Editorial
| Published date | 01 July 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/001955612015030v |
| Date | 01 July 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
EDITORIAL
Interest groups or pressure groups are essentially a phenomenon
of
collective action. The International Encyclopeadia
of
Political
Science (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2011:1219) defines them
as
'formal
organisations, usually based on individual voluntary
membership, that seek to influence public policies without assuming
government responsibility.' Beyond this stipulative definition, when
we begin to deal with the real world
of
pressure group politics
in
democratic governance, we encounter, more often than not, difficulties
in operationalising this concept with gainful empirical import and
theoretical fruitfulness,
as
Yogendra Narain
in
his note and almost all
contributors
of
this special issue
of
our journal attest. For pressure
groups often partake in features
of
activities and organisations ranging
from political parties and nongovernmental organisations to social and/
or political movements.
Historically, pressure group politics may be seen
as
a pluralist
democratic alternative to feudal and modem elitist corporatism, on
the one hand, and radical class struggle
of
early stages
of
industrial
society, on the other. Evolution
of
pressure group politics has broadly
displayed two basic approaches in political theory: neo-corporatist
and pluralist. In the former, elaboration
of
public policies is a
function
ofjoint
agreement among state actors (decision makers) and
organised groups, e.g. tripartite negotiations among the government
and representatives
of
capital and labour (e.g. theorists like Philippe
Schmitter, etc.). In the pluralist approach, public policies are a product
of
competition among many interacting groups -some strong and
some weak, but dispersion
of
political power in the complex matrix
of
governmental institutions and process often ensures the access and
manoeuverability
of
all in some measure (e.g. David Truman, Robert
A. Dahl, etc.). With a certain degree
of
over-simplification, it may be
said that neo-corporatism tends to be state-centric, while pluralism is
society-centric. Predictably, the elected and appointed state officials
play a more decisive role in neo-corporatism, while in pluralism the
functional (occasionally dysfunctional) role
of
interest groups, political
parties, and mass media have a greater role than in neo-corporatism
To continue reading
Request your trial