – business and professional associations and trade unions. Professions: (doctors, lawyers, dentists, musicians)

• these groups are constantly trying to shape government economic policies and matters that affect their occupations.
• some interest group represent state bureaucrats => powerful interest groups

Example: in most countries the army, although not organised as an interest group, also exercises a powerful influence over defence policy

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Cause groups: Sometimes known as ‘promotional’ or ‘attitude’ groups, cause groups are a type of pressure group that do not represent organised occupational interests, but promote causes, ideas or issues

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How government separate the 3 types of pressure groups? §

Episodic groups: are Groups that are not usually politically active but become active when the need arises.

• local football club
• film club

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Fire brigade’ groups: are Groups formed to fight a specific issue, and dissolved when it is over.

• a local action group might be set up to keep a park as an open space, but fade away when the issue is won (or lost).

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Political groups: Groups that are created to engage in politics.

• Trade unions and business associations, are created to engage in politics and to influence the wide range of public policies that affect their interests.

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• Long established democracies (freedom of association + social and political stability) tend to have greater density of politically active voluntary association than new democracies (free association has not been allowed by authoritarian or totalitarian governments) 11 of the best established democracies of western Europe and north America
  • 5.5 per cent of the population are members of local political action groups Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain
  • 2.4 per cent in the newer Mediterranean democracies 8 of the ex-communist democracies in central Europe,
  • 2.2 per cent 4 of the third-wave democracies of Latin America (Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Peru)
  • 3.7 per cent

Difference between pressure groups, political parties, and social movements? §

Pressure Groups

• want to influence government

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• Most pressure groups are interested in only one policy area

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• most pressure groups are not primarily political. Associations are not interested in politics unless they have to be

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• Most pressure groups do not fight elections

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Political Parties

• want to become government

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• cover all or almost all of policy area

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• Parties are primarily political. Parties are set up to win power

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• Parties fight elections

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Social Movements (NSM)

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• Bring together a range of different organisations and associations to work loosely together. They are not organised into a single bureaucratic structure like pressure groups and parties.

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• Social movements are concerned with a particular area of public life
  • working-class interests,
  • minority groups
  • racism
  • religious issues
  • human rights, women’s rights
  • animal rights
  • environment
  • peace
  • nuclear power and weapons

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5 ways social movements differ from political parties? §

1. Political Agenda: counter-cultural, anti-politics and anti-state have wider agenda than most groups
2. pressure groups have a broad range of interests than most group, but a narrower range than parties
   • Ex: Environmental movements are often networks of interests that come together as loose-knit coalitions, rather than hierarchically organised and bureaucratically centralised organisations. That is why they are called ‘movements’
3. have a broader range of members than most groups, but a narrower range than the largest parties
   • Most groups appeal to specific kinds of individuals for specific kinds of activities – they are sports clubs, or choirs, or mountain walkers’ clubs
   • Some social movements have been called ‘rainbow coalitions’ because they try to link rather disparate social groups and organisations under a single political umbrella
4. A looser and more decentralized form of organisation than groups or parties
   • they have been described as ‘networks of networks’. The ‘old’ organisations are hierarchical, bureaucratic and professionally run, the ‘new’ ones are based upon the grass-roots participation of volunteers
5. Political methods: often innovative and unconventional, involving direct political action, community involvement and sometimes protest action or even violence
   • Ex: Environmental movements often use unconventional political methods, including direct action, grass-roots participation and eye-catching protests

How political parties, pressure groups, and social movements interact and relate to each other? §

• Some pressure groups are aligned with or integrated into parties
  • esp in dominant single-party systems like Japan
• Some pressure groups contest elections for publicity rather than winning
• Some pressure groups operate as parties
  • Ex: Agrarian parties in Scandinavia, and religious groups in Israel
• Some pressure groups turn themselves into parties
  • Ex: the Greens formed political parties to fight elections
• Most Pressure groups stick to being groups
• Some are naturally aligned groups
• Most pressure groups try to maintain a non-aligned status so that they can work with whatever party or coalition is in power.
• Many groups (trade unions, cooperatives and collectives, savings clubs, worker educational organisations and socialist organisations of all kinds) => form a broad coalition of forces (movement) => own political party.

💡 ‘New Social Movements’ (NSMs) in modern world

• the working-class coalition formed in many countries in the nineteenth century to protect and promote working-class interests
• Abolition (of slavery) movement
• Chartist and the Suffragette movements of the nineteenth century
• Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in Britain in 1950s
• Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace
• Black Power movement in the USA
• peasant and land reform movements in South America
• the loose alignment of right-wing
• Racist groups in Europe

2 roles of pressure groups and social movements in politics? §

Interest aggregation: form a single policy programme from a set of different interests and view by sorting and sifting opinions and presenting it as a single package.

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Interest articulation: express and publicize policies in order to influence government action and to make their views heard amid the great confusion of noise made by all groups equally concerned to stress their own point.

• lobbying politicians and bureaucrats
• producing pamphlets
• doing research
• organising petitions (a document signed by a large number of people demanding or requesting some action from the government or another authority)
• organising strikes, sit-ins, non-cooperation, rioting, violence
• organising publicity events

💡 General rule in choosing any one or combination of these methods:

1. try to get into the policy formation process as early as possible
   • because this is when government is still undecide.
2. to operate at the highest possible level of government to which you have access
   • because this is the best way to achieve the greatest amount of influence with the least possible expense and effort.

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What insider groups and governments want from each other? §

Insider Group: Pressure groups with access to senior government officials, often recognized as the only legitimate representatives of particular interests and often formally incorporated into the official consultative bodies.

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Insider group

• want to influence policies and receive advance warning about them

government

• want inside group’s technical information and expertise, and for their cooperation in the smooth implementation of policy.

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• to preserve their ‘insider’ status, they must not disturb the relationship with government by making extreme demands or attacking the government in public

💡 similar elite backgrounds => relations between private interests and government improve

Ex: Oxford and Cambridge University and the London clubs in Britain

Ex: the Grande Ecole’s in Paris, the Tokyo Law School and the Law and Business Schools of Harvard and Yale

• “Revolving door” (UK and USA) “descent from heaven” (Japan): leaving public service to work for organisation which they were regulating when they’re in office

Ex: A professional association of doctors may be very concerned about a health issue and have important information that it wants to feed into government policy making circles. Doctors are a prestige professional group that governments will listen to, and often there are special consultative committees to enable them to meet regularly with top health officials so that they can exchange views.

Marxist/Elitist Theory §

Marxist and elitist theorists claims Pressure Groups undermines democracy

• Leaders are unrepresentative of the people as they are knowledgeable upper-middle class who controls the social groups with their rules
• Most social groups are weak and unorganized, only middle-class groups and business groups have resources and power to fight political battles
• The government is a political arena for middle-class and upper-class battles usually the government favoring the weathy
• Relations between military and business controls most key decisions, only leaving unimportant things to pluralist competition

Pluralism §

Pluralists argue that:

• Many political issues are fought over by competing groups. Rarely is one of them so powerful that it can get its own way. Most have to compromise but they often get something they want, even if it is only to prevent other groups encroaching on their interests. This is called veto-group power.
• All groups have some resources to fight their political battles – money, numbers, popularity, ‘insider’ status, leadership skills, popular support, votes. Resources are not distributed equally, but nor are they distributed with cumulative inequality: all groups have some resources; none has all of them: no group is powerless; no group is all-powerful.
• Power is fragmented, fluid, or ‘mercurial’. There is no fixed power structure or power elite, but different configurations of shifting coalitions and power according to the issue and the circumstances. Today’s winners will be tomorrow’s losers, and vice versa.
• Groups that fail in one political arena (national government) may be successful in others (local government, the courts, international arenas).
• Groups often look for political allies, which obliges them to compromise and cooperate with others.
• Groups cannot always get what they want, but they can often veto other groups’ proposals they do not like.
• The main exponent of pluralist theory, Robert Dahl (1915–), argues that pluralist democracy does not work in a perfect ‘textbook’ manner, but it works reasonably well, ‘warts and all’.

Marxist/elitist theory §

Pluralist theory is opposed by Marxist and elitist theories, which claim that the pressure group system undermines democracy:

• The ‘iron law of oligarchy’ (chapter 13) means that groups are controlled by a few, unrepresentative leaders, because they are the people with the skill, knowledge and experience to run them, and because leaders make sure they control group resources and the means of communication.
• The group world is dominated by educated, wealthy, and upper-class ‘joiners’. Survey research shows that people of higher social and economic status are more likely to join voluntary associations, and that the leaders of such associations are generally dominated by the upper strata.
• Some social groups are weakly organized, or largely unorganized – the very poor, children, the homeless, the mentally and physically ill, minority groups.
• Group resources are distributed with cumulative inequality. The class-based nature of the group world ensures that middle-class groups have most of the resources necessary to fight political battles.
• Groups with structural power in the economy (especially business interests) are particularly powerful.
• Groups fight within a political structure that is systematically loaded in favor of middle- and upper-class interests. Government is not a neutral ‘referee’ in the group battle, but part of a system that favors the wealthy and well organized.
• The group world reflects and reinforces the power structure in which wealthy interests with structural power in the economy dominate the political system.
• Some elite theorists argue that a ‘military–industrial complex’ controls key decisions, leaving less important issues to pluralist competition.

Social capital and civil society theory §

Social capital theory has a lot in common with pluralist theory. It argues that:

💡 Social capital: The features of society such as trust, social norms and social networks, that improve social and governmental efficiency by encouraging cooperation and collective action.

• Voluntary associations – particularly ‘bridging’ associations that bring different social groups together – are crucial for the development of democratic attitudes, such as trust, reciprocity and satisfaction with democracy, and for democratic behavior, such as civic engagement, voting and membership of parties. The social trust and the personal and organizational networks that groups create are what make up the social capital on which democracy rests.

• Voluntary organizations teach the political skills of a democracy – how to organize, how to run meetings, how to compromise and how to work and cooperate with others for collective goals.

• Not all social organizations generate ‘good’ social capital that is beneficial to society as a whole. The Italian mafia, for example, generates ‘bad’ social capital that is of benefit only for the mafia.

• Putnam’s research on Italy and the USA suggests that economic success and democratic stability is rooted in networks of voluntary associations. Democratic malaise (falling election turnout and party membership, declining trust in politicians and government institutions, cheating on taxes, political fear and cynicism) is caused by a decline in the voluntary organizations that generate social capital.

  There are also some criticism of this theory

  • The definition and treatment of the concept of social capital is vague and all-inclusive.
  • Some survey evidence shows that voluntary organizations have rather little effect on political attitudes and behavior. In any case, which is cause and which is effect?
  • Some research suggests that television is not particularly responsible for eroding social capital – on the contrary, television news and current affairs programmes can inform and mobilise people.
  • Social capital theory sometimes assumes a ‘bottom-up’ process in which individuals who join organizations help to create a culture of civic engagement and democratic participation. A ‘top-down’ approach argues that governments help to create the conditions in which both voluntary organizations and a climate of trust can flourish.

Civil society has much in common with pluralist and social capital theory.

💡 Civil society: That arena of social life outside the state, the commercial sector and the family that permits individuals to associate freely and independently of state regulation.

• Strong and vibrant private organisations are essential both for a satisfying social life, and as a counter-balance to the power of the state.
• Transition to democracy depends on building autonomous, private organizations and creating a culture and tradition to sustain them, especially in societies where such organizations have been controlled or suppressed by the state.
• So far, civil society in central and eastern Europe has tended to develop in a different way from western pluralism, in that organizations have formed most readily around nationalist, ethnic and religious interests that have become a force for division and conflict, rather than compromise and integration.