¹ The study is based on data drawn from pressure group materials and official publications, and from sixty elite interviews with civil servants, former cabinet ministers, party leaders, and officials of the major pressure groups. The major part of the interviewing was conducted in London during the spring of 1967. Subsequent work took place in Oxford and London during 1969–70. For support, I wish to express my appreciation to Harvard University for a Knox Traveling Fellowship, to the Social Science Research Council for a postdoctoral Research Training Fellowship, and to the University of California for a Faculty Research Grant.

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, September 8–12, 1970. For their comments and criticisms on the original and later drafts, I wish to thank Kenneth I. Hanf, Alexander J. Groth, Donald Rothchild, Richard L. Merritt, Nelson W. Polsby, and Nancy I. Lieber. For a more comprehensive treatment of the data on which the analysis is based, see Lieber, Robert J., British Politics and European Unity: Parties, Elites and Pressure Groups (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

² See, for example, Camps, Miriam, Britain and the European Community, 1955–63 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, and her subsequent work, European Unification in the Sixties: From the Veto to the Crisis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966)Google Scholar; Beloff, Nora, The General Says No: Britain's Exclusion From Europe (Baltimore: Penguin, 1963)Google Scholar; Kitzinger, Uwe, The Second Try: Labour and the EEC (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Uri, Pierre, From Commonwealth to Common Market (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1968)Google Scholar.

³ This effort also differs from previous British pressure group case studies in that it examines neither an important piece of legislation nor the administration of an existing program, but rather the formulation of a policy, and one which is concerned with foreign rather than domestic matters. Cf. Christoph, James B., Capital Punishment and British Politics: The British Movement to Abolish the Death Penalty, 1945–57 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Wilson, H. H., Pressure Group: The Campaign for Commercial Television in England (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; and Eckstein, Harry, Pressure Group Politics: The Case of the British Medical Association (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

⁴ See, for example, Beer, Samuel H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Knopf, 1965)Google Scholar; Finer, S. E., Anonymous Empire, 2nd ed., rev. (London: Pall Mall Press, 1966)Google Scholar; and Eckstein, Pressure Group Politics. For the United States, see also Bauer, Raymond A., Pool, Ithiel de Sola, and Dexter, Lewis A., American Business and Public Policy: The Politics of Foreign Trade (New York: Atherton, 1963)Google Scholar; and Milbrath, Lester W., “Interest Groups and Foreign Policy,” in Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, ed. Rosenau, James N. (New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 231–261 Google Scholar.

⁵ Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age, (see especially Chapter 12). Collectivist or corporatist politics are not confined to Britain: Joseph La Palombaro describes in Italy, “a vast network of quasi-corporative relationships between certain interest groups and the administrative agencies.” See La Palombara, , “The Utility and Limitations of Interest Group Theory in Non-American Field Situations,” in Comparative Politics, ed. Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David E. (Glencoe: Free Press, 1963), p. 427 Google Scholar.

⁶ As Beer defines it, the notion of functional representation is one which “finds the community divided into various strata, regards each of these strata as having a corporate unity, and holds that they ought to be represented in government” (p. 71).

⁷ Beer, p. 321.

⁸ McKenzie, R. T., “Parties, Pressure Groups and the British Political Process,” Political Quarterly, 29 (01–03, 1958), 10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Eckstein, pp. 18–19.

¹⁰ Beer, pp. 321–331.

¹¹ However Finer actually prefers the term “lobby” to the term “pressure group.” (See Finer, p. 3). In this paper, the terms “pressure group” and “interest group” will be employed interchangeably. There is however considerable—and occasionally tedious—treatment of the definitions elsewhere. See Almond, Gabriel and Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), p. 75 Google Scholar; Potter, Allen, Organized Groups in British National Politics (London: Faber and Faber, 1961)Google Scholar; Self, Peter and Storing, Herbert J., The State and the Farmer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963)Google Scholar; and Wilson, Christoph, and Eckstein.

¹² Eckstein, pp. 16–17.

¹³ Beer, p. 321.

¹⁴ For a detailed treatment, see Political and Economic Planning, Advisory Committees in British Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1960)Google ScholarPubMed.

¹⁵ In 1965, the Federation of British Industries merged with two smaller organizations, the National Union of Manufacturers and the British Employers Confederation to form the Confederation of British Industries.

¹⁶ These limitations on British pressure group activity are similar to those found by Bauer, Pool and Dexter in their analysis of American groups. Thus in the United States, the role of a trade association leader may be more that of “arbitrator” among forces within his organization than of “statesman”; he also finds himself in a position of mediating between his organization and the outside world and is often caught in a web of conflicting forces (p. 331). In addition, groups are reluctant to take stands on issues unless there is near unanimity within the organization (p. 337). However, British groups do not suffer from the serious lack of money, skills, and information which Bauer, Pool and Dexter find characteristic of their American counterparts (p. 349). The parallels are further limited because the British groups operate within a corporatist political culture so that their legitimacy is enhanced. They also enjoy far greater “density” (percentage of potential membership actually belonging) and “amalgamation” (extent to which the organized have been brought into one body) than do the American pressure groups. See Beer, p. 332.

¹⁷ La Palombara, p. 425. For an alternative conception, based on Dahl's criteria for the measurement of power as the capacity to shift the power of outcomes, see Lieber, Chapter 10.

¹⁸ Finer, p. 27.

¹⁹ Finer, p. 133.

²⁰ Almond and Powell, p. 18. Italics in original.

²¹ Politicization is also used in different contexts, but with related meanings, by Deutsch, Karl et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 46–47 Google Scholar; and by Haas, Ernst B. and Schnitter, Philippe C., “Economics and Differential Patterns of Political Integration: Projections About Unity in Latin America,” in International Political Commuities: An Anthology (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1966), pp. 261–262 Google Scholar.

According to the P.E.P. study, a nonpolitical subject “is merely one about which politicians do not feel strongly for the time being” (p. 106).

²² This is also akin to the distinction drawn by E. E. Schattschneider between “socialization” and “privatization” of conflict Expanding the scope of a previously privatized conflict brings the public, or “audience” into involvement, thus changing the coalition possibilities and decisively affecting the outcome. The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (New York: Holt, 1960), pp. 2–8 Google Scholar.

²³ One listing of 700 central advisory committees presented to the House of Commons in 1949 included only two attached to the Foreign Office and both of these were highly specialized. (The two committees were in the Foreign Office's German Section: The Book Selection Committee and the Scientific Committee). See Allen Potter, pp. 223–225.

²⁴ “Elite” and “attentive public” are here used to the manner of Gabriel Almond's basic approach. The attentive public is “informed and interested in foreign policy problems, and … constitutes the audience for the foreign policy discussions among the elites.” The “policy and opinion elites” are “the articulate policy-bearing stratum of the population which gives structure to the public, and which provides the effective means of access to the various groupings.” The American People and Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1960), p. 138 Google Scholar.

²⁵ British voters tend to be bi-partisan on foreign policy, and concentrate their attention on domestic matters. Their tendency to vote on the basis of domestic issues is analyzed in Beloff, Max, New Dimensions in Foreign Policy: A Study in British Administrative Experience, 1947–1959 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1961), p. 15 Google Scholar; Blondel, Jean, Voters, Parties and Leaders (Harmondsworth Middlesex: Penguin, 1966), pp. 75–79. 81–83, 87 Google Scholar; and Younger, Kenneth, “Public Opinion and British Foreign Policy,” International Affairs, 40 (01, 1964), 22–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ See, e.g., “European Process at Atlantic Cross-purposes,” Journal of Common Market Studies,” 3 (02. 1965), 92 Google Scholar.

²⁷ See especially, Mitrany's, A Working Peace System: An Argument for Functional Development of International Organization (London: Oxford University Press, For the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1943)Google Scholar; also Haas's, The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social and Economic Forces, 1950–1957 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar, and his Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

²⁸ For a useful summary of Mitray's functionalism and its differences from later interpretations, see Green, Andrew Wilson, “Review Article: Mitrany Reread with the Help of Haas and Sewell,” Journal of Common Market Studies, 8 (09, 1969), 50–69 Google Scholar.

²⁹ “Technocracy, Pluralism and the New Europe,” in A New Europe, ed. Graubard, Stephen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), p. 71 Google Scholar.

³⁰ “The Uniting of Europe and the Uniting of Latin America,” Journal of Common Market Studies, 5 (06, 1967), 327–328 Google Scholar.

³¹ Haas, , “The Uniting of Europe …,” p. 321 Google Scholar

³² Haas, and Schmitter, , “Economics and Differential Patterns of Political Integration …” p. 261 Google Scholar. For Haas's revisions to his original theorizing, see “The Uniting of Europe …” and his 1968 Preface to the reissued edition of The Uniting of Europe.

³³ See Brenner, Michael J., Technocratic Politics and the Functionalist Theory of European Integration (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Center for International Studies, 1969), p. 5 Google Scholar.

³⁴ According to Haas, , perhaps his “chief finding is that group pressure will spill over into the federal sphere and thereby add to the integrative impulse.” The Uniting of Europe, 1968 edition, p. xxxiii Google Scholar.

³⁵ Brenner discusses this on p. 8.

³⁶ Europe's Would-Be Polity: Patterns of Change in the European Community (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 244 Google Scholar.

³⁷ E.g., Edward Heath told the 1960 Conservative Conference that the government had sought to create the FTA and EFTA “for economic reasons.” National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, 79th Annual Conservative Conference (10 12–15, 1960), p. 61 Google Scholar.

³⁸ Britain and the European Community, pp. 104–105.

³⁹ Mulley, Fred in Hansard, , Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 561 (11 26, 1956), c. 80Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ The original seven members of EFTA were Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal and Britain. The arrangements resembled those which Britain had sought for the abortive FTA, namely freer intragroup trade, a minimum of institutions and of integration, and no harmonization of external tariffs.

⁴¹ “International Integration: The European and the Universal Process,” in International Political Communities, p. 94 Google ScholarPubMed.

⁴² Camps, , Britain and the European Community, pp. 280–281 Google Scholar.

⁴³ Macmillan later wrote in his memoirs, “About Europe, regrets still haunt me,” and he recalled that he had written Churchill in protest when the newly elected Conservative government of 1951 failed to move Britain toward the European Coal and Steel Community. Sunday Times (London), 07 31, 1966 Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ “Whitehouse and Whitehall,” Paper delivered at the 1965 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 8–11, p. 9.

⁴⁵ The negotiations also became mired in detail, a prime area of group operation, because the Government sought to negotiate á sept (rather than regard the Six as a single group with a coherent position), because it felt obliged to negotiate on behalf of the Commonwealth, and because the openness of the negotiations frequently involved Edward Heath in an embarrassing dialogue with the groups.

⁴⁶ Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British Experience (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), p. 266 Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ This point is emphasized by Windlesham, Lord in Communication and Political Power (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966), p. 158 Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Federation of British Industries, British Industry and Europe (London, 07 1961)Google ScholarPubMed.

⁴⁹ “In principle we do not oppose the suggestion for a common or harmonized tariff put forward by HMG.” Federation of British Industries, p. 3.

⁵⁰ Sunday Times (London), 07 16, 1961 Google ScholarPubMed.

⁵¹ Cmnd. 1249 (Her Majesty's Stationery Office, December 19, 1960), paragraph 37, cited in British Farmer, No. 163 (January 7, 1961).

⁵² Hansard, , Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 645 (07 31, 1961), c. 1483–88Google Scholar.

⁵³ The United Kingdom and the European Economic Community, Cmnd. 1565, Vol. 36 (HMSO, 11, 1961), pp. 14–15 Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ The Labour government's approach to the EEC began in November 1966 with exploratory talks. The application was formalized in May 1967, then vetoed by de Gaulle in November 1967. Prime Minister Wilson initiated a renewal of the application in 1969–70, and Labour was then defeated in the June 1970 General Election. The incoming Heath government continued with the negotiations and reached agreement with the Six in June 1971. The later phase is beyond the scope of this paper.

⁵⁵ This political emphasis was quite obvious. See, e.g., Kitzinger, , The Second Try, pp. 9–10 Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ The unconditional nature of the Labour government's application is particularly visible when its terms, as set out by George Brown at The Hague on 3–4 July, 1967, are contrasted with those outlined by Edward Heath in Paris on 10 October, 1961. Thus, for example, on agriculture, Brown accepted the EEC's Common Agricultural Policy without safeguards, while Heath sought to retain Britain's existing safeguards for her farmers. On the Commonwealth, Brown cited only New Zealand and the need to avoid defaulting on the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement; Heath Usted each country, requested “comparable outlets,” and said Britain could not join if trade was cut with a severe loss to the Commonwealth. On EFTA, Brown asked only one year's standstill for its members “to make their own arrangements,” while Heath said Britain could not join unless all seven members “could participate, from the same date, in an integrated European market.” On collective action, Brown accepted the Rome Treaty and all “regulations, directives and … decisions taken under it”; Heath accepted the Treaty but proposed to negotiate over agreements reached among the Six since then. See Beloff, Nora, “What Happened in Britain After the General Said No,” in Uri, From Commonwealth to Common Market, pp. 81–83 Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ The terms are those of Hanrieder, Wolfram, “Compatibility and Consensus: A Proposal for the Conceptual Linkage of External and Internal Dimensions of Foreign Policy,” American Political Science Review, 61 (12, 1967), 971–982 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ Almost no serious assessment of the economic prospects of membership reached conclusions more pessimistic than these.

⁵⁹ This is not to imply that even fully centralized authorities can not make irrational or dysfunctional decisions.

⁶⁰ In this regard, they resembled American trade associations, which Bauer, Pool and Dexter found reluctant to take stands on issues on which unanimity was absent. (American Business and Public Policy, p. 337).

⁶¹ E. g., see Lindberg, Leon N., The Political Dynamics of European Economic Integration (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

⁶² Brenner, , Technocratic Politics and the Functionalist Theory of European Integration, p. 1 Google Scholar.

⁶³ There is also a normative implication here. It is that parties ought to play a greater role than pressure groups in the policy-making process. Unlike pressure groups, parties provide at least the opportunity for political leaders to make independent judgments on the basis of some broad interpretation of the national interest. But during the nonpoliticized phase of European policy making, those intimately involved in the process were nonelective, not responsible to the public, and concerned to maximize values less broad than those of the country as a whole. More generally, the functional representation process tends to manifest a static bias. It provides bargaining advantages for those interests which are better organized, while minimizing more diffuse considerations of public benefit. See Shonfield, Andrew, Modern Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 389 Google Scholar. For other critical views, see Finer, , Anonymous Empire, pp. 126–129 Google Scholar; Neumann, Sigmund, “Toward a Comparative Study of Political Parties,” in Modern Political Parties, ed. Neumann, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1956), p. 397 Google Scholar; and Crick, Bernard, Observer (London), 10 23, 1966 Google Scholar. But for views which question the ability of parties to promote the broader interest, see Pennock, J. R., “ ‘Responsible Government,’ Separated Powers, and Special Interests: Agricultural Subsidies in Britain and America,” American Political Science Review, 56 (09, 1962), 621 and 633 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Wilson, , Pressure Group, pp. 210–211 Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Stanley Hoffmann's argument also seems applica ble here. He has indicated the importance of an ir reducible political core of “high politics,” which is not susceptible to gradual erosion through step-by-step functional or spillover processes. See “European Process at Atlantic Crosspurposes,” p. 92.

⁶⁵ Lindberg and Scheingold find, directly contrary to Haas in The Uniting of Europe, that the successful transformation leading to the establishment of the Common Market itself was not due to functional spillover: “The transformation of the European Community cannot be adequately described within the context of the standard neofunctional model with its heavy emphasis on supranational institutions and functional linkages.” Europe's Would-Be Polity, p. 243.

⁶⁶ E. G., Lindberg and Scheingold; Brenner, Technocratic Politics; and Hansen, Roger D., “Regional Integration: Reflections on a Decade of Theoretical Efforts,” World Politics, 21 (01, 1969), 242–271 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.