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Advantages
- Widen power - pressure groups articulate the views and interests of those who are marginalised by political parties. They provide a means of influencing government between elections.
- Promote education - groups stimulate discussion, helping create a better-informed electorate. They provide people with an alternative source of information, and provide the government with technical expertise and practical advice, improving the quality of public policy.
- Extend participation - groups provide alternatives to conventional party politics and offer opportunities for grass-roots activism. This may be especially attractive to the young and those disillusioned by politics.
- Limit government - groups check government power and defend rights and freedoms, as they are autonomous and independent from government. They therefore ensure that the state is balanced against a healthy civil society.
- Maintain stability - in providing a channel between citizens and government, groups uphold political stability by ensuring the government responds to popular pressure. Groups are therefore a kind of safety valve in the political system.
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Disadvantages
- Concentrate power - the most successful groups are those who are wealthy and educated, concentrating political power in the hands of the elite.
- Narrow self-interest - groups are socially and politically divisive due to their specific concerns. In defending minority concerns, they make it more difficult for the government to act in the interests of larger society.
- Unaccountable power - groups are not elected and therefore exercise power without responsibility. Group leaders are not publicly accountable and groups often lack internal democracy, meaning that leaders are rarely elected and are unaccountable to their members.
- Undermine parliament - groups undermine parliamentary democracy by bypassing representative processes. Most of they influence is exerted secretly, away from public scrutiny.
- Ungovernability - groups make society more difficult to govern, a they create a range of vested interests and are able to block government initiatives, or make a policy unworkable. This 'hyper pluralism' can undermine good economic policy by forcing up public spending and increasing state intervention,
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