Pressure groups

Supplementing electoral democracy:

• Pressure groups keep government in touch with public opinion between elections and give a political voice to minority groups as well as represent concerns that are overlooked by political parties. 
• Pressure groups force gov to engage in ongoing dialogue with the people. 
• Elections only take place every few years, pressure groups are constant. 
• Pressure groups give a political voice to the minority groups.
• They represent concerns that are overlooked by political parties.

Participation:

• Decline in electoral turnout and decline in party membership= democratic deficit.
• Increase in pressure group membership supplements this democratic deficit.
• Single-issue politics engages the wider public much more than convential politics.
• Younger people and disilluisoned people have become more engaged in pressure groups. 

Education:

• Promote political debate, discussion and argument.
• Electorate become better-informed, more educated and more engaged. 
• Improves the quality of public policy.
• Offer alternative view points.
• Speak truth to power.
• Specialist knowledge and expertise.

Competition:

• Widen distribution of political power.
• Cannot be a single group that is permanently dominant because they are constantly competing.
• Counterveiling power.
• Public policy can be developed through an ongoing social debate between inter-competing groups. 
• For example: Trade Unions developed in respone to the growth of business power and Pro-abortion groups via anti-abortion groups.

Increase political inequality:

• Tend to empower those who are already powerful.
• Most powerful pressure groups tend to be ones that possess money, expertise, institutional leverage and privileged links to the government. 
• Some pressure groups are much more powerful than others on the basis of the national or governmental issue that they are campaigning for.
• For example: the influence of major corporations cannot be compared with the influence of minor ones like trade unions, charities or environmental groups.
• Strengthen the voice of the wealthy: give them influence over the government as a result of their access to financial, educational and organisational resources.
• Large sections of society can be excluded: difficult to take part or organise (the elderly, asylum seekers, the homeless etc). 

Non-legitmate power:

• Pressure group leaders: unelected.
• Unaccountable to the public.
• Even if leaders are elected, it is done on the basis of a low turnout.
• Few groups operate on the basis of internal democracy.
• Dominated by a small number of senior professionals: unrepresentative.

Behind the scenes influence:

• Not subject to scrutiny or accountability.
• Insider groups perform their political influence in secret.
• Insider groups are hidden away from public and media scrutiny.
• Unaccountable power.
• Undermines parliamentary democracy.
• Insider links between groups and executive bypass Parliament: Commons do not get to discuss the issue.

Tryanny of the minority:

• Represent minorities.
• Prevent tyranny of the majority.
• As pressure groups become more powerful, government will find it difficult to please the national interest as a result of a pressure group policy being legislised.
• Through civil disobedience, pressure groups hold the country to ransom: governmnet more inclined to listen in order to protect the nation.
• When civil disobedience takes place, pressure groups are operating against the democratic process. 

• Work closely with the government to influence practical legislation.
• Government also works with and checks on the practicality of corporative ideas.
• Coprorations can use lobbying to their advantage through their economic influence.
• May pressurise the government to give them more favourable legislation/financial assistance by threatening to relocate.
• Could say this is undermining democracy.
• For example: Nissan & Ford proposed to relocate their manufacturing plants elsewhere, which would increase unemployment in the UK and hinder economic strength.
• In the EU referendum: HSBC, Burberry and Ford campaigned to remain in the UK: jobs, wages and economic stability would be threatened.
• Minority of coporations: Dyson campaigned to leave. The leave campaign and the people dismissed the majority of corporations by voting leave.