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Changing Pressure-Group Politics: The Case of the Trades Union Congress, 1976–84

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Neil J. Mitchell
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Extract

This Note presents a variety of new evidence on the paths and channels that one pressure group, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), has used to influence or obstruct public policy in Britain over the last decade. Where is pressure applied? At what level? Which departments are most important? What is the role of tripartite organizations? How are policy positions communicated? In addition to these and similar questions the evidence permits a systematic examination of the impact made by a change in the party of government upon the structure of group-government interaction. Two contrasting patterns of interaction, which represent a rapid and sharp change coinciding with the change in government, are revealed. Government decisions themselves appear to be determinants of pressure-group influence and activities – even for a group with such a central position in British politics as the TUC – as well as the other way around; ‘Bentley on his head’ as Harry Eckstein puts it.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 1987 , pp. 509 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Eckstein, Harry, Pressure Group Politics: The Case of the British Medical Association (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

2 Interview with author.

3 In categorizing TUC-government interaction, I found the work of Eckstein, , Pressure Croup PoliticsGoogle Scholar, Martin, Ross, TUC: The Growth of a Pressure Group 1868–1976 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980)Google Scholar and Wilson, Frank, ‘French Interest Group Politics: Pluralist or Neocorporatist?’ American Political Science Review, LXXVII (1983), pp. 895–910, very useful.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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