Promoting Education

Pressure groups promote political debate, discussion and argument. In so doing, they create a better-informed and more educated electorate. This, in turn, helps to improve the quality of public policy. Without pressure groups, the public and the media would have to rely on a relatively narrow range of political views, those expressed by the government of the day and a small number of major parties. Pressure groups challenge established views and conventional wisdom. They offer alternative viewpoints and widen the information available to the public, especially through their access to the mass media and the use of ‘new’ communications technology such as the Internet. Pressure groups are therefore prepared to ‘speak truth to power’. In many cases, pressure groups raise the quality of political debate by introducing specialist knowledge and greater expertise.