Buying off pressure groups

Compensating vested interests

Description

Buying off pressure groups involves providing concessions, financial incentives, or policy adjustments to organized interest groups in order to neutralize their opposition or gain their support. This strategy aims to resolve conflicts, reduce public dissent, and facilitate the implementation of policies by addressing the immediate concerns of influential stakeholders, thereby minimizing obstacles to decision-making and maintaining social or political stability.

Context

Buying off pressure groups and vested interests differs from straightforward compensation of those penalized by reform processes. It is a way of overcoming obstacles to change in an overtly political way.

Counter-claim

Far from softening resistance to change, this approach tends merely to channel protest into pressure on governments about who should get the most compensation.