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Essay evaluating Pressure Group Activity in the UK's Pluralist Democracy
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An A* essay evaluating pressure group activity's impact on a pluralist democracy for the UK Politics paper of Government and Politics A level.
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Leena Ramlakhan Wednesday 13 th March 2019“Pressure group activity helps to enhance pluralist democracy in the UK.’ Discuss.
Elitism proposes that political power is concentrated in the hands of the elite; typically wealthy
corporations, politicians, socially privileged individuals and groups – most of which act in a
conservative framework. Contrastingly, the pluralism theory is characterised by a wide-spread
distribution of political power from various sources, such as the mass media and pressure groups. It
can be argued that the latter theory successfully enhances democracy in the UK, in particular the
work of pressure groups: organisations that seek to change or influence government policy and
legislation.
Firstly, some may argue that pressure group activity does, indeed, help to enhance pluralist
democracy in the UK, because of the levels of participation they have. In mainstream politics,
membership declining in political parties due to partisan dealignment resulting in apathy.
Meanwhile, pressure groups are gaining a wide and extensive membership, such as the RSPB which
has accumulated more members than that of the two major parties combined - which could perhaps
be because people identify more with single-issue politics. In a recent poll, the majority of people
stated that they identified more with either ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ than a political party, and another
revealed that 86% of people tend not to trust politicians. Hence, the public are increasingly likely to
turn to a pressure group to represent their interests and subsequently enhancing pluralist
democracy as it displaces political power from parties people are no longer trusting and voting for
and instead supporting pressure groups. However, lately there has been a resurgence in
participation in party membership, so this could concentrate power back to politicians and parties.
Another reason pressure group activity enhances pluralist democracy in the UK, is because they help
represent the interests of the minority and thus prevent tyranny of the majority. Due to the
disproportional nature of our electoral system: first past the post (FPTP), there is always a
dominance of the same two parties, that will not share the ideologies of the entire electorate. Thus,
pressure groups can better represent the interests of the minority that are usually underrepresented
in parliament and prevent policies being always tailored o fit the needs of the majority, neglecting
the minorities’ needs. For example, pressure groups can represent cannabis smokers and users who
are not represented at all in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, because it would be
regarded as scandalous and severely damage their professional reputation although cannabis has
numerous medicinal benefits and harmful products like tobacco are completely legal. Additionally,
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