Pressure Groups, Foreign Policies, and International Politics

Abstract

In international as in domestic politics group ac tivity has become influential. Organizational and propaganda techniques have enabled these groups to claim an enlarged role in the decisions both of foreign offices and of intergovernmen tal organizations. Whether the form of activity which in the United States is synonomous with pressure groups is a universal phenomenon is a question awaiting systematic analysis. In the United States governmental structure, undisciplined political parties, the industrial and communications revolutions have combined to widen the opportunities open to citizens' groups to participate in the making of policy. Due to the necessity of compromise between the conflicting aims of such groups, the results of their activities in terms of foreign policies are rarely consistent. The external environment raises the armed serv ices, already practiced in lobbying, to a new height of influence in grand strategy. Participation by international nongovern mental organizations in making policy with wider scope and effect has been recognized in the United Nations and other postwar charters. In a nation-state system in which national ism builds up new states while the technology of security tends to undermine old ones, the modern system of pressure groups introduces an element of democratic control over policy, but with mixed effects on the welfare of peoples.