2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
In the earlier post-war decades an almost essential aspect of pluralism was the existence of pressure group politics. Thus, each group attempted - outside of the normal democratic processes - to sway the decisions of government in its favour. The process has not disappeared with the change to more extreme politics.
Even so, it is still possible for outsider groups to have a significant impact, if their pressure is well enough managed. In the United Kingdom, the anti-roads lobby, which has been especially successful, brought together a whole range of groups - from the 'Dong Tribe' (of travellers, who demonstrated violently) to Transport 2000 (which published well-researched briefs) - all of whom worked together for the common cause, in the process possibly setting an important precedent for lobbyists and activists in other fields. Elsewhere, the classic example of outsiders, the Jewish community in the United States represents a very few per cent of the overall population, yet in the area it has chosen to apply pressure - the support of Israel - it has hi-jacked the whole government agenda. Its wishes have been imposed on the rest of the population. No matter how badly behaved Israel has been (and has been seen to be by the rest of the world), to the US government it could do no wrong - and it has received billions of dollars in support. This victory of pressure over fact was achieved by the very effective use of multi-million dollar funds and not least by very careful targeting of politicians who were vulnerable, in terms of future re-election, to small swings in their support. The threat of some millions of dollars being swung behind your opponent understandably frightened not a few congressmen - and it was a very productive weapon, since the same few million dollars could be used against a number of congressmen (since they all succumbed to the bluff!).
The Catholic church has similarly used the Pro-Life movement to apply political pressure in support of its views. The point is not that such pressures are good or bad, it is simply to recognise that they exist. Thus, the main victim of the 1980s swing away from pluralism was the reduction in the efforts being made to regulate these pressures. Now that their existence is largely ignored, their power has actually increased - but it is applied more unpredictably (and arbitrarily) except in the US where it has gained real power.
15 May 2003
Other pages you might like to consider are:
hits
Copyright © 2005 Future Observatory