Political Parties And Pressure Groups: Understanding The Difference And Their Characteristics

Political Party

Political parties are an important part for functioning of a government in democratic countries. Countries like UAE, Oman, Libya, and Qatar have a government without political parties because they are not democratic, and political parties are banned. Hence, democracy works only where competitive party systems exist. Political parties help in the formation of institutions and various processes of the democratic government. They allow common people to engage and participate in elections and other governance procedures and facilitate and educate them to form policy choices (Bale, 2019).

A political party is a systematic body of the people who belong to the common rules and regulations with the same goals related to the political system. Political parties manage and look for political power through the constitutional method to implement their policies into business.

Characteristics of political parties:

• It is a systematic group of people.
• The systematic group trusts the same rules, regulations, and goals.
• The main motto is to come into political power through the collective efforts of all party members.
• They form a government to maintain peace and harmony by constitutional rights.
• They try to fulfill all the objectives in their policies during the electoral campaigns.
• They nominate representatives.
• They try to educate and engage people and help formulate people’s opinions.
• They give a connection between the public and government institutions.
• They try to gain support from the public by campaigning.

A pressure group is an interest group that puts pressure on the decision-makers to fulfill their demands. They play an important role in the proper functioning of democratic government. They used to promote, talk, discuss and activate a public view on various issues. They educate and increase public thinking ability and widen their role. They mainly try to modify the public policies (Bernauer, 2004).

• The pressure party uses lobbying, appeals, processions, petitions, etc., to achieve its targets and goals.  
• They also include media to enlarge their campaign, chant slogans and pressure the government to fulfill their requirements.
• Pressure groups often strike to put pressure on the decision-makers.
• They may carry out a non-violent protest, but sometimes it gets violent.
• The pressure groups boycott activities to convince the government.

The main difference between political parties and pressure groups is listed here:

Hong Kong is a city and a unique regulatory part of Southern China. It is situated on the east Pearl River Delta with more than 7.5 million populations of different nationalities. It is one of the most populated places globally in terms of density. It is the world’s 10^th largest exporter and 9^th largest importer. Its currency is the Hong Kong dollar, the 8^th most traded currency globally.

The Britishers colonized Hong Kong before 1997. Hong Kong is controlled by China now but with more rights than other parts of China.

Being a part of China but still having more freedom and authority came with many challenges to Chinese institutions. Hong Kong has freer media, opposition parties, and legal and political protests. 50% of the government is non-communist though the CPC (The Communist Party of China) approves the Chief Executive under the Basic Law of Hong Kong (Brown, 2017). CPC explains its policy as ‘One Country, Two Systems’ towards Hong Kong. The majority of the political freedoms were still actively agreed upon in 1997, but the continuous demand for complete political freedom challenges Chinese authorities from time to time. 

Under the basic law, the local government is comprised of three branches, these are:

Executive

Legislature

Judiciary

Executive: The Chief Executive plays an important role in imposing law and can reconsider it. Chief Executive also appoints members of the executive council and officials. Chief Executive can impose new bills and laws with the help of chief executive members of the executive council. CE can also dismiss law in critical situations. The chief executive is elected for five years and can serve two times.

Legislature: The legislative council implies the local law, approves the budget, and has the right to change the sitting chief executive.

Characteristics of Political Parties

Judiciary: The chief executive appoints the court judges under the guidance of the recommendation commission. It is a court of final appeal.

The legislature is divided into two distinct authorities to legislative power concerning the composition and methods of voting. The two authorities were formed to stop the growth and development of the political parties. The election raised the expectation of voters but still has no impact either on the formation of government or governance policies, so it creates a distance between the voters and government. It is very easy to analyze party growth and development than to provide solutions to exclude the problems. The organizational reforms frequently arise from hard bargaining among planned elites who are enlightened by power and choices instead of rationality in designing the constitution. It requires high profile design to direct all three electoral levels, the law and legislative, and the executive-legislative. Hong Kong is not an anomaly in the age of political and ideological status. The history of pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong is long, where protest involvement is the most common role of non-institutional political arrangement. The declaration of Chinese economic and cultural force takes charge of the growth of democracy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. This declaration shows the two main positions of Hong Kong. The one shows the pro-democracy, whereas the other one shows the pro-establishment. The pro-democracy camp was filled with parties and lawmakers, activists, and civil society groups that stood to save the rules and regulations (Ho, 2020).

On the other hand, the pro-establishment camp comprises pro-Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and the professional interest groups, conservative business groups, townships groups, and Beijing government parties that favor stability in society and overall economic growth. The clash between Democratic and conservative activists increased as the HKSAR government and Beijing authorities liked the activists (Wang, et al., 2021). The militarization of the pro-democracy people. The militarization of the pro-democracy people is usually activated by the rise of human rights and legislative issues. One such incident was an umbrella movement in 2014 (Ortmann, 2015). When the Chinese government ruled that the representative for the election of a new CE in 2017 would be from a list pre-approved by the communist party of china (CPC), it led to widespread protest in Hong Kong. Scholarism, Occupy Central, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, and thousands of common people gathered in protest on the streets. Many carried an umbrella (a sign of passive), non-violent resistance that became an “Umbrella Revolution.” The revolution didn’t succeed after the failed conversation with the Chinese authorities (Lee, et al., 2018).

Hong Kongers protested in the year 2019 against an extradition bill that may have allowed the locals to send to mainland China, but the chief executive stopped and withdrew it (Lee, et al., 2020). The critics were afraid that this bill might ruin the regional judicial system, which increased mainland Chinese authorities’ power to target journalists, critics, NGO workers, human rights protectors, and the common people of Hong Kong (Watts, et al., 2021).

Characteristics of Pressure Groups

 Since 2003, the mainland Chinese authorities have actively increased their activities in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR); the youth population of Hong Kong thought that there might be an increase in mainlandisation. These young people protested to protect the everyday life in Hong Kong because the streets were filled with mainland Chinese tourists. The protest was against the mainlandisation of the city in politics, ideology, and society. From this point of view, the city is losing its glory by the decrease in the political values that are irregularly linked with capitalism: human rights, an independent law system, and freedom. So, the young generation separates itself from both camps (pro-democratic and pro-establishment camps) (Agur, 2021).

In 2011, Joshua Wong, a youth leader, came out to lead others to fight against the moral and national education curriculum. A group of scholars was formed, including higher secondary school and tertiary students, and successfully led a campaign to push the government to postpone the controversial curriculum of national education. At the age of 17 only, Joshua Wong gained such popularity that he made the cover of TIME magazine. As per Joshua, ‘ I am doing this for democracy for my generation and the next generation during the Occupy Central campaign in 2014 (Lee, et al., 2021). Joshua wanted self-determination for the people of Hong Kong after 2047, which is controlled by Beijing right now. The basic law of Hong Kong does not allow these things. In association with the Hong Kong Federation of Students and the other young people of Hong Kong, these students are fighting for the increased activity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Hong Kong matters.

There is no law for forming political parties in Hong Kong, so there is no legal meaning for what a political party is. The registered political parties are mostly either limited companies or societies. The business groups in Hong Kong wanted to fund the regional government in favor of financial aid. This Napo system made the business endeavors dependent on politics, enclosed business into politics, and many times controlled the government. Business groups choose to preserve capitalism and their political power in Hong Kong and their mainland market (Guo, et al., 2018). The appointment of business tycoons in the LegCo to the committee that selects the chief executive of Hong Kong indicates their direct relationship with the Chinese government.

The Communist Party of China do not control Hong Kong as they have in mainland provinces and municipalities but due to the active role of business groups who mainly hold the regional political sphere, CPC can control from Beijing. Beijing may control or interpret the Basic Law of Hong Kong (Gao, 2018).

References

Agur, C. (2021). Hong Kong and the umbrella movement. Mobile Technology and Social Transformations: Access to Knowledge in Global Contexts, 103.

Apostol, C. L., & Thompson, N. (2019). Joshua Wong—The Umbrella Movement. In Making Another World Possible. 240-241. Routledge.

Bale, T., Webb, P., & Poletti, M. (2019). Footsoldiers: Political party membership in the 21st century. Routledge.

Bernauer, T., & Caduff, L. (2004). In whose interest? Pressure group politics, economic competition and environmental regulation. Journal of Public Policy, 24(1), 99-126.

Brown, K. (2017). The communist party of China and ideology. In Critical Readings on the Communist Party of China. 4,  797-815. Brill.

Gao, X., & Shao, Q. (2018). Language policy and mass media. The Oxford handbook of language policy and planning, 299-317.

Guo, M., He, L., & Zhong, L. (2018). Business groups and corporate social responsibility: Evidence from China. Emerging Markets Review, 37, 83-97.

Ho, M. S. (2020). How protests evolve: Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement and lessons learned from the umbrella movement. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 25(1), 711-728.

Lee, F. L., & Chan, J. M. (2018). Media and protest logics in the digital era: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Oxford University Press.

Lee, F. L., Tang, G. K., Yuen, S., & Cheng, E. W. (2020). Five Demands and (Not Quite) Beyond: Claim Making and Ideology in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 53(4), 22-40.

Lee, P. S., So, C. Y., Lee, F., Leung, L., & Chan, M. (2018). Social media and political partisanship–A subaltern public sphere’s role in democracy. Telematics and Informatics, 35(7), 1949-1957.

Ortmann, S. (2015). The umbrella movement and Hong Kong’s protracted democratization process. Asian Affairs, 46(1), 32-50.

Wang, Q. J., Feng, G. F., Wang, H. J., & Chang, C. P. (2021). The impacts of democracy on innovation: Revisited evidence. Technovation, 108, 102-333.

Watts, D. J., Rothschild, D. M., & Mobius, M. (2021). Measuring the news and its impact on democracy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(15), 19-124.

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