Pressure politics 105political system. First, there must be a broad consensus of agreement about
the basis and aims of the society so that no group will attempt to force its
views upon the rest to the point where civil war might ensue. As we have
seen, this consensus is one of the characteristic features of the American ide-
ological scene. Second, there must be a set of political mechanisms through
which inter-group bargaining can be conducted in such a way that some sort
of equilibrium can be attained between the competing demands. Perhaps the
first requirement of this system of government is that it should be flexible.
The pattern of demands is continually changing as new economic, social and
military developments take place, and a stable political system must be able
to accommodate them. Changing group aspirations, such as those of blacks
and other minority groups today, will disturb the established distribution of
authority or wealth, and a new position of equilibrium, a new compromise,
must be attained, a new bargain struck. This flexibility, the ability to adapt
to changing circumstances, is one of the outstanding characteristics of the
American political system, in contradiction to the oft-laboured clichés about
the inflexibility of the American constitution.
This description of the working of the political system undoubtedly over-
emphasises the pluralistic features of American government, certainly fail-
ing to give sufficient weight to the policy-making functions of the presidency.
Nevertheless, it is by no means negligible as an explanation of the general
working of American politics. As we shall see, on many issues the Congress
of the United States becomes something of a marketplace in which the pres-
sures of party, constituency and interested groups, including in the last cat-
egory departments of the federal administration, are assessed, balanced and
reconciled to produce compromises that seem in the eyes of the members
of the legislature to be as satisfactory as possible to the interests involved.
Given the diversity of American society, these interests can be effectively
represented only by a wide variety of competing groups with overlapping
membership. This last consideration, the way in which the membership of
different groups overlaps, is an important factor in the operation of group
bargaining, making the processes of the reconciliation of competing demands
far easier than if the groups concerned were ossified into completely distinct
and separate sections of the community.
The flexibility of the political system flows to a considerable extent, there-
fore, from the way in which interest groups work the cumbrous machinery
of American government. The constitutional devices of federalism and the
separation of powers, which together serve to decentralise both the govern-
ment and the parties geographically, and to disintegrate them vertically, cre-
ate the conditions in which interest groups can flourish and indeed become
essential to the operation of government. Interest groups, unlike political
parties, are not bound to particular geographical constituencies. They can
organise themselves across states or sections, or across the whole nation.
They can adopt a unitary or a federal structure, as circumstances demand. A
retail drug-store owner in a small Southern town can ally himself with fellow