Interest Groups

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Interest Groups

Interest Groups

Introduction

A pressure group or interest group is a structure with a formal, identifiable and recognizable organization, based on the functional division of tasks acting in view of the statement. The particular interest that caused the genesis to exert influence on the decisions of policy makers, whether they are the representatives of the legislature, the executive, the Authority and the control bodies or function implementation are made ??by the PA. The interest groups are also called lobby (Interest Groups, 2012).

The term lobby is currently the indication of a number of organizations, groups, individuals, bound collectively by the desire to place an impact in favour of the interest representing the legislative, political and administrative institutions, which calls to identify the general interest and to legislate on to it. In Europe, this process occurs at the Commission which is based in Brussels, and to a lesser extent in the Parliament, which is based in Strasbourg, U.S. pressure is exerted on the Congress in Washington (SparkNotes, n.d).

Discussion

The phenomenon is part of a lobbying de-ideological context therefore adherence or making contact with a group of interest is not in itself implying a generalized coincidence, or ideological view of the world. However, it takes the form of support to individual and specific negotiations with the institutions (Smith, 1995).

Moreover, finally, it has spread improper journalistic use of the term to indicate also a popular event, a procession, the rallies, the use of signs and banners in order to put pressure in support of (or against) a precise measure legislation, For example, the lobby against the "poll tax" introduced by Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who has been active in several occasions during the year 1990/1991 in the UK (Berry & Wilcox, 2009).

In Brussels, anticipatedly there are 15000 lobbyists who favour the inetersts of giant organizations of Europe, especially in relation to environmental conflicts. The interest gropus are developed due to the lack of restrictions in contrast to systems in which the lobbying is more rooted, like Canada and the USA.The commissioners and lobbyists do not have a code of conduct, except the in voluntary participations proposed by SEAP, which proved to be insufficient. Another organization, ALTER-EU, is responsible for proposing transparency tools. Lobbyists are working in Brussels as the antennas of civil society. They are infrastructure essential to the decision-making process, enriching the process of technical information and often influencing the decisions of both the commissioners of parliament (Hrebenar & Thomas, 2004).

The issue of regulation of lobbying has recently been addressed to the Commission and by the European Parliament. Even with the White Paper on European Governance Commission, there was the possibility that organized groups of business; moreover, civil society organizations would take part in the European decision-making, which is no longer characterized by a government. The decisions making is no longer centralized and based on top-down logic. However, it is based on the governance widespread and based on a bottom-up model (Berry & Wilcox, 2009).

With the Green Paper of the European Transparency Initiative 2006, ...
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