The main difference between interest groups operating within a party and interest groups negotiating in Parliament is party discipline.
Interest groups negotiating within a party to form an intra-party coalition generally do things in private. When you have parties that owe their existence in the House of Commons to a very specific and, let's say, narrow agenda, everybody knows what that particular party will want, and they will therefore be looking to the larger party, whatever it is, to see how great a concession the larger party will make to the smaller one. That's the difference in the style of negotiation that goes on.
That's important for two reasons. There's always going to be discontent in the electorate, and there's always going to be discontent within big-tent parties, but there are not always solutions to these discontents. The point of party discipline is that it's able to stifle what you might call irrational discontents, people wanting things that are impossible or unlikely or contentious.
Smaller parties are composed of, let's say, true believers who are less willing to compromise and who are not subject to party discipline. They have no reason to compromise. We've seen this most obviously in the United States in the last 15 or 20 years, but I think it's also true in Ottawa.
Compromise is not a bad thing—