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Chapter Eight: Pressure politics: civil society, organized interests and new social movement

• Chapter Summary
• Useful websites 
• Discussion questions
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Chapter Summary

• The traditional distinction between insider and outsider groups - while still useful - is beginning to blur, as governments have grown used to a more participatory policy process and groups employ a range of strategies according to the 'political opportunity structure' they inhabit and help shape.

• The even more traditional distinction countries that are 'pluralist' (lots of competing groups in the 'market place of ideas') and 'corporatist' (more institutionalised consultation with the national associations of, say, employers and employees) is also breaking down.

• Groups that previously enjoyed privileged access to government in relatively enclosed 'policy communities' are having to reconcile themselves to a less insulated environment and follow multiple strategies.

• Trade union influence has been in long-term decline in Europe, but varies considerably - according to history more than geography. But even fragmented unions with low memberships can still disrupt governments.

• In any case, partly as a result of coping with the demands of the single currency and the single market, there is evidence to suggest a return to an albeit limited form of 'corporatism'.

• Business is at an advantage in any capitalist country because it creates the wealth citizens and governments rely on: the formal organisational capacity of business is no guide to its strength.

• The strength of 'new social movements' that push a more oppositional/alternative agenda is greater in the richer more northerly and westerly parts of Europe. The biggest of these campaigning groups are now as professional as they are participatory, becoming something akin to 'protest businesses'.

• More and more interest groups are operating on the European as well as at the domestic scene since multilevel governance means they are interrelated. National governments can be bypassed in this way, but they also recognise that national interests often benefit from such lobbying and involvement - a process encouraged by EU institutions.

• The EU also presents cause groups and new social movements with opportunities, although both finance and focus continue to mean that most alternative and protest activity still goes on at the national level.

Useful websites

(For general web materials on European Politics see Tim Bale’s Internet Guide)

To find out more about NGOs across Europe, check out Social Platform www.socialplatform.org For academic research on social movements in Europe, see the Centre for European Political Communication at the University of Leeds

http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/eurpolcom/index.cfm and the Research Group on Collective Action in Europe at the University of Florencehttp://www.unifi.it/grace/inglese.htm#

For an example of environmental pressure groups, see Birdlife Internationalhttp://www.birdlife.net/ For a non-environmental cause group, see Autism Europe

http://www.autismeurope.arc.be/english/frame.htm Also check out a ‘protest business’ like Greenpeacehttp://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/ and, for youth issues, the European Youth Forumhttp://www.youthforum.org/en/

For a comparative study of lobbying, see the essay by Conor McGrathhttp://www.psa.ac.uk/cps/2002/mcgrath2.pdf

An example of an EU-wide interest group is the UNICE (the European Employers Federation) http://www.unice.org. Business is also represented by the Association of European Chambers of Commerce and Industryhttp://www.eurochambres.be/

A powerful domestic interest group is the German Confederation of Trade Unionshttp://www.dgb.de/sprachen/englisch/kontakte.htm For more on unions both at the EU and the national level, see the European Federation of Public Service Unionshttp://www.epsu.org/ and the European Trade Union Confederationhttp://www.etuc.org/

To get a sense of E urope’s farm lobby, see the joint website of the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations in the European Union and the General Confederation of Agricultural Co-operatives in the European Union http://www.cogeca.be/en/

For an example of a pressure group-cum- think tank, see the European Road Transport Research Advisory Councilhttp://www.ertrac.org or the even more specialised Airports Council International – Europehttp://www.aci-europe.org/

Discussion questions

1. Do you think a country needs a healthy civil society and, if so, why? How and why does the level of popular participation in non-party political activity vary across Europe?
2. What role do you think cultural and institutional factors play in how a pressure group goes about trying to gain influence?
3. How can we explain the power of the agricultural lobby in European countries? Do you think it will last?
4. Have trade unions all over Europe lost their influence?
5. Does the power of business in European countries depend simply on its importance to the economy?
6. Do you have any sympathy with or are you actually involved in the activities of new social movements? If so, why? If not, why not?
7. Do you think that big NGOs with their roots in new social movements remain true to their ethos, or have they become part of the mainstream and even the establishment?
8. Why has lobbying at the EU level become an integral part of most interest groups’ strategies, and why might groups from some countries be more successful at it than others?
9. Do you think Europeanization poses a threat or an opportunity to groups whose aims do not dovetail neatly with liberal capitalism?

Updates

(none yet for this chapter)

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