Groups, Interests, and Movements - Notes

Groups, Interests, and Movements

Preview

• Organized groups and interests gained prominence in the 20th century, transforming political interaction.
• In the 1950s and 1960s, some believed business interests, trade unions, and farm lobbies replaced assemblies and parties as key political actors.
• From the 1960s, single-issue protest groups grew, addressing issues like consumer protection, animal rights, sexual equality, and environmental protection.
• These groups were often linked to broader social movements (e.g., women’s movement, civil rights movement, green movement).
• They adopted new activism and campaigning styles, termed ‘new politics’.
• Debates exist about the nature and significance of groups, interests, and movements, especially their impact on democracy.
• Groups vary in size and function, acting as agents of citizen empowerment and cogs in government.
• Some believe groups distribute political power, while others argue they empower the already powerful and undermine public interest.
• Questions arise about how groups exert influence and what factors enable this influence.
• ‘New’ social movements are praised for stimulating decentralized political engagement but criticized for causing people to abandon formal representative processes.

Key Issues

• What are interest groups, and what different forms do they take?
• What have been the major theories of group politics?
• Do groups help or hinder democracy and effective government?
• How do interest groups exert influence?
• What determines the success or failure of interest groups?
• Why have new social movements emerged, and what is their broader significance?

Group Politics

• Interest groups, like political parties, are major links between government and the governed in modern societies.
• Their origins parallel those of parties, emerging from representative government and the complex divisions of industrial society.
• Political parties seek to win elections by building coalitions, while interest groups usually advocate a more distinct position based on the aspirations or values of their members.
• The Abolition Society (founded in Britain in 1787) opposed the slave trade.
• The Anti-Corn Law League (established in 1839) is a model for later UK groups, set up to pressure government.
• Alexis de Tocqueville reported the rise of Associations, calling them a ‘powerful instrument of action’.
• Young Italy, set up in 1831 by the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini became the model for sister nationalist organizations that later sprang up throughout Europe.
• By the late 19th century, farming and business operated in most industrial societies, alongside a growing trade-union movement.
• Most interest groups are of more recent origin, a product of pressure and protest politics since the 1960s.
• This may reflect the decline of political parties and a growing emphasis on organized groups and social movements as agents of mobilization and representation.
• Cleavage: A social division that creates a collective identity on both sides of the divide.
• Association: A group formed by voluntary action, reflecting a recognition of shared interests or common concerns.

Types of Groups

• Defining and classifying groups is difficult due to their imprecise nature and diverse forms.
• The distinction between groups and interests is important. Are groups defined by cohesion and organization, or merely by shared interests?
• Are interest groups concerned with selfish and material interests, or also broader causes and public goals?
• The relationship between interest groups and government is also important. Are interest groups always autonomous, or can they operate within government?
• Terminology varies among political scientists. In the USA, ‘interest group’ describes all organized groups, while in the UK, ‘pressure group’ is preferred, with ‘interest group’ as a subcategory.
• Groups can be classified into three types:
  • communal groups
  • institutional groups
  • associational groups.

Communal Groups

• Communal groups are embedded in the social fabric, with membership based on birth rather than recruitment.
• Examples include families, tribes, castes, and ethnic groups.
• Unlike conventional interest groups, communal groups are founded on shared heritage and traditional bonds/loyalties.
• Such groups play a major role in developing states.
• In Africa, ethnic, tribal, and kinship ties are often the most important basis of interest articulation.
• Communal groups also continue to survive and exert influence in advanced industrial states, as demonstrated by the resurgence of ethnic nationalism and the significance of Catholic groups in countries like Italy and Ireland.

Institutional Groups

• Institutional groups are part of the machinery of government and attempt to exert influence through that machinery.
• They differ from interest groups in that they lack autonomy or independence.
• Bureaucracies and the military are examples of institutional groups, often containing competing interests.
• In authoritarian/totalitarian states, where autonomous groups are suppressed, rivalry among institutional groups may become the principal form of interest articulation.
• The Stalinist system in the USSR was driven by bureaucratic and economic interests, particularly those centered around heavy industry.
• Institutional groups are not only significant in non-democratic regimes. Some argue that bureaucratic elites and vested interests in democratic systems shape the policy process.
• Such groups also form alliances with conventional interest groups, as in the case of the ‘military–industrial complex’.

Associational Groups

• Associational groups are formed by people who come together to pursue shared, but limited, goals.
• These groups are characterized by voluntary action and the existence of common interests, aspirations, or attitudes.
• The most obvious examples are interest groups or pressure groups.
• The distinction between associational and communal groups may be blurred, such as when class loyalties are strong and membership in a trade union is an expression of social identity.
• Associational groups are becoming increasingly important in developing states, but are usually seen as a feature of industrial societies.
• Industrialization generates social differentiation and encourages self-seeking behavior.
• When their primary function is to deal with government and other public bodies, such groups are usually called interest groups.
• Interest groups appear in a variety of shapes and sizes, are concerned with an enormous array of issues and causes, and use tactics that range from serving on public bodies and helping to administer government programs to organizing campaigns of civil disobedience and popular protest.
• They may operate at a local, national, or international level.
• Anti-constitutional and para-military groups are excluded from this classification.
• Groups such as the Black Panthers and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) may not be categorized as interest groups because they sought fundamentally to restructure the political system, not merely to influence it, and used the tactics of terrorism and direct action instead of pressure politics.

Common Classifications of Associational Groups:

• Sectional and Promotional Groups
• Insider and Outsider Groups

Sectional Groups

• Sectional groups (protective or functional groups) exist to advance or protect the interests of their members.
• Trade unions, business corporations, trade associations, and professional bodies are examples.
• Their ‘sectional’ character comes from representing a section of society: workers, employers, consumers, etc.
• Only groups engaged in the production, distribution, and exchange of goods and services are seen as ‘functional’ groups.
• In the USA, sectional groups are often classified as ‘private interest groups’.

Promotional Groups

• Conversely, promotional groups (cause or attitude groups) are set up to advance shared values, ideals, or principles.
• These causes are many and diverse. They include ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ lobbies on abortion, campaigns for civil liberties or against sex and violence on television, protests about pollution and animal cruelty or in defense of traditional or religious values.
• In the USA, promotional groups are dubbed ‘public interest groups’ to emphasize that they promote collective, rather than selective, benefits.
• When involved in international politics, these groups are often call non-governmental organizations, or NGOs.
• Promotional groups aim to help groups other than their own members. Save the Whale, for instance, is an organization for whales, not one of whales.
• Some organizations, of course, have both sectional and promotional features.
• The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) addresses the sectional interests of American black people (by opposing discrimination and promoting employment opportunities) but is also concerned with causes such as social justice and racial harmony.

Insider Groups

• Insider groups enjoy regular, privileged, and institutionalized access to government through routine consultation or representation on government bodies.
• In many cases there is an overlap between sectional and insider classifications.
• Government may also be inclined to consult groups that possess specialist knowledge and information that assists in the formulation of workable policy.

Outsider Groups

• Outsider groups are either not consulted by government or consulted only irregularly and not usually at a senior level.
• Outsider status is often an indication of weakness, forcing these groups to ‘go public’ in the hope of exercising indirect influence on the policy process.
• There is often an inverse relationship between the public profile of an interest group and the political influence it exerts.
• Groups may choose to remain outsiders, both to preserve their ideological purity and independence, and to protect their decentralized power structures.
• Non-governmental organization (NGO): A private, non-commercial group or body which seeks to achieve its ends through non-violent means. NGOs are usually active in international politics and may be accorded formal consultation rights by bodies such as the UN or EU.
  • Operational NGOs are those whose primary purpose is the design and implementation of projects that are usually either development- related or relief-related.
  • Advocacy NGOs exist to promote or defend a particular cause, and are more concerned with expertise and specialist knowledge than with operational capacity.

Models of Group Politics

• Some believe group politics derives from factors specific to each political system.
• The role of groups reflects political culture, party system, and institutional arrangements.
• Others believe understanding group politics is shaped by broader assumptions about the political process and power distribution in society.
• These assumptions are linked to theories of the state.
• Influential models of interest group politics include:
  • pluralism
  • corporatism
  • the New Right.

Pluralist Model

• Pluralist theories offer a positive image of group politics.
• They stress the capacity of groups to defend individuals from government and promote democratic responsiveness.
• The core theme is that political power is fragmented and widely dispersed.
• Decisions are made through bargaining and interaction, ensuring that the views and interests of many groups are taken into account.
• Arthur Bentley emphasized organized groups as fundamental to the political process.
• David Truman’s work continued this tradition, focusing on the US political process.
• Enthusiasm for groups as agents of interest articulation and aggregation was strengthened by systems analysis, which portrayed interest groups as ‘gatekeepers’.
• Community power studies claimed that no single local elite dominates community decision-making.
• From the pluralist perspective, group politics is the stuff of the democratic process.
• In the 1960s, it was argued that pluralist democracy had superseded electoral democracy, with groups and organized interests replacing political parties as the principal link between government and the governed.
• Assumptions include that all groups/interests can organize and access government, that leaders articulate members’ interests/values, and that political influence aligns with size and support.
• Political power is fragmented, preventing any group from achieving dominance.
• Countervailing powers suggest a dynamic equilibrium emerges among competing groups.
• Group politics is characterized by a rough balance of power.
• Elitists and Marxists heavily criticize this optimistic view.
• Elitists challenge the empirical claims, drawing attention to a ‘power elite’ (Mills, 1956).
• Marxists emphasize that political power is linked to the ownership of productive wealth, suggesting a capitalist ‘ruling class’.
• Neo-Marxists point to ‘unequal competition’ between business and labor, with business enjoying greater control of economic resources and access to government.
• Globalization has renewed these arguments, suggesting a ‘corporate takeover’ of government (Hertz, 2001).
• Neopluralism emerged as a more critical form of pluralism.

Corporatist Model

• Corporatist models trace the implications of closer links between groups and the state in industrialized societies.
• Corporatism is a social theory that emphasizes the privileged position that certain groups enjoy in relation to government, enabling them to influence the formulation and implementation of public policy.
• Some consider corporatism state-specific, shaped by historical and political circumstances.
• Others see it as a general phenomenon stemming from economic and social development, manifest in all advanced industrial states.
• Even the USA has invested regulatory agencies with quasi-legislative powers, fostering formal bonds between government and major interests.
• Corporatist tendencies may reflect the symbiotic relationship between groups and government.
• Groups seek ‘insider’ status for access to policy formulation.
• Government needs groups for knowledge, information, and compliance.
• Increasing differentiation and complexity lead to the need for consultation and bargaining.
• The drift towards corporatism in advanced capitalist states, particularly pronounced in the 1960s and 1970s, provoked deep misgivings about the role and power of interest groups.
• It cuts downs the number and range of groups that enjoyed access to government.
• Corporatism invariably privileges economic or functional groups, because it leads to a form of tripartitism that binds government to business and organized labor.
• Corporatism portrays interest groups as hierarchically ordered and dominated by leaders who are not directly accountable to members.
• The price of privileged access to government is a willingness to deliver the compliance of their members.
• Worry about the threat that corporatism poses to representative democracy.
• Corporatism has been linked to the problem of government ‘overload’, in which government may effectively be ‘captured’ by consulted groups and thus be unable to resist their demands.
• Coporatism In its broadest sense, is a means of incorporating organized interests into the processes of government.
  • Authoritarian corporatism (‘state’ corporatism) is an ideology or economic form closely associated with Italian Fascism. It was characterized by the political intimidation of industry and the destruction of independent trade unions.
  • Liberal corporatism (‘societal’ corporatism or ‘neocorporatism’) refers to the tendency found in mature liberal democracies for organized interests to be granted privileged and institutional access to the process of policy formulation.
• Tripartitism: The construction of bodies that represent government, business and the unions, designed to institutionalize group consultation.

New Right Model

• The New Right’s antipathy towards interest groups is derived from the individualism that lies at the heart of neoliberal economics.
• Social groups and collective bodies are viewed with suspicion.
• This is reflected in the New Right’s preference for a market economy driven by self-reliance and entrepreneurship.
• The New Right has expressed particular concern about the link between corporatism and escalating public spending.
• New Right anti-corporatism has been influenced by public-choice theory.
• Olson argued that people join interest groups only to secure ‘public goods’. A pay increase is thus a public good in that workers who are not union members, or who choose not to strike in furtherance of the pay claim, benefit equally with union members and those who did strike.
• People become ‘free riders’, reaping benefits without incurring the various costs that group membership may entail.
• This implies that forming an organization to advance a common interest is not guaranteed.
• Pluralist assumption that all groups have a political voice becomes questionable.
• Olson also argued that group politics may often empower small groups at the expense of large ones. A larger membership encourages free riding
• An analysis was further developed in Olson’s later work, The Rise and Decline of Nations (1984), which advanced a trenchant critique of interest group activity, seeing it as a major determinant of the prosperity or economic failure of particular states.
• The UK and Australia, for example, were seen as suffering from ‘institutional sclerosis’.
• The message that there is an inverse relationship between strong and well-organized interest groups, on the one hand, and economic growth and national prosperity on the other had a powerful impact on New Right policies and priorities.
• The clearest demonstration of this was the backlash against corporatism from the 1980s onwards, spearheaded in the USA by Reagan and in the UK by Thatcher.
• In the USA, this took the form of an attempt to deregulate the economy by weakening regulatory agencies; in the UK, it was evident in the marginalization and later abolition of corporatist bodies such as the National Economic Development Council (NEDC or Neddy) and a determined assault on trade union power.
• Public choice theory is a subfield of rational- choice theory. The ‘public’ character of public- choice theory stems from its concern with the provision of so-called ‘public goods’. These are goods that are delivered by government rather than the market, because (as with clean air) their benefit cannot be withheld from individuals who choose not to contribute to their provision.

Controversy: Do Interest Groups Enhance Democracy?

• Interest groups empower otherwise marginalized people, giving a political voice to minorities ignored by political parties.

• Few exist outside the interest group universe. Promotional groups act for those who struggle to organize.

• ‘Outsider’ tactics enable influence despite lacking wealth/power.

• Groups stimulate debate, educating the electorate. They provide alternative information and rival government expertise.

• Debate often occurs between interest groups, not just with government.

• Group membership has increased as party membership/voter turnout declines, making organized interests key participation agents.

• Interest groups empower the already powerful through money, expertise & links to the government.

• Certain groups benefit little from the interest group representation.

• Interest group leaders aren't popularly elected, they aren't publicly accountable, meaning the influence they wield isn't democratically legitimate.

• Insider groups operate ‘behind closed doors’ and subvert representative democracy by circumventing assemblies, exerting control over parties/politicians through campaign finance.

• Protest groups also undermine democracy when they achieve their objectives through direct action, operating outside the established legal and constitutional framework.

Patterns of Group Politics

• Interest group activity is linked to economic and social growth. Advanced industrial societies are complex and differentiated.
• Interest groups mediate between the state and society, especially as education spreads political awareness.
• Roles and significance vary by system, state, and time.
• Principal factors determining group influence:
  • the political culture
  • the institutional structure
  • the nature of the party system
  • the nature and style of public policy
• The political culture determines whether groups are legitimate and whether their formation/influence is permitted.
• It affects people's willingness to form/join organized interests.
• Monism involves suppressing voluntary associational activity to ensure a single center of state power. This is typical in military regimes and one-party states.
• Pluralist regimes permit, encourage, and sometimes require group politics. Groups may participate in policy formulation or be represented on public bodies.
• In the USA, the right of private groups to be heard is recognized.
• In Japan, the close relationship between government and business has been taken for granted.
• In France, groups have been seen to undermine the ‘general will’ of the people and challenge the strength and unity of the French state.
• The institutional structure of government establishes points of access to the policy process.
• Unitary and centralized systems narrow the scope of group politics.
• US government is fragmented and decentralized, making it vulnerable to group pressures.
• Groups can act only as ‘veto groups’, canceling each other out.
• Interest groups often seek to exert influence in and through parties, in some cases even spawning parties in an attempt to gain direct access to power.
• Multiparty systems broaden the scope of access for groups.
• Relationship between political parties and interest groups is complex.
• Spending levels are higher in the USA, where President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney together spent almost six billion dollars during the 2012 presidential election campaign, mainly donated by business or corporate interests.
• As a result, groups such as Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group in the UK have assiduously guarded their non- partisan status.
• Very different methods are employed by groups that seek to influence government indirectly via the mass media and public opinion campaigns.
• Tactics here range from petitions, protests and demonstrations to civil disobedience and even the tactical use of violence.
• Finally, since the closing decades of the twentieth century, interest group activity has increasingly adjusted to the impact of globalization and the strengthening of international organizations.
• Interventionism: Government policies designed to regulate or manage economic life; more broadly, a policy of engagement or involvement.
• Monism: A belief in only one theory or value; monism is reflected politically in enforced obedience to a unitary power and is, thus, implicitly totalitarian.

How do Groups Exert Influence?

• Interest groups have various tactics and political strategies.
• They rarely confine themselves to a single strategy.
• The methods vary by the issue and how policy is shaped.
• The nature of the group and its resources are crucial.
• Business groups are more likely to employ professional lobbyists or expensive public-relations campaigns.

Principal Channels of Access Available Include:

• the bureaucracy
• the assembly
• the courts
• political parties
• the mass media
• international organizations.

The Bureaucracy

• Interest group activity tends to center on the bureaucracy as the key institution in the process of policy formulation.
• Access via this channel is largely confined to major economic and functional groups.
• In Austria, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian states, corporatist institutions have been developed specifically to facilitate group consultation, usually giving ‘peak’ groups representing employers’ and employees’ interests a measure of formal representation.
• More commonly, the consultative process is informal yet institutionalized, taking place through meetings and regular contacts that are rarely publicized and are beyond the scope of public scrutiny.
• The advantages that business groups enjoy in this respect include the key role they play in the economy as producers, investors and employers, the overlap in social background and political outlets between business leaders and ministers and senior officials, and the widely held public belief that business interests coincide with the national interest (‘what is good for General Motors is good for America’).
• This relationship is often consolidated by a ‘revolving door’ through which bureaucrats, on retirement, move into well-paid jobs in private business.
• Peak group: A hierarchically organized group that coordinates the work of a collection of groups in the same area of interest, usually formed to strengthen links to government.

The Assembly

• Directly lobbying the assembly for support of your group or cause.
• One manifestation of this is the growth in the number of professional lobbyists, nearly 15,000 of whom were registered in Washington DC in 2009.
• Much of this influence is exerted through financial contributions made to election campaigns by political action committees (PACs).
• However, since the 1990s and as a result of tighter campaign finance laws, ‘hard money’ donated by PACs has tended to be displaced by ‘soft money’ (indirect and unregulated donations).
• Lobbying activities focused on the assembly are less extensive and less significant in states like Canada and the UK in which party discipline is strong and parliaments are usually subject to executive control.
• Lobby. The term lobby is derived from the areas in parliaments or assemblies where the public may petition legislators, or politicians meet to discuss political business.

The Courts

• In systems in which the courts are unable to challenge legislation and rarely check executive actions, interest group activity focused on the judiciary is of only limited significance.
• This applies in states like the UK and New Zealand, despite a general tendency since the 1990s towards judicial activism, which has encouraged civil liberties and environmentalist groups in particular to fight campaigns through the courts.
• Where codified constitutions invest judges with the formal power of judicial review, however, as in Australia and the USA, the court system attracts far greater attention from interest groups.

Political Parties

• Interest group pressure is often also exerted through political parties.
• In some cases, parties and groups are so closely linked by historical, ideological and even institutional ties that they are best thought of as simply two wings of the same social movement.
• The principal means through which groups influence parties is via campaign finance, and the benefits they hope to achieve are clear: ‘he who pays the piper plays the tune’.
• There are, in addition, examples of political parties that have sought to ‘divorce’ themselves from interest groups. In the 1990s, the UK Labour Party thus reduced the influence of affiliated trade unions at every level in the party in an attempt to destroy the image that the Labour Party is merely a puppet of the union movement.

The Mass Media

• Very different methods are employed by groups that seek to influence government indirectly via the mass media and public opinion campaigns.
• Tactics here range from petitions, protests and demonstrations to civil disobedience and even the tactical use of violence.
• The traditional practitioners of this form of politics were trade unions, which utilized their ‘industrial muscle’ in the form of strikes, pickets and marches.
• However, the spectacular rise of promotional and cause groups since the 1960s has seen the emergence of new styles of activist politics practised by peace campaigners, environmental lobbyists, animal rights groups, anti-roads protesters, and so on.
• One, very different reason is Civil disobedience is that the individual or group are trying to make the point that the current standing is corrupt or wrong to begin with.

International Organizations

• Finally, since the closing decades of the twentieth century, interest group activity has increasingly adjusted to the impact of globalization and the strengthening of international organizations.
• Amongst the groups best suited to take advantage of such shifts are charities and environmental campaigners that already possess transnational structures and an international membership.
• Sectional interest groups in EU member states have adjusted to the fact that, in a number of policy areas, key decisions are increasingly made by EU institutions rather than national ones.
• The most financially powerful and best-organized groups operating at the EU level are undoubtedly business interests.
• Civil disobedience is law- breaking that is justified by reference to ‘higher’ religious, moral or political principles. Civil disobedience is an overt and public act; it aims to break a law in order to ‘make a point’, not to get away with it.

Social Movements

New Social Movements

• Social movements can be traced back to the early nineteenth century.
• New Movements typically have a postmaterial orientation, being more concerned with ‘quality of life’ issues than with social advancement. Although the women’s movement, for example, addresses material concerns such as equal pay and equal opportunities, it draws from a broader set of values associated with gender equality and opposition to patriarchy.
• Such a stance challenges prevailing social goals and political styles, and embraces libertarian aspirations such as personal fulfillment and self-expression.
• It is therefore not surprising that there is a significant membership overlap, as well as mutual sympathy, amongst the women’s, environmental, animal rights, peace, anti-roads, ‘anti-capitalist’ or anti-globalization and other movements.
• The ideas of the emergent anti-globalization movement have been articulated in the writing of authors such as Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein.
• The emergence of new social movements is widely seen as evidence of the fact that power in postindustrial societies is increasingly dispersed and fragmented. The class-based politics of old has thus been replaced by a new politics based on what Laclau and Mouffe (2001) called ‘democratic pluralism’.
• Social movement: A particular form of collective behavior in which the motive to act springs largely from the attitudes and aspirations of members, typically acting within a loose organizational framework. A movement is different from spontaneous mass action (such as an uprising or rebellion), in that it implies a level of intended and planned action in pursuit of a recognized social goal.
• New Left: The New Left comprises the thinkers and intellectual movements (prominent in the 1960s and early 1970s) that sought to revitalize socialist thought by developing a radical critique of advanced industrial society.
• Mass society: A society characterized by atomism and by cultural and political rootlessness; the concept highlights pessimistic trends in modern societies.

The Occupy Movement: A Counter-Hegemonic Force?

• Although radical decentralization and participatory decision-making structures may have been part of Occupy’s appeal, especially as far as the young and marginalized are concerned, it is difficult to transform a collection of ‘anarchist swarms’ into a sustainable mass movement.
• Over time, the Occupy movement has thus become more tactically flexible, placing less emphasis on semi-permanent protest camps, and adopting wider and more innovative forms of protest.
• By contrast, the ‘anti-capitalist’ movement, or, more accurately, the loose coalition of groups that has been brought together by resistance to globalization and its associated consumerist values and free-trade practices, has as yet been less successful.