The Role of Pressure Groups in Modern Democracies

1. Introduction to Pressure Groups

Government decision-making is a complex process, which is influenced by many actors and behaviors. In addition to political parties, bureaucrats, courts, and legislators, pressure groups and lobby organizations are also found to exercise influence in the different spheres of governance. The concept of public interest originally started with the Founding Fathers of the United States, who emphasized the role of the ‘public interest’ through the Constitution (B. Harris, 1969). The concept was subsequently used by the government and is now a prominent feature of political philosophy. The term ‘pressure groups’ is a twain of two words, ‘pressure’ and ‘group’. Pressure signifies the mounting influence on decision-makers from a variety of sources. Groups refer to those persons, who perceive themselves as having common interests, formed to persuade, and work for political change. Pressure group is a combination of groups that exert pressure on government decision-makers to bring about desirable changes by lobbying, advocacy, public campaigns and concerted actions.

Interest groups, pressure groups, political or lobbying groups seeking to influence political institutions are all terms used interchangeably. The main purpose of interest groups is to exert influence so that their interests or demands are taken into consideration. The work of pressure groups is more informal and indirect, via subjective and less tangible means.

2. Categorizing Pressure Groups

A classification can be made on the basis of the ambitions of a pressure group. Those ambitions might be limited to the modification of specific government actions, or they might be broad enough to challenge the essential policies of the government. It's also possible to make a distinction regarding the number of people affected by the work of a group. A pressure group might work for the benefit of every person in a country or region, or, on the flip side, it might represent a very specific interest. Just like the previous distinctions don’t fully capture the messy reality of politics, none of them seem to genuinely illustrate the vast differences between the types of groups out there.

To tackle this classification issue, we can use the “strategies applied” distinction as a basis. There are two broad strategies we can identify in terms of resource mobilization: playing a lonely trade or playing a numbers game. Groups that choose to play a lonely trade aim to persuade the target to extend a concession with a narrow response. In contrast, those who take up the play a numbers game strategy will try to sway the target's decision by mobilizing as many folks as possible for the desired outcome (Grant, 2005). By doing this, they tap into public opinion, mass media, and protest rallies. One could assume that groups relying on playing a lonely trade and those who opt for a play a numbers game strategy will have distinctly different characteristics.

2.1. Interest-Based Groups

The term pressure groups is only one of several which are used to describe organisations made up of individuals whose common interests are scarce enough to promote political action, within government, in the press or with other groups in one or the other interest. Another widely used term is interest groups. The terms organised interests and public interest groups are also used but less frequently. The reader is cautioned that different writers adopt different definitions of interest and that this sometimes leads to confusion. Interest groups could be defined as all organisations, associations, or groups which promote interests of any kind or tenable interests on the part of their members. As understood here, pressure groups mean always organisations or groups based on mutual interests (Greenwood & Halpin, 2007).

Trade unions and all sort of employers and industry associations as well as other professional associations exist in the interest group category but are not pressure groups as distance to government is usually quite short. Academics associations, lobby groups providing research funding, or groups with a lay-off interest may be viewed as intended interest groups, but not as pressure groups, because the two are not based on a society-wide interest. Therefore, pressure groups in this discussion are nothing but interest groups if understood as organisational groups which are not representatives of labour market parties, or if otherwise denoted as interest groups. All those political organisations which have a special interest or a mixture of interests of a kind which cannot be classified through the above mentioned categories but still observe the same roles in society responses toward political action are included as pressure groups.

The main role of pressure groups within the politico-administrative system is expressed by the term representation. Basically group representation means that outside the deliberative forum (the parliament) a political actor exists which is allowed to express his or her point of interest to the deliberative forum. The term interest groups is frequently used instead of pressure groups simply to mean groups that pursue a particular interest in a political arena. Politically the term interest is closer to the term wishes than the term power. To focus on interests in the politics means not to disregard the main political drive institutions but to focus on wishes or interests which may be more or less biased compared to their epistemic, ethical, social ontological and legal interpretations on the polity.

2.2. Ideological Groups

Ideological groups raise ideas and principles of greater permanence and more comprehensive scope than temporary groups. These views and ideas may move persons to action in the political arena or to convince parties of the wisdom or folly of certain courses, and there are very many groups who are ardent with this kind of zeal. In South Africa there are the Dutch Reformed Church and its subordinate committees, as also bodies like the Broederbond, devoted to the Afrikanerisation of South African society. The Broederbond might really be a “philosophical society” in the sense of abjuring action in the political field, but it has been no less influential than political parties in the pursuit of political goals great and small. These societies have, at certain periods in history, been brought to act in concert, and then havoc has been wrought. Brooks’s “intellectually aristocratic” society is an instance of this form of group. It is probable that just as in America secrets were united at the time of the Boston Tea Party, so in South Africa a group of influential men were united in a society to form the Johannesburg Conspiracy (B. Harris, 1969). The Broederbond is effective because it gives the outside world the impression of a closely integrated group of about 6,700 self-perpetuating oligarchs. Moreover, apartheid would appear to be a Broederbond plot. The fact that the Broederbond is described in such a fashion is itself a testimony to its effectiveness. However, it is hoped that this organism is capable of reform—not in the sense of political change, but in the sense of democratization. That there is something specific that might be described as a Broederbond is doubtful. Rather it is a mass of different and often conflicting groups and movements with the same general ethos (Donovan et al., 2003). The Broederbond actions have often taken place in the open—the inkwazi central banks, the attempt made in 1957 to found the ABC or Assemblers of Better Citizen Groups out of all the youth organizations. With the gradual refinement of techniques of persuasion through surveillance and censorship, the actions of the Broederbond might descend into a more holistic complexity. Of the earlier actions almost all have been unmitigated failures. The gradual erosion of the Broederbond’s earlier influence has often been misread as a reduction in the whole society’s power over the regime. A difficulty arises with a change of government. Given a particular party ethos, a change in government results in a change in ethos, groups take on a new personality and interest groups resign from it, taking with them the need to wield power.

2.3. Professional Associations

Moving from social movements to institutionalized pressure groups, we first consider the role of professional associations. A professional association is a formal organization responsible for overseeing the professional qualifications and standards of members and their practice of their vocations. Widely recognized as custodian of the public standards of a profession, they also possess considerable political and social power. The very different political capabilities of the various professional associations are explained by differences in the length and organization of their professional cultures and business expertise. Professional associations are generally more successful than other pressure groups in blocking governmental action. A theory of the knowledge, esteem, and identity advantages of professional associations over otherwise-equally-placed pressure groups is postulated. The theory is to be applied to the example cases of the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, and the American Institute of Accountants.

The influence of professional associations on public policy serves as an exemplar of the influence of formally-structured interest groups in modern representative democracies. Professional associations serve as avenues through which the professional knowledge and knowledge-based esteem (which a sizeable percentage of the public generally believes to be equivalent with the quality of their work) of the professions can be communicated to the political process. In doing so, they provide politicians with opportunities to appear knowledgeable and informed regarding those issues and so to develop their own professionally-associated identities. Their expert testimony is most often a social good that enhances political efficiency and accountability but they are also a source of public harm in that they promote public policies calculated to maximize profits regardless of any adverse repercussions on the public they are meant to benefit. As a form of structured interest group, professional associations are generally more powerful than other forms; acting under equivalent conditions, politicians incur greater costs and difficulties in taking action against professional associations than against other pressure groups (G. Donnelly, 1994).

The basic characteristics of what are referred to as professional associations are outlined and those characteristics taken as the requisite definition of the term. The argument for their consideration as a distinct type of pressure group is advanced. The argument for their relative political capacity is made in general terms and then applied to the American professional associations of the medicine, law, and accounting professions as example cases.

2.4. Public Interest Groups

Public interest groups, or groups that claim to represent broad societal interests and thus function as intermediaries between citizens and the centralized state, are of fundamental importance to the basic functioning of democratic pluralism. On the one hand, these groups provide the representation otherwise absent from the agenda-setting functions of policy elites. On the other hand, they are at least initially outside the core of civil society. As a group sector these associations thus raise fundamental questions about democracy. What broad public interests are represented among ideas and interests present in the political discourse? Under what conditions, structure, and processes, do public interest movements/campaigns form in modern democracies? Although extensively studied in the literature, this is still an important issue. In the case of interest groups, examples include: What are the similarities and differences in the role of business, trade, and public interest groups in different democratic contexts? How do different collective action structures condition access and influence paths? What are the effects of the changing party-state-public interest groups relationships in different national contexts? How do public interest groups with transnational claims emerge, mobilize, and interact with the EU? How can public interest groups deal with the limits of deductible donations in terms of their funding strategies, and how can they influence the debates on regulation within the EU? (S. Meyer & R. Imig, 1993).

Public interest groups are likely to exist in modest numbers for long periods of time and often in countries with active trade associations and business groups. In recent years, however, the relative numbers and influence of these organizations have increased dramatically, particularly in the United States, the battered but largely intact bastion of pluralism. This adopts a political opportunity approach to address some critical theoretical and empirical questions involving these groups. Public interest groups have emerged in increasing numbers and with considerable political effectiveness since the late 1950s. Their creation and widespread success mark the most dramatic change of the last quarter century in the composition and behavior of organized interests. Other sectors of organized interests have also flowered, but few as abruptly or noticeably as the public interest.

3. Characteristics of Pressure Groups

Throughout history, society has had to come to terms with the roles that groups play in the social and political spheres in which they exist. It is hoped that the following sections will clarify how pressure groups or interest groups operate within a liberal democratic framework. At one end of the spectrum are groups that are concerned with a particular issue and who deploy carefully thought-out campaign resources to alter the political environment. At the other end of the spectrum are groups driven by clear ideological considerations that seek to alter the political and constitutional fabric of the state (Grant, 2005). In Britain and other states, there is some evidence that what have been described as ‘new’ or ‘narrow’ pressure groups have developed in response to both regime change and events. Some of these are clearly subversive and radical in tone and content.

From the definition of pressure groups, interest aggregation and synthesis can only commence after the broad wishes of the electorate have been artificially confined within narrow limits (B. Harris, 1969). That is, pressure groups can be said to aggregate interests only if the definition of ‘interests’ is restricted to urgent parochial demands. But, the process of aggregation and synthesis being more subtle is easily overlooked. It is usually assumed that interest aggregation means the arriving at a widely acceptable compromise. However, it is a well known truth that mass social conflicts seldom offer that opportunity. Broad groups or sub-systems form in political systems more in response to contrary trends than to some concerted attempt at consistency. Despite their size and weight they are often comparatively loose formations. The relations connecting their units are seldom explicitly worked out.

3.1. Membership and Organization

Which citizens choose to belong to groups and what kinds of groups are they? Many are ordinary citizens who join voluntarily. They join or affiliate with innumerable and diverse types of groups. They are typically in a few wage-earning organizations and in a few more rooting for a favorite team or singing in a choir, group sympathy adding a variety of tones to their choices. Beyond the basics, they range as widely geographically from towns to states or countries, and organizationally from small informal lists of demands to more formal structures with names and significant histories. What do ordinary men and women know about these organizations or group memberships? They have some knowledge and experience, but because there are so many of them most would not know enough about even one to speak intelligently.

Whether adversity or purpose puts pressure on citizens and groups to be politically engaged is a very complicated dependent variable. For on-going issues like collective bargaining, the setting within which polity groups operate shifts almost constantly. There are arrests, court ruling, meetings, compromises and more votes. At each stage the issue is revisited, often with classes and behaviours being recombined like loose Lego blocks. On the other hand, social accounting interests would argue it is how much and how effectively the group present their pressure. Consider what happens simply with government funding, where representatives sit on advisory boards together presumably effecting harmony among academy, policy, paid advisers and clients. In principal there is no effect on how effectively an organization acts within the polity. In practice the group with deepest roots in the polity and thickest skin would seem to do best. Whose deficit narrows quicker is an empirical question for research but a critique of social capital that does not pick a measure is no counter to difficult but reasonable counterfactuals that weight or interaction degrees in a networks model (Donovan et al., 2003).

3.2. Funding and Resources

A big political party needs huge amounts of money to carry on its daily functions as well as during elections. Though political behaviour has become so popular, yet such spectacular achievements of finance capitalistic accumulation and spending create a fearful wonder. Whether such a process is normal and legal or something abnormal seems to be a question of great significance. However, too much money, huge donations by somebody and contribution from some dubious source invite suspicion as it is very serious matter and involves trust for the democracy (Belko, 2005). Political parties in India, both at the centre and the states, have been doing their job with a paltry amount of money. This is due to three reasons. First, the government has not enabled them to grow economically, politically or ideologically. The largest multi-party nation and the second largest democracy has little political finances. Next, the poor level of grants is hardly believed to be the primary cause of the political corruption, as they receive donations from crores outside the model code of conduct.

3.3. Strategies and Tactics

With the growing competition among pressure groups for governmental and media attention, groups are adopting a wider range of strategies and tactics. This includes mass demonstrations as well as minority militancy, infiltration of parliamentary committees, and extensive media work. The concern here is with national or transnational pressure groups. Local pressure groups have always engaged in petty tactics, and there is no need to consider local pressure groups here.

A standard repertoire of tactics has been established. A successful tactic does not merely generate media coverage, or stir public interest and debate, but directly impacts on the target (Cable, 2015). When Hungerford Road, one of the road-schemes proposed by Camden Borough Council, was declared worthy of action, the local press carried substantial coverage, culminating in earth-moving machines attacking the trees on the road-line. Council attempts to improve traffic flow through the area were made in 1967, and rejected after a successful local campaign based on local discussions. It was concluded that the Council's efforts represented an over-reaction to a problem, and that re-siting a bus stop would be enough. In view of the last six years' experience, the proposal to cut down trees in an effort to calm the traffic should be abandoned. Instead, a range of measures should be adopted to reduce through traffic. Though none of these points had been raised with sufficient emphasis in the group discussions, the Council approval was forthcoming, and the situation was monitored for a year (Grant, 2005).

By targeting a business involved in unsafe practices, the social legitimacy of the business is endangered. Forces of law and order are sent in, to slander with hate-motivated crime scientists, police or school children who are frightened off from the area. By targeting those youngsters, the 'wet' is discredited, and then civil disobedience on a small scale is debated. Nonviolent direct action, often in the form of roadblocks, is adopted, as a form of contempt for court. Civil disobedience activities are accompanied by the evocation of Science and Justice as shields against police battering. Direct action is regarded as justified and necessary; it is 'an old and honorable tradition in the West', which is used as social actors improve practices for better quality of life.

4. The Socio-Political Context and Pressure Groups

Most studies of pressure groups focus on the particular characteristics of pressure group politics. Such approaches can be either extensive or intensive. An extensive approach will attempt to catalogue systematically the types of groups existing in the system. Efforts will need to be made to develop taxonomies of groups taking into account, inter alia, the external environment. By contrast, an intensive approach will need to examine in detail the pressures exerted by a few groups on policy issues. It may examine the range of tactics employed by these groups, their search for allies, the channels through which they operate or the interaction between these groups and decision-makers. Both approaches cohere around the proposition that pressure group politics is a form of politics in its own right.

The difficulty with such approaches is that they establish an artificial boundary between pressure group politics and politics as such. Characteristics of pressure groups will depend very much on the context within which they interact. The way politics is organized and the range of pressures will differ from one country to another, from one period of time to another and in diverse theories of politicization. In this respect, such an approach makes it very difficult to generalize elsewhere. It is also evident that what is understood as a pressure group cannot be taken as universal. There are societies, such as the Sultans of Brunei, in which the concept has little purchase. There are conceivable socio-political contexts that go beyond the normal comprehension of all but a few political theorists (Grant, 2005).

Thus, avoidance of these theoretical abstractions and backdrop theorizing means that the analysis becomes practically a-political. This should not necessarily lead to radical ditching of theoretical perspectives, but rather to more modest intentions. Approaches that have been developed and tested – utopian as one of them may be – need not be discarded when undertaking political analyses of a particular country. They can simply be calibrated on the basis of both strengths and weaknesses. The continuing evolution of alternative approaches, by contrast, provides an internal hedge against stagnation. In considering the political environment within which pressure groups operate, the focus will be on two aspects: the evolved socio-political context on the one hand and analytic paradigms on the other (Donovan et al., 2003).

5. Pressure Groups in the 20th Century

A pressure group is a group of individuals that is organized and equipped to exert influence over those responsible for making decisions about matters of interest to the group. Pressure groups play an essential role in a democratic society by providing a check on the powers of elected officials and other decision-makers, allowing groups of people to come together to communicate their collective views and push for change, and providing a mechanism through which citizens can meaningfully participate in government. Despite having a positive image in principle, in practice, pressure groups may undermine people's trust in democracy. In particular, interest groups may have conflicting motives that prevent them from being unambiguously beneficial to democracy.

An interest group is defined as any organization of people who share common objectives and actively seek to influence public policy. Interest groups can be grouped into four broad categories: 1) Economic, representing business, trade, labor, and agriculture; 2) Public interest, advocating for issues like the environment, health and safety, and social equity; 3) Government, representing state, local, and federal initiatives; and 4) Ideological, promoting broader societal changes. Interest groups can exert influence over policymakers I) directly, through lobbying and contributions to campaigns or II) indirectly, through grassroots mobilization tactics that build public support for, or opposition to, a given policy. The current involvement of interest groups and lobbying in policymaking is the subject of extensive research and debate.

The relative strength of various elite groups is important for understanding democratic decision-making. In this context, the elite-group theory posits that key decisions are made by small groups of elites operating behind a facade of democracy, while much of the political process is devoted to the manufacture of consent among the masses. From this perspective, pressure groups may be viewed as instruments used by elites to protect their interests in the face of mass opposition and demands for equity and social justice. As such, democracy may quite well represent the interests of elite groups holding opposing views, who will use their differing pressure groups to achieve conflicting, yet elite-preserving, ends (A. Jellison, 2018).

5.1. Promoting Democracy

Pressure groups within modern democracies can, to some extent, be called pivotal in promoting democracy around the globe. The sustained ramping-up of transnational democratization efforts over most of the next two decades, which accompanied the decline of civil wars and the discrediting of democracy deniers, was followed by the disappointing outcomes of various colored revolutions, Arab Springs, and more recent home-grown democracies in authoritarian countries. The up and down swings of democracy that rocked many countries across the world also had their effects upon the instrumentalization of international democracy promotion efforts. Some smaller economy and political powers began to see through the inadequacies of center-stage grand projects of democratic global governance, instead boiling them down to the essential necessity of strengthening the safety of general democratic rules over democratic procedures. Others retooled efforts to promote democracies in authoritarian countries or countries in transition from authoritarianism to democracy into piecemeal and low-key accompaniment initiatives designed to mitigate and/or manage social unrest instead (Challoumis, 2024). Still others embarked on a grand vision of global electoral democracy, now based largely upon the diffusion of electoral democracy parameterized as modern western-style liberal democracies, but documenting and monitoring its worldwide developments with democratically-credentialed electoral commissions and otherwise increasing the pressure upon but also decreasing the scope of action for any responses by governments to dealing with democracy problems in many newly democratizing countries.

5.2. Restricting Democracy

When judging a democratic system, we presume that it is a good one unless there is something specific that degrades it. Ensuring that deliberation within political structures proceeds well is seen as invaluable. This leads to consideration of whether pressure groups (groups formed that seek to take political action to achieve a common goal), as they have become a more prominent part of electoral politics, have degraded the quality of political deliberation. Political deliberation is taken to refer only to discussions of matters of actual political significance, which excludes discussions that only concern how to organize political deliberation (Koreman, 2019). So long as those making decisions about political matters themselves live within the system of political relationships to which their decisions pertain, they are deemed to be ‘internal’ to that system. Many claim that contemporary democracies are systems of government that are structured around majority decision-making. It is then presumed that these systems therefore treat all citizens as equal as they weight citizens’ votes equally. Those that cast votes in these systems expect that the more votes a particular law obtains, the more likely it is that that law will be enacted. Additionally, it is reasoned that precisely because citizens have an equal say in whether or not a particular law is enacted, the more votes it obtains, the more citizens desire that law. Nevertheless, it is noticed that modern democracies often contain groups or interests that campaign for the restriction, reform or outright abolition of democracy. They deny freedom to a segment of the citizenry on the grounds that doing so serves the freedom of all citizens.

Yet if desiring agents are equal, a decision procedure that equally values the desires of those agents would yield decisions that, whilst offering freedom to one citizen, would not deny it to another. Thus, with the possibility of one citizen being the object of a decision that another desired, such a system of government would be unable to confer freedom on either citizen. So the conditions under which a citizen’s desire is realized would be consistent with other agents not desiring that realization, which indicates that in some pertinent way, such conditions would license a lack of freedom for those citizens.

6. Case Studies of Pressure Groups

European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is without doubt the most important steps in attempting to tackle climate change. The scheme is the most important piece of legislation to control carbon emissions in the UK with tight limits being set for the sectors covered by the scheme (i.e. energy generation, oil refining, and aviation). The EU ETS is intended to put a price on carbon emissions and encourage industry to invest in low carbon technologies and greener processes in order to minimise their emissions. If companies invest with the intent of reducing emissions they are then permitted to sell their spare allocations of emissions, the prospect of profit will ensure investment in greener industries.

The UK is also a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol which is a 1997 international agreement, which commits developed countries to limit their population’s carbon emissions. It was against the backdrop of one of the hottest decades of summers in recorded history and public opinion had shifted towards greater awareness of global warming. The Labour government had to demonstrate that the UK was doing its part but it also had to ensure that this was done in a way that did not damage the British economy. The UK ETS was one of the first pressure group launched since New Labour swept to power in 1997. Blair was determined to establish stake-holder capitalism with a tripartite agreement amongst government, employers, and unions. Environmental issues would be included within this framework. Britain’s heavy reliance on coal meant that local government alone could not tackle air pollution in London and elsewhere within the Tory government’s jurisdiction. The government initially rejected these initiatives out of hand. However, in the face of ever increasing pollution from coal power stations and as a means of drawing environmental groups away from the streets and into boardrooms, the government capitulated to demand for a UK Emission Trading Scheme in April 2002.

6.1. Immigration in Greece

Greece is one of the European countries that experienced a dramatic increase in immigration. At the beginning of the 1990s, the influx was a sudden change in the homogeneity of society, to a multicultural environment that was foreign to the collective consciousness of people, while the identity of modern Greeks built from the very conception of the national self was based on the principles of ethnocentrism and insertions of homogeneity, referring to both the state and the society (Kandylis, 2016). In these historical circumstances, there is now a vivid presence of non-Greeks in the public life of the cities, from observations in the streets and every public space; moreover, debates on the issue of the presence of foreigners get an increasingly emphasis in the dominant political agenda via the mass media. The aim of this research paper is to present responses to the question: How the dominant representations of immigrants and immigration in the public discourses of mass media and the politicians are being formulated?

The literature review is divided into two main topics. The first constitutes theoretical issues, including the character of the representations, the connections of the representations, the political and social contexts, and the mediating role of the mass media. The second relates to the dominant representations about migrants and immigration in the case of Greece, with emphasis on the prevailing contexts, the named process of Otherness and its contemporary transformation, and the ways migrants’ and newcomers’ representational process are being imagined. Greece is presented as an experience of a new and large-scale immigrant flow country that has become ethnorreligiously and culturally pluralistic at the city level and ethnoculturally at the national level. A review of published studies indicates that there are different standpoints, various aspects tackled in the case of representation by mass media, printed or audiovisual, as well as by different technologies that are not relatively widespread internationally.

6.2. Tourism Advocacy

Tourism advocacy as a pressure group in the modern world is more relevant now than ever. The tourism sector has shown growth rates significantly above average. Various regions and cities are striving to enrich their tourism product. The tourism sector is fighting for the right purposes. It is responsible for significant contribution to global GDP, employment creation, business creation, cultural variety increase, resolving poverty in underdeveloped countries, raising political and cultural esteem and international understanding among people. Modern democracies are based on the freedom of citizens to pursue their objectives. To promote diverse aims various pressure groups exist. These groupings collect funding and lobby for actions they consider are of common and mutual benefit. Governments infringe on the freedoms of these interest groups even in the case of activities inconceivable by hyper democratic countries. As one of the better recognized interest groupings, tourism advocacy, undoubtedly affected by the possibilities presented by government laws, is likely seriously affected by government presentment as well.

A tourism industry as a societal economic sector is a relatively new school of thought both in rationalization in public, professional, terms, as well as in academic explanation and argumentation. The assumed collective wish is not a strong precise pattern of thoughts which is being worked out thoroughly. By mean of an impressionistic approach an intuitive presentation of tourism advocacy is made. In particular fractures in input, intermediary actions, consequences, degree of success, insights and generalizations are dealt with. To conclude, in the vanishing of solitary thoughts and actions something new is likely arising, other than disgusted hoaxes. As indicated above, sheer presentation cannot do good without knowing: without sound academic exegesis advocacy efforts will remain strategic and tactical black box to be missed and considered risky ventures. As everybody should know, present times are about discerning themselves and social and economic spheres may drastically, even overnight, change less friendly considering democratic values and human rights. On the contrary, efforts to group, argue, defend knowledge, figuring out mutual benefits, and lobbying what likely should be, should be reinforced: a chastening but presenting paradox.

In an age without heroes and powers seeking for blatantly objectifying ground of belief, philosophy, and judgment, nobody should abstain from ethical debate and trial and error - bouncing - learning on what arguable should be. Tension is to pick up the semi-colons of unfinished thoughts and coalesce search of insight and instant action - together. Knowledge filtering in tourism advocacy is about transformations in economically being, living, meeting, learning, acting and thinking that have ambivalent impacts on wealth division, cultural variety, international standing and mutual respect among individuals and communities, and therefore should be denied profoundly.

6.3. Environmental Groups

The term environmental groups is extensively construed throughout the literature, but a commonplace definition comprises all organizations engaged in public education or legislative lobbying activities germane to environmental protection. Public interest organizations that lobby in the energy field are also included in this definition. Environmental groups consist of a wide array of organizations significantly diverse concerning fiscal and policy resource and goals. Environmental groups that have engaged substantially in lobbying and public education efforts might be divided into three categories–national organizations, regional organizations, and local organizations. The national organizations are non-profit organizations headquartered in Washington, D.C. or other major cities with local affiliates and field offices in cities and smaller localities. The defining characteristic of the national organizations is a very substantial organizational capacity, almost exclusively in the level of fiscal and expert resources. They maintain extensive lobbying staffs in Washington, D.C. and a modest number of local lobbyists in several cities. They engage in lobbying efforts that are characteristically high profile on scientific questions with considerable budgets devoted to them. These organizations are the key players in wild river prohibitions, the preservation of the National Park System and Wilderness Areas, nuclear reactor site selection, and pesticide regulation (E. George, 1992).

The lobbyists of national environmental organizations target higher level government officials than do their local counterparts. The national organizations have the unique component of control over the media in which environmental and energy issues are investigated and debated. Environmental groups of this organizational type are also most frequently directly responsible for the formation of coalitions to achieve statute goals. However, among regional organizations, public education efforts dwarf lobbying efforts related to legislation. Unlike national organizations, regional organizations do not at present have expert assistance to help organize lobbying coalitions. Efforts to lobby Congress directly are rare in contrast to frequent lobbying of state environmental and energy authorities, local governments, and political figures.

The organizations served by lobbyists in the largest metropolitan areas actively engaged in lobbying against and in favor of proposed legislation. These organizations, somewhat remarkably, consist of a number of professional societies and trade unions having diverse local goals. Lobbying threats, however, have so far not materialized into concerted campaign efforts. Organizations not involved in lobbying efforts are as diverse as those that do engage in lobbying. A common factor among organizations pressed for resources is the belief that involvement in lobbying is a low payoff and of limited use in achieving stated policy goals.

7. The Influence of Pressure Groups on Policy Making

Pressure groups try to have their voice heard. They lobby politicians formally, but act by displaying themselves publicly, marching and demonstrating, and acquiring some form of control over the media. These methods are clearly most important in a more sophisticated society, and in a media-dominated environment. It is well worth the expense of staging publicity campaigns when media opinion is moulded by an imaginative and skilfully constructed event. Protest groups have engaged in political theatre, reminding politicians, electors and journalists alike of the strength of feeling around some topics. Where mass demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and blocking access to buildings have engaged large numbers of people, the political emotions they expressed have been difficult to ignore (Grant, 2005).

The state and bureaucracy are expected to monopolize the language of bureaucracy and all forms of report and data. Unfortunately, it does not follow that these forms of representation are relevant. In many cases, scientific opinions will not be in the public domain. Citizens have to rely on experts who often publish only highly technical reports. Furthermore, since the topic may concern a very small number of citizens, their publication does not allow for conventional methods of state accountability. There may be no public interest in a case concerning three citizens accused of making false statements on a tax return, and therefore no formal publication of data. The conclusion is clear: in this domain, the aggregation of citizens’ preferences expressed by vote is not sufficient.

Para-political groups debate to try to solve these problems. In the environmental field and other groups publish counter-expertise, scientific reports and digest them into short press releases and/or documentary films having both editorial and participative functions that can be screened publicly. They go to great lengths and use a wealth of media mediums to explain their analyses, denote prejudices, and promote politically useful knowledges. Public meetings, seminars, debates and protests at the same time serve to invite non-experts to question, contest and decipher the state’s bureaucracy. They are expected to appear in opposition to the techniques of knowledge and render the path of rationality porous. Their goal is to take part in the procedural instability of a concept and knowledge: the emergence of a pluriform culture.

8. Challenges Faced by Pressure Groups

The first problem is the relative place of pressure group politics in a representative democracy. People feel not only justified in asserting their views and interests through pressure group politics but also feel justified in doing so from outside the party and electoral system. Even widely acknowledged representatives of “public opinion” are reluctant, for example, to say they represent the broader interests of society. Reliance on representative democracy is not, and cannot be, an unquestioned assumption. Despite this relatively strong argument against such representatives, they are nevertheless institutions of representative democracy. To this degree, not only opponents of representative democracy but also those defending it face a challenge (Grant, 2005).

A second problem is the growing resourcefulness of pressure groups. In the past few years, and particularly in the UK, there has been a proliferation of new groups. Some have enormous monetary resources to shape views and interests by exercising power apart from the state. Others have few monetary resources and hence rely more on the ability to shape and exert power by changing existing perceptions of legitimacy. This resourcefulness is politically important for both sides but a practical problem for representative democracy. Most importantly, activists are increasing their own ability to shape views and interests by being inventive in constructing non-legal means of influencing collective policy preferences.

Third, there is the limitation of pressure group politics. Some people and hence their views and interests feel that pressure group politics are inappropriate for them to influence collective policy preferences. Some of them have few existing “interests.” Moreover, this form of politics tends to overlook needs and spheres that have much stronger claims to public attention regarding interests. As such groups often have specific interests, the claims and objectives they put forward do not always reflect a broader view of society. Hence, their politics of legitimation may indeed be legitimate but the politics of clarification behind them may not be so. Attempts to render collective policy preferences would thus face a serious challenge: how to decide which kinds of ideas to include and on what grounds.

8.1. Public Perception

The past year has seen a further expansion of the activities of protest groups. The incursion of hunt protesters on to the floor of the House of Commons attracted particular attention, as did other acts of civil disobedience by defenders of the right to hunt with dogs who promised to defy legislation that was passed. A variety of stunts carried out by Fathers 4 Justice also attracted considerable media coverage. Attempts by animal rights militants to stop the activities of Huntingdon Life Sciences continued and led firms and universities to resort to novel legal remedies. There is some evidence that Britain is becoming a more ‘uncivil society’ as far as pressure group activities are concerned.

The politics of collective consumption is concerned with the outcomes of the production process rather than what happens in the production process itself. It is concerned with the externalities of that production process. It is called a politics of collective consumption because at its core is a concern with collective goods, or at least goods which have some of the characteristics of public goods. The boundaries and characteristics of this form of politics are less clear than those of the politics of production. In part, this is because the shift in the character of pressure group politics reflects changes in society itself. As society becomes more fragmented and moves away from a situation in which people’s roles were more commonly defined for them, citizens can select and construct identities for themselves. When taken with the widespread endorsement of the language of rights, this means that there can be a process of supplier-driven lobbying whereby a group of citizens coalesces around a shared, heretofore unrecognised, issue and seeks to broaden its appeal through the identification of other fellow-citizens to whom the construction of the identity might be applicable. In part, it reflects the grade inflation of ideas which has accompanied the growth of a relatively prosperous and educated middle class. The centrality of lifestyles to the self-conception of a new elite, coupled with the growth of public concern about issues which came to be understood in health or environmentalist terms, has contributed to the emergence of a politics of collective consumption, at the same time as the increasing rejection of those ideas by an older elite has led to political confrontation between these different cultural worldviews.

8.2. Regulatory Environment

While lobbying and transnational advocacy had already made their presence felt in the Community and the International institutions, regulatory and participatory management of lobbying took centre stage later after issues of trust, transparency, accountability and legitimacy of European governance became major controversial themes. The European Commission as the main actor dealing with interest groups is still making efforts to reinvent its regulatory framework but it is more open today to the engagement of interest groups than perpetually closed and haughty (Greenwood & Halpin, 2007). The focus of the Commission, now more than ever, is on consultation and public service rather than on monopoly representation. In this light, the common functions of the institutions and the major challenges facing the European governance of lobbying, the nature of implementation surveillance mechanisms and possible future developments were assessed. Overall, the capability of the Commission –in terms of analytic and regulatory– to appropriate resources and actors’ attention to one issue, such as lobby regulation, far surpasses other institutions. Considering the rules of the game of transnational interest group politics where the Commission is in the driver seat, member states, national parliaments and lobbies have higher stakes in the effectiveness of the Commission’s resource deployment efforts.

The qualitative take on the developments pertaining to regulatory and participatory management of lobbying in the Commission is a first step to a longitudinal study of the topic for future developments, possible blind spots and alternative scenarios. Overall, the Commission’s institutional focus on self-regulatory models reflects its high interest in external control though “creative” mediagens derailed from monitoring based co-regulation. On the regulatory aspects of public interest the Commission’s development from self-regulation towards co-regulation is still in its infancy but entirely warranted by the policy and administrative logics framing interest representation. The First Horizontal Rules on the Institution’s side to regulate interest group representatives from the re-invented second actor perspective are expected to be adopted and considered a showcase case of formal “rescue solutions”. Also, somehow left in the shadows of lobby regulation are the deliberation processes of the presence and the public access to lobby registries against which the system cannot but be compared to the US-style decision pre-publication model.

9. Ethical Considerations in Lobbying

The modern lobbying environment raises multiple ethical questions regarding lobbying conduct and arrangements, as well as the shape, content, and timing of lobbying disclosure requirements. One widely discussed question is the appropriateness of lobbying ahead of legislation and the negative consequences of discussion of how many lobbyists ought to be prohibited from lobbying. Here, lobbying is defined loosely to include consultant activity and a broad swath of advocacy activity, lobbying, and lobbying-like behavior, such as criteria channels, expert testimony, and public negotiation.

Many of the ethical questions and appropriate responses are exactly the same, regardless of the specific case at hand. Accordingly, one need not start from scratch when addressing new lobbying scandals or practices. However, because lobbying practices constantly involve misapplication of previously elaborate ethical analyses and advocacy reform efforts, it is also helpful and necessary to consider ways in which each case differs from earlier ones.

In practice, the lobbying environment often poses new ethical questions that have not been previously addressed. Attempts to view types of lobbying behavior like types of business practice, labor negotiation, contractor bidding, and other specialist cases are often inadequate. This is in part because lobbyists may act in multiple capacities across multiple channels and because lobbying success often hinges on new forms of practice. As a result, past resolutions of ethical questions do not apply neatly and some entirely new ethical questions that have not been addressed will also arise.

10. Comparative Analysis: Greece and Other Democracies

Nowhere is the tension between grandiose and minutia clearer than in the case of Greece. Events in Greece have worried the rest of Europe in recent years: political extremes have thrived in this shattered democracy, and its politics have been almost obsessively scrutinized. But the new Greek government oozes grandiosity in its demands from Europe — no austerity, ever. Austerity has played a really minor role in most policy debates in recent years. Critics pointed to the disastrous decline in GDP after Greece implemented austerity policies or demanded a wider set of reforms; supporters pointed to a successful turnaround in the public finances. Perhaps a political explanation of the rise and success of alternative parties in Greece is needed: the “fudge” of allowing the parties of the left and right of PASOK to have mouths of their own led to the development of an elaborate parallel topic system, offering mini-assurances to the populace frighteningly at odds with the grand European narrative; perhaps, alternatively, the “puzzlingness” of the apparent success of pre-2010 hard austerity and “full-commitment” Greece required more “bottom-up” explanations. More recently, ironically, Greece received fresh challenges from the far left, with threats of de facto expropriation, and potentially more destructive challenges from the (new) far right, delegitimizing the democratic behavior of their adversaries on grounds with deep historical roots (Karyotis et al., 2014). Such trends are counterintuitive and at odds with the standard story about democratic engagement, populism, and the normality of parties and the democratic system. Parties are expected to scaremonger, step back into the fold, or either privately retreat (Donovan et al., 2003).

10.1. European Context

All systems of governance face a challenge of legitimacy. This is particularly acute in and for the European Union, where the perceived distance between the decision-makers and those affected is equivalent to very low levels of legitimacy. While certain political systems display higher legitimacy based on instruments of arrangement, organisation, and procedure for collective decision-making, the EU displays the opposite, inviting issues of input legitimacy as well as systematic de-legitimation through deliberative democracy. Input stem mainly from feedback and activism through mass political parties, but collective action made in the mass political arena takes a representation as part of a polity. For this reason, some observations regarding the engagement of collective interests will be made, particularly in regard to business interests (Greenwood, 2007).

The EU’s system of governance displays forms of institutionally-legitimated interest representation. In addition to political parties and trade unions, interest groups function as actors in the representation of interests. These put demands on public authorities in the opposite direction by means of lobbying and advocacy. Formally, this has been implemented through semi-structured networks and forums of dialogue. Separation of powers and the distinction between the public and the private sphere of governance is not fundamental. In both general and specific terms, voices are constructed, authoritative discourses formulated, and collective preferences formed by interest expressions shaped as mediations between itself and public authorities.

In terms of representation, interests can be differentiated into business and non-business interests. The intensity of interest representation is heavily skewed towards business interests. There is a large landscape of competition among business interests, most of which are sectorally/identity-framed. Since the very formation of the red-bricks of the EU, business interests have been engaged in a feasible and institutionalised interest representation, finding voice in the making of a common market. Interests represent differences on an ex-ante basis. As diffused representation, they are a-fortiori at a disadvantage as well as a-represented, whereas observations of MPs in representative democracies is different, where competing interests have similar input rules.

10.2. Global Perspectives

Twelve to fourteen years ago, the challenge to government from pressure groups appeared less acute than it does today. Twenty years ago, it was not clear whether pressure groups per se could survive in a world of ideological certainties not unlike that operating today in respect of terrorism. The Soviet Union had entered its twilight years. In the West, public disillusion with Government was even more pronounced than today (Grant, 2005). Despite the clamour for partnership in a new process of global governance, government acquiescence in the social agenda was even slower than now. Today, in contrast, the challenge from pressure groups, not excluding new local and global groups, appears to pose a particular threat to the political stability of Government.

These considerations notwithstanding the very concept of social movement will need to be redefined in order to fulfil the ultimate aim of this section, to argue that pressure groups, whether in the form of social movements or not, need to be recognised as an essential and equal part of the democratic process. Domestically, a crucial element in this will be the need to embrace pressure groups, especially the ones that do not fit the pre-existing definition of co-optable groups. Ultimately, all groups must be co-optable if a genuine pluralism is to be attained (Donovan et al., 2003). This mid-point must be one where deeply-held beliefs, expressed as imaginary communities, allow different visions of good society to be articulated and actively fought for in the public, civil, policy and political arenas. In the absence of the inclusion of a wide repertoire of beliefs, the possibility exists that pluralism could be as threatening to a stable democratic future as the current situation seems to be.

Globally, the challenges posed by social movement organisations (SMOs) will also necessitate a redefinition of the concept of pressure groups. Ideally, this will encompass the conditions of inclusion in the political process and the fora in which political participation occurs. With regard to SMOs as pressure groups, this could be achieved through the establishment of an inexpensive, fast and computerised process of readaptation of the relevant bodies into a fold of co-opted groups. Alternatively, a coexistence treaty could be adapted to allow both types of behaviour to coexist within the international political system.

11. Future Trends in Pressure Group Activities

Participatory politics is indicative of a more ‘uncivil’ popular movement defined by escalating direct action protests and a deeper critique of state and business behaviour resulting in a dramatic set of reforms of wider regulation and regulation of the Internet media. Protesters have introduced new forms of pressure group activity, including often dramatic, highly disruptive, instantaneous and mobile actions designed at turning the media spotlight on new issues, organisations and campaigns to companies and political leaders whose actions and behaviour elicit public condemnation. Similar pressure groups have grown up to encompass almost all activities in which companies are engaged, including specially created widely distributed takeovers of prime time television and radio media, local and national government streamed wireless internet events and communications technology. More novel, imaginative and inventive forms of peaceful protests have been initiated as new technology has allowed dispersed pressure groups to participate in pressure group protest activities without needing physical presence at the action .

With the emergence of the so-called ‘commercialised counter-public'- where the profit motive drives media coverage in new and unexpected directions - information is exchanged, public condemnation is initialised and conceived abuses of power are addressed and acted upon. Pressure groups will take upon themselves the role of 'the vigilant public' to begin to act as an indirect yet powerful substitute for the trust in traditional mainstream such as the BBC, public enquiry into exploitation and abuse of public interest and public resources, monitoring state activities over a range of issues from the political to human rights abuses, and in doing so gain a measurable amount of political power in their own right. Pressure group activity is not a marginal or dubious form of non-participation anymore.

Protest activities, the growing sophistication of individuals and need for widespread participation in the form of observed and measured impact across all wasted time, will lead to more groups resorting to technology for solutions that match the protest. Mass participation in campaigns requiring little more than attendance or vigilance by group participants on the web will increase the chances of effective action being taken. It is likely that legislators will respond with the formality of considering legal action over content rather than actually infringing rights to free expression, and second, that they will censor information and its dissemination with ad hoc and often incoherent policies which run counter to the speed of the media. This suggests that digital technology will underpin not only new forms of protest and new forms of information, but also new forms of regulation and censorship, which will be laughed off and gift-wrapped for all to see and tom-tom.

12. Conclusion

The foregoing discussion underlines the significant role that pressure groups or interests demonstrate as an ever-presence in modern democracies. They appear in a range of sizes and shapes, representing a diversity of interests. They perform a number of functions within modern democratic politics, some of which enhance the representativeness of the democratic process, while others can potentially distort it. The modes and methods employed by pressure groups are also widely varied, from direct action to lobbying, funded by sources as diverse as public subscription and the coffers of wealthy donors. Recent changes in technology have made the work of pressure groups easier through the development of new forms of communication and information-sharing. In kind, however, they have made for an exponentially more complex landscape in terms of questioning the legitimacy of particular groups and the interests which they seek to represent. As a result, the future of pressure groups and interest representation in general would seem to promise both challenges and opportunities across democracies.

Pressure groups are as old as societies and can be found in all societies, no matter their political systems, ranging from democracies to totalitarian states. The literature on pressure groups covers almost the entire scope of their existence, from attempts to classify their various types, motives for formation and group interaction, to their more immediate role in policy-making. While this extensive literature is mindful of the role played by pressure groups in the democratic process, it neglects the issue of their relationship with democracy outside of a narrow conception of their legitimacy in terms of appropriate norms for modern governmental systems in relation to civil liberties. Similarly, while the general literature on democracy covers the same extensive range of issues covered by the literature on pressure groups – definition, measurement, types, etc. – it neglects the issue of what reasons there are for a state to acknowledge political and pressure group rights in the first place and the implications of these reasons with respect to legitimacy in democratic and non-democratic states alike (Donovan et al., 2003).

However, it may be useful to revise the definitions and typologies of pressure groups. Both in their origins and throughout their existence, pressure groups often do not "represent" a given group with any common interests, even when they claim to do and the differences in interests are usually manifold and significant. Some attempts to represent group interests are simply abortive and, in some cases corrupt. In no way do these attempts imply "countervailing power". Even when pressure groups "represent" a social group with sufficiently common perceived interest, this exists in the realm of the public "good" or interest. Pressure groups, however, have a vested interest in the representation of their inside interests. Thus, the attempted representation of group interests is inhibited by at least two reasons for the uncertainty and unease regarding the extent to which that interest is represented. It may well be that these reasons apply only to some pressure groups. It is possible to think of cases where the actual existence of “democratic” pressure groups representing common public interests is assured because of public ownership of the said interests (Grant, 2005).