Pressure for the Poor by Paul F. Whiteley Stephen J. Winyard

Author:Paul F. Whiteley, Stephen J. Winyard [Paul F. Whiteley, Stephen J. Winyard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138608801
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Group activities and strategies

The starting point of an analysis of group strategies is an examination of the targets of group activities: if a group wishes to influence policy making, how should it do it? Interestingly enough this rather simple and basic question has seldom been asked by theorists interested in the politics of pressure groups.

There are a large range of targets for group activity, and they can be classified in a variety of ways. We shall consider a classification which takes in all the logical possibilities. First, groups can try to influence central government, which for our purposes means Whitehall and parliament. This includes the judiciary as well, and this has been important for some groups in the area of moral issues (Pym, 1974). But the traditional conservatism of the British courts and the lack of American style class-action suits make it hard to influence income maintenance policy via the courts. However, a few groups have used the courts to achieve benefits for their clients, mainly in relation to the implementation of particular regulations. Governments have often responded to this by closing off legal loopholes by legislative action, and so the courts have not been a major channel of group influence. We discuss examples of groups using the judicial process to influence policy below. Influence can also be exerted at local government level, although this is of relatively minor significance for income maintenance given that virtually all policy decisions are made at a national level.

A second group of targets are political institutions outside the government and the state. The principal ones here are the political parties, but producer groups such as trade unions and federations of producer groups, namely the TUC and CBI, should also be included. Obviously a strategy which targets such institutions aims at influencing income maintenance policy indirectly; by gaining support from political parties or the TUC a group can exert pressure on the government by influencing its supporters. Other pressure groups constitute another type of institution outside the state. Joint action by an alliance of different groups can disproportionately increase the influence of any one group compared with when it acts alone.

A third target is the general public, and what is ambiguously referred to as public opinion. (It is ambiguous because sometimes it refers to élite or informed opinion, and sometimes to mass opinion.) This target can be tackled directly by canvassing, leafleting, etc., but it is far more cost-effective to do this via the media. Media coverage refers to a variety of different things including ‘in-depth’ stories in the quality press, brief news items in the tabloids, television interviews and letters to the press. Given that public opinion is not homogeneous, groups will need to make decisions about whether they wish to influence subsets of the wider public, in particular opinion-leaders or élite actors, rather than the general public as a whole. Moreover, for reasons we shall discuss below, groups have to be careful about the type of coverage they obtain.

Table 5.1 Group activities: the

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