Organised Interests and the State

Abstract

Any group, where its members perceive that they share certain interests and could promote these interests further by some organised action — in particular, action aimed at some level of political authority — may be regarded as an interest group. Therefore, the range of issues with which groups are concerned, the means they use to advance them, and the power that they wield can all vary enormously. In this chapter we shall be concerned mainly with functional interests in Western European societies: that is, those groups based on the performance of some function within the economy, though some references will be made to such promotional or pressure groups as environmental organisations. For reasons of space, we shall largely neglect local and regional action (see Chapter 11), concentrating on the diverse range of interest groups at the levels of the nation-state and the European Union.