Groups use various methods to try to achieve their aims including lobbying, media campaigns, publicity stunts, polls, research, and policy briefings.
In February 2003, millions took to the streets as part of the Stop the War Coalition's efforts to persuade the government not to deploy US forces in Iraq.
The Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force also distributed an "Update Call to Action", urging people to make telephone calls to state officials and write letters in support of education reform, revising state education policies and encouraging lawmakers to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected rights under the Pennsylvania Civil Rights Initiative.
[1] Following concerns over a proposed ban on hunting with dogs and lack of concern for rural issues, in 2002 the Countryside Alliance organised "the march for Liberty and Livelihood", which allegedly attracted over 400,000 people (including the Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith) and attracted supporters from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States and across Europe.
[5] This supports the view that groups with greater financial resources at their disposal will generally be better able to influence the decision-making process of government.
According to George Monbiot, the influence of big business has been strengthened by "the greater ease with which corporations can relocate production and investment in a global economy".
[6] This suggests that in the ever modernising world, big business has an increasing role in influencing the bureaucracy and in turn, the decision-making process of government.
[3] In the British cash-for-questions affair, which began when The Guardian newspaper alleged that London's most successful parliamentary lobbyist,[7] Ian Greer of Ian Greer Associates, had bribed two Conservative Members of Parliament in exchange for asking parliamentary questions, and other tasks, on behalf of the Egyptian owner of Harrods department store, Mohamed Al-Fayed.
As a result of group pressure from the NAACP, the supreme court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in education was indeed unconstitutional and such practices were banned.
The premise of direct group action stems from the concept that traditional methods of influencing government policy are flawed, and that more direct protests, acts of civil disobedience and (in more extreme cases) illegal acts and violence may offer the best opportunity of group success, as they captivate media attention.