Pressure Groups in British Government

Abstract

Readers of Professor Hancock’s autobiography will remember that he refers to Disraeli’s gambit — ‘How is the old complaint?’ — and says that if he ever meets a young social scientist whose name he has forgotten he opens conversation by asking, ‘How is the conceptual framework?’¹ The subject of ‘pressure groups’ raises so many issues of social and political theory that one is tempted to treat it primarily as an excuse for the discussion of concepts. I think however that it would be unwise to push logical analysis very far until some attempt has been made to state the facts of the situation, and this is the primary object of the present paper. Criticism of it may provide a basis for further research and for better analysis.

From British Journal of Sociology, VI, no. 2 (Jun 1955).