Page 25 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

emerged in the course of the twentieth century and is now routinely
employed by political parties.

Public organisations

If parties are at the constitutional heart of the democratic political
process they are not, of course, the only political actors. Surrounding
the established institutions of politics are a host of non-party
organisations with political objectives. Some, like the British trade
unions, have clear organisational links with one or more of the parties
(the trade unions, indeed, gave birth to the Labour Party as the
organised political expression of workers’ interests).
Others, such as consumers’ associations and lobby groups, will
be more peripheral, dealing as they do with relatively narrow
constituencies and issues. Others will, by virtue of the tactics which
they adopt, be excluded from constitutional politics altogether, and
may have the status of criminal organisations.
We may divide these non-party actors into three categories. Firstly,
trade unions, consumer groups, professional associations and others
may be defined as public organisations. They are united not by
ideology, but by some common feature of their members’ situation
which makes it advantageous to combine, such as work problems
(trade unions), or the weakness of the individual citizen in the face
of large corporations (consumer groups).
In such organisations individuals come together, not just to help
each other in the resolution of practical problems associated with
their common situation, but to campaign for change or to raise the
public profile of a particular problem, often through enlisting the
help of elected politicians. These organisations have, to a greater
or lesser degree, institutional status and public legitimacy, as
reflected in their access to policy-makers and media, receipt of
charitable donations, and official funding. Chapter 8 will examine
the techniques used by such organisations to influence the political
process, such as ‘lobbying’, advertising, and the organisation of
public demonstrations.

Pressure groups
Chapter 8 will also consider the political communication practices
of a second category of non-party actor: the pressure group. Pressure
groups (or single-issue groups, as they are also known) may be
distinguished from the public organisations listed above in that they

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