Get complete information on the meaning and role of pressure groups

Pressure groups are collections of individuals who hold a similar set of values and beliefs based on ethnicity, religion, political philosophy, or a common goal. Based on these beliefs, they take action to promote change and further their goals. For example, members of Mothers.

Against Drunk Driving (MADD) share a common belief that, in turn, influences the actions (e.g., advocacy, “public awareness programs, policy research) they use to achieve their goals. Pressure groups often represent viewpoints of people who are dissatisfied with the current conditions in society, and they often represent alternative viewpoints that are not well represented in the mainstream population.

By forming a pressure group, people seek to express their shared beliefs and values and influence change within communities and sociopolitical structures, such as governments and corporations. Some pressure groups, such as the tobacco-control movement, have been successful at influencing change across a number of sociopolitical structures.

Pressure groups are different from political parties. Political parties seek to create change by being elected to public office, while pressure groups attempt to influence political parties. Pressure groups may be better able to focus on specialized issues, whereas political parties tend to address a wide range of issues.

Pressure groups are widely recognized as an important part of the democratic process. Some groups offer opportunities and a political voice to people who would traditionally be thought of as disadvantaged or marginalized from the mainstream population. In this way, pressure groups strengthen the democratic process by giving a voice to a variety of people. Pressure groups also offer alternatives to the political process by providing opportunities for expressing opinions and a desire for change.

While pressure groups are acknowledged as potentially beneficial to a democratic society, problems can arise when the democratic process becomes dominated by a few specific groups. In this situation, the voice of a small group of people with a particular interest can become overly influential and negatively affect the rights of other individuals.

In the democratic process, there is a need for compromise in order to reach consensus regarding the common good. If pressure groups remain rigid and refuse to compromise on specific issues, they can potentially monopolize the democratic process by focusing public debate on a few specific issues.

Pressure groups may adopt a variety of strategies to achieve their goals, including lobbying elected officials, media advocacy, and direct political action (e.g., organized protests). Clearly, some pressure groups exert more influence than others. The degree to which such groups are able to achieve their goals may depend on their ability to be recognized as legitimate by the population, media, and by those in power. For example, civil rights groups, trade unions, and professional associations are more widely recognized and accepted than a newly formed, single-issue pressure group.

Significant gains in public health have been achieved because of efforts by pressure groups, including important changes and advances in public health issues such as tobacco control, occupational health and safety, air pollution, and HIV/AIDS.

Pressure groups can fulfill a valuable function within public health. They have the potential to raise the profile of previously marginalized issues and force action to improve the health of their members, as well as the health of the general population. For example, mental health service consumers have joined together to form pressure groups that have identified the issue of homelessness as an unintended consequence of deinstitutionalization. Initiatives spawned by these groups aim to improve living conditions for the homeless. These actions have provided benefits not only to the homeless; they have also positively affected the well-being of entire communities.

Individual pressure groups can form larger coalitions to advance their cause more effectively. The tobacco-control movement provides an excellent example of how a variety of pressure groups can work together across sectors and at many different levels to affect change. This movement has successfully pulled together many organizations under the umbrella of the National Center for

Tobacco-Free Kids, Members include organizations from a number of sectors including health (American Public Health Association), education (American Federation of Teachers), medical (American Medical Association), civic (Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights), corporate (Adventist Health Care), youth (Girl Scouts of the USA), and religious (National Council of Churches Group activities are generally more effective than individual activities.

Therefore, pressure groups play a vital role in a democratic society in terms of influencing the government for expressing the common concern of a section of society and promote their interest. The vitality of the pressure groups is mainly determined by their ability to influence the government. Influencing the government involves influencing the public policy decision makers, law makers, implementers of policies and decisions, etc.

The role of pressure groups is closely connected with politics. Here our assumption is that power is an essential element of politics which implies the study of influence. In this context Harold D. Lasswell in his early work on politics, uses the subtitle, “who gets what, when, how?” and says that, “the study of politics is the study of influences and influential.” In view of this understanding, the state of pressure groups in democratic countries constitutes an important dimension of the study of politics because the primary objective of any pressure group is to influence the government on a specific public policy issue or problem.

Pressure groups do not contest elections and they may not have political programmes. Pressure groups informally attempt to influence the government on a specific public policy issue of a section of society. Freedom of association is generally found in all democratic societies. This is required in order to identify and promote common interest or well-being of the people through the collective activities.

This is regarded as the basic factor which tends to the establishment of pressure groups. So, pressure groups play a crucial role in interest formation and interest aggregation helpful information for the policy makers to select the best alternative. This role of pressure groups is to provide inputs to public policy making. On the whole, pressure groups contribute to democratize the public policy making and law making.

When it is found that political parties cannot adequately represent the aspirations of the people, pressure groups become the devices for representing the aspirations of the people. In this sense, pressure groups perform the representation function.

In a welfare state, the growing functions of government may tend to affect the responsive capability of the political system. Besides the members of government may not be able to get sufficient time to get all the details of a particular issue of public importance as the political elites are preoccupied in the political activities.

In view of these, pressure groups are essential to make the political system respond to the aspirations of people and provide the details of particular policy issue of public importance to the ruling political elites. This will contribute to work out development activities very effectively.