Groups Interests and Movements Cleavage social division that

Groups, Interests and Movements

• Cleavage: social division that creates a collective identity on both sides of the divide. • Association: group formed by voluntary action, reflecting a recognition of shared interests or common concerns. • Interest: that which benefits an individual or group; interests are usually understood to beobjective or ‘real’.

• communal groups • institutional groups • associational groups

Communal groups • embedded in the social fabric, in the sense that membership is based on birth, rather than recruitment. • families, tribes, castes and ethnic groups • founded on the basis of a shared heritage and traditional bonds and loyalties rather than volunteerism

Institutional groups • part of the machinery of government and attempt to exert influence • differ from interest groups in that they enjoy no measure of autonomy • Bureaucracies and the military • rivalry amongst institutional groups may become the principal form of interest articulation

Associational groups • formed by people who come together to pursue shared, but limited, goals. • Industrialization both generates social differentiation and individualized patterns of behaviour

• Interest Group – seek to exert influence from outside, rather than to win or exercise government power – typically have a narrow issue focus – seldom have the broader programmic or ideological features that are generally associated with political parties – Direct action: Political action taken outside the constitutional and legal framework

Sectional groups • exist to advance or protect the (usually material) interests of their members. • Trade unions, business corporations, trade associations and professional bodies

promotional groups • • advance shared values, ideals or principles ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ lobbies on abortion, campaigns in favour of civil liberties NGOs: private, non-commercial group or body which seeks to achieve its ends through nonviolent means

• Insider Groups: enjoy regular, privileged and usually institutionalized access to government • Outsider groups: lacking formal access to government, these groups are forced to ‘go public’ in the hope of exercising indirect influence on the policy process

Models of group politics • Pluralist Model • Corporatist Model • New Right Model

Pluralist model • political power is fragmented and widely dispersed • Decisions are made through bargaining and interaction • ensures that the views of a large number of groups are taken into account • group politics is the very stuff of the democracy • all groups have the potential to organize and gain access to government • This highly optimistic view has been criticized by elitists and Marxists

Corporatist model • Corporatism: emphasizes the privileged position that certain groups enjoy in relation to government • Tripartitism: The construction of bodies that represent government, business and the unions, designed to institutionalize group consultation. • portrays interest groups as hierarchically ordered and dominated by leaders who are not directly accountable to members • Government by consultation may simply be a sham concealing corporatism as a mechanism of social control

New Right model • derived ideologically, from individualism that lies at the heart of neoliberal economics • Social groups are viewed with suspicion • market economy driven by self-reliance and entrepreneurialism

Patterns of group politics • • political culture institutional structure nature of the party system nature and style of public policy

political culture • determines whether interest groups are viewed as legitimate or non-legitimate • affects the willingness of people to form or join organized interests or to engage in group politics • Monoistic Regimes: Monoism, belief in only one theory or value, implicitly totalitarian • Pluralist Regimes: permit and encourage group politics

Institutional structure of government • Establishes points of access to the policy process

Party System • Dominant and one party systems allow for more limited scope of influence for interest groups that multi-party systems.

Public Policy • The degree to which government intervenes in public and social life • Interventionism: Government policies designed to regulate or manage economic life; more broadly, a policy of engagement or involvement

How do groups exert influence • public sympathy for the group and its goals • size of its membership or activist base • financial strength and organizational capabilities • ability to use sanctions that in some way inconvenience or disrupt government • personal or institutional links it may have to political parties or government bodies.

Channels of Access • • • the bureaucracy the assembly the courts political parties the mass media international organizations.

Lobby • to make direct representations to a policymaker, using argument or persuasion

Civil Disobedience • Lawbreaking that is justified by reference to ‘higher’ religious, moral or political principles. An overt and public act; it aims to break a law in order to make a point.

Social Movements • particular form of collective behaviour in which the motive to act springs largely from the attitudes and aspirations • Typically acts within a loose organizational framework

New social Movements • traditional social movements were movements of the oppressed or disadvantaged • contemporary movements have attracted the young, better-educated and relatively affluent • Decentralized and prioritize personal freedom • Emerged in the last half of the 20 th C

New Left • Seeks to revitalize socialism by developing a critique of industrial society. The • Rejects ‘old’ left alternatives: Soviet-style state socialism • Fundamental rejection of conventional society as oppressive

• Mass society: characterized by atomism and cultural and political rootlessness; the concept • Globalization and modernity