question_answer

What is the difference between a Pressure Group and a Political Party?

Answer:

There are many differences between pressure groups and political parties.

Pressure Groups	Political Parties
(i) Pressure Groups have specific interest and work for the collective interests of its membership only.	(i) While political parties have a broad based programme that covers many aspects of national life influence and coerce the Government.
(ii) Membership of pressure groups is limited and that too of a particular kind, i.e., a student's pressure group will consist only of students and not of traders, etc.	(ii) On the other hand, membership of the parties is very broad based and it is a wide coalition of diverse members and they have mass memberships.
(iii) Pressure groups resort to agitation a politics like marches, demonstrations, strikes, fasts, etc.	(iii) Whereas political parties use only Constitutional means to achieve their aims.
(iv) Pressure groups are informal, often secretive, conceited and conspiratorial and sometimes even unrecognized entities.	(iv) But, political parties are the formal, open and recognized part of the political system competing for power.

In this way, Political parties are better and more widely organised than pressure groups but pressure group's aim is to direct policy and laws in their favour.