Paper on pressure groups
This papers covers how pressure groups must choose between being accepted by government and business as partners in decision making or outsiders who use spectacular action to draw attention to themselves and their issues.
This paper was modified slightly by Phil Harris (my former teacher at the Manchester Metropolitan University and submited at the Fourth Academy of Marketing Political Marketing Conference which was held in Dublin in september 2001.
Oil platforms and eco-warriors
Environmental pressure groups and the case of Brent Spar
1999
Download the paper (53 KB - pdf format)
Introduction
The purpose of this paper to trace the development of modern environmental pressure groups, demonstrate their diversity, describe the factors that affect them and give an example of a recent pressure group campaign.
The case that we shall use here is the well documented case of the Brent Spar controversy. There pressure group was able to force a big corporation change it's policy after a long sustained high profile protest. In the words of Rawcliffe (1997):
For many commentators, the act that has clearly symbolised the ability of environmental pressure groups to harness and direct larger global trends was Shell´s dramatic change of heart in 1995 over its plan to sink the Brent Spar oil installation in the deep water of the North Sea In some ways the Brent Spar was a return to older campaigning methods of the environmeental groups. As we will find pressure groups use a multitude of tactics and strategies in their attempts to influence decision at governmental and corporate level. Various factors determine their methods, the most important is the "opportunity structure" in which they operate.