Functional Representation and Interest Group Theory: Some Notes on British Practice

Abstract

This article seeks to develop a number of themes regarding the manner and the scope of interest group involvement with economic ministries in contemporary industrial societies, with special reference to Great Britain. It has two main premises: (1) that the phenomenon of functional is analytically inseparable from the assumption by government of general responsibilities for economic steering and welfare in the postwar period; and (2) that distinctive characteristics of a nation's political culture are the primary determinants of the exact form that this relationship takes in a specific societal context. A survey of the existing literature on interest to search out theoretical propositions or concepts that might be useful in pursuing this mode of analysis reveals little in the way of applicable theory. Those writings which are not simply empirical case studies tend to be insufficiently rigorous in defining their subject and to lack precision in differentiating among the various types of interest activity. The most venerable tradition in the field, that which sees pressure groups as intruding upon the rightful domain of official decision-makers, clearly is inappropriate for a critical analysis of this dimension of industrial politics.l Taking seriously, if not literally, the classical liberal theory of elected representation and impersonal governance, writers in this