Describe any five techniques employed by the
pressure groups.
Answers
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Article shared by For securing their aims and goals, interest groups use peaceful persuasion as well as pressure techniques. When the interest groups, use pressure tactics for securing their interests these are called pressure groups.
Article shared by For securing their aims and goals, interest groups use peaceful persuasion as well as pressure techniques. When the interest groups, use pressure tactics for securing their interests these are called pressure groups.As such, ail methods by which influence and pressure can be exerted upon the decision-makers are the methods of interest groups. Such techniques as strike, gherao, bandhs, demonstrations, passive resistance, work to rule, which are usually described as means of direct action, fall within their scope.
Answer:
1. Lobbying:
A very popular means used by pressure groups is lobbying. It involves the art of cultivating and influencing the policy-makers, legislators, judges and civil servants. In its wider form, lobbying means attempts of the pressure groups to influence government departments in favour of their interests. In its original form, Lobbying is “referred to the efforts of the individuals to influence the votes of legislators, generally in the lobby outside the legislative chamber.”
2. Use of Party Platforms:
Though with a professed non-partisan character, the interest groups do not hesitate to use party platforms and organisation for promoting their interests. They, through lobbying, persuasion, speeches and contacts, try to secure the support of political parties for their interests. They try to influence the choice of party candidates in elections, mould the election campaigns and secure the election of only such candidates as can be helpful for their interests.
Through parties, the pressure groups try to penetrate into the legislature and executive. Sometimes, interest/pressure groups also provide trained personnel to the parties, who assume leadership roles within the party organisations.
In fact, each party has interest groups within its structure and each pressure group is favourably inclined towards one or another party or parties. Use of party platforms by the pressure groups for securing their interest is a recognised fact of the contemporary era of democratic politics.
3. Electioneering:
Groups exploit election times for their advantage. They do not contest elections, but at the same time they do try to influence the choice of candidates by political parties as well as their election campaigns. They participate in electioneering with a view to secure the victory of their ‘favoured’ candidates, i.e., to influence the outcome of election in a direct way. Behind party labels they indirectly get involved in elections for securing their interests.
4. Propaganda and Mass Media:
The communications revolution of the 20th century has enabled pressure groups to use propaganda. They always try to secure such provisions in the election manifestoes of the political parties as can serve their interests and use means of mass media for securing public support for their demands and interests.
Through advertisements or press notes in the newspapers the interest groups try to secure public attention towards their demands and support for the campaigns launched for securing such demands. Through lobbying and contacts with the Press, the groups try to secure favourable write-ups and editorials in leading newspapers and periodicals.
These write letters to the editors for clarifying their views as well as for answering the questions raised by the press. Through discussions over Radio and Television too, interest groups seek to espouse the interests they represent and the cause that they support. They always try to maintain good public relations with the press.
By getting printed and distributed hand-bills, placards and posters, the pressure group try to win public sympathy and support for their interests which in turn is used to influence the policies and decisions of the government.
As such, Interest Groups always use propaganda and publicity through means of mass media for getting goodwill of public opinion and thereby a desired change in governmental policies.
5. Strike:
Strike has come to be a frequently used method for securing interests. Through strike, which involves a temporary stoppage of work, a pressure group tries to coerce those who are responsible for satisfying its interests. It is used by the pressure group as a weapon of offence and to demonstrate the harm, loss and inconvenience those results from the stoppage of work.An indefinite strike or a general strike is used as an ultimate means of direct action. Its purpose is to force the managing authorities to accept the demands of the pressure group. In the words of Bondurant, “The strike is commonly used to affect economic pressure and is intended to hurt business, or to strain relationship so that normal functions are brought to a half, or at least inhibited.
Normal functioning cannot be resumed until policy changes are instituted. The process of strikes or passive resistance in its most common forms amounts to the intensification of pressure or the shifting of the points of attacks until a settlement is reached through capitulation or through compromise. “(Hunger strikes, fasts into deaths, token hunger strikes, etc. also fall in this category.)