1.	Pressure group characteristics

a) Interest
b) Social movement
c) Individual political actors
d) Quasi-governmental organizations
e) Pressure group definition

2.	Typologies of groups

a) Group strategies
b) Outsider groups
c) Insider group strategies

3.	Getting issues on the agenda

4.	Fathers 4 Justice

a) Origins
b) Activities
c) Criticism
d) Impact

5.	Conclusion: Pressure groups and democracy in Britain

6.	References

"1 Pressure group characteristics
Pressure groups are such groups that seek to influence public policy. The policy can be formulated by central or local government, or in some cases, by quasi-governmental organizations. Any organized entity that has a power to make decisions may develop internal pressure groups, e.g. groups within a particular company may try and lobby for a particular decision and thus the company may be viewed as a political organization, even though the groups are not formally constituted. But other groups with a decision-making authority may choose to form an advocacy group with a particular purpose: for example Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, or Fathers 4 Justice in Great Britain, which I would like to discuss more thoroughly later in this paper.
What are the characteristics of such groups, how they move and differ from each other and how they operate within the political system of Great Britain, what is the effectiveness of their actions and what are the actual activities and inner workings of a particular pressure group – Fathers 4 Justice? Those are the questions I try to answer in this paper.
I would like to focus mainly on those groups that are organized entities and are defined by organized membership, have stated objectives relating to public policy and also usually paid employees that help attaining the stated objectives. But those are not the only formations that can influence political process by administering pressure activities.
According to Wyn Grant, there are four different issues that help to understand the characteristics of a pressure group [GRANT01]:
1. A relationship between an ‘interest’ and the pressure group that seeks to promote it;
2. A relationship between a ‘social movement’ and the pressure group it generates;
3. The problem of pressure exerted by a single actor such as a business company;
4. The problem of whether parts of the machinery of government itself can be regarded as pressure groups.
Interest
In this particular context, the ‘interest’ is defined as covering both the pursuit of causes and the promotion and defense of particular stakes in the economy.
Social movement
The ‘social movement’ and the groups that emerge by those movements can be well illustrated on one of the most important social movements of the late twentieth century: feminism. Many women think of themselves as part of the ‘feminist movement’ without belonging to any organization or even informal groups. But many of the goals of women’s movement required (and still do) political action if they are to be achieved – pressure group activity helped with many of the goals of the woman’s movement that required political action (for example, better day-care facilities to help women with pursuing their careers, persuasion of police to regard violence by a husband against his wife as a criminal offence; fund are necessary to provide counseling, refuge and general assistance to assaulted wives).
Individual political actors
In Britain, especially in the 1970s and 80s there was an increased direct political activity of individual companies, operating either through their own government relations divisions, or through paid lobbyists acting on their behalf. Just because these groups don’t involve organizations with constitutions, memberships and paid officials, they should still be regarded as pressure groups, since they are incorporating number of people that act together."

Součástí práce je schéma.