Term
| What are the characteristics of interest groups? |
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Definition
1. The purpose of the organizations is to influence public policy.
2. They contribute money and provide information:
• Policy information: information about a particular policy.
• Political information: how the public will react to a particular policy, who cares and who does not.
3. Political parties are generalists vs. Interest groups are specialists.
• No interest groups serves to represent the American values, but they exist to pursue policies. They want benefits from the government. |
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Term
| What are the influences on interest groups? |
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Definition
| Latent interests that exists because of interests group. Law of large, disparate numbers and diffused interests. |
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Term
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Definition
A public risk is a risk for the collective, which creates an incentive to work because the public would be harmed.
• The domain of public risk is the economy, where the private sector has incentive to free ride.
• Collective action problems are a public risk, ways to solve:
1. Incentives such as money or goods.
2. Coercion. |
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Term
| What does Mancur Olson say about collective action problems? |
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Definition
| Large groups for public goods will not form absent selective incentives or coercion → a “by-product” theory aptly describes the provision of public goods in these larger groups. |
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Term
| What does the exchange theory of interest groups state? |
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Definition
Robert Salisbury states that large groups do form. Organizers can be viewed as entrepreneurs offering mixes of benefits to rank-and-file members. Groups can only succeed if the return on investment is large enough for the group organizers.
• Success > Cost of participation |
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Term
| What kind of benefits to organizers offer as an incentive to get people to join a particular interest group? |
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Definition
Organizers offer some mix of solidary, material, and purposive benefits.
1. Material: money or something of that kind.
2. Solidary: benefits you derive from engaging with like-minded people.
3. Purposive: believing in the cost, it exist regardless if you participate with others or not. |
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Term
| What does pluralism, as a theory of interest groups and group influence, state? |
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Definition
Pluralism (and hyperpluralism) → extend the Republic, roots in Madisonian framework of government.
1. The job of government is to represent groups.
2. Groups represent interests in society.
3. By representing these groups, government promotes competition among the groups.
4. Groups compete and moderate one another.
5. This leads to moderate policy.
6. The policies benefit the general public, because not everyone gets what they want. |
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Term
| What does the elite and class theory state about interest groups and their influence? |
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Definition
Elite and class theory: Wealthy and educate elite controls politics, not by telling people what to do, by structuring the agenda.
• They determine the range of alternatives presented, which will benefit them, no matter what is chosen. |
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Term
| What does Theodore Lowi states about interest group liberalism? |
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Definition
1. All relevant interests can be presented.
2. These interests must compete, if they do not then policy will be biased.
3. Groups should stay out of each others way and avoid conflict or both subsystems lose control. |
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Term
| What does Mark Smith states about business and public opinion? |
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Definition
When the majority of businesses align against the public, the public wins because the issues that businesses are united on are the issue that the public is most salient on.
• Businesses operate through the public by molding public opinion, but do not have the ability to move public opinion. |
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Term
| What role does media play and how has it changed? |
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Definition
The news media is how citizens get information and aids in the development of an individual's opinion. → comes from the associative press.
•The media has changed from a party model to a business model of the media, never has it been a watchdog for democracy.
1. 1800s, news was based on a party model. A paper that will lean slightly left and another that leans slightly right, this model left along with patronage.
2. Business model: newspapers exist to make a profit. Media is not overall biased, its middle-of-the-role concept captures more consumers, therefore there is more profit. |
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Term
| What is the relationship between the government and the media? |
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Definition
Government institutions use the media to communicate to citizens, as well as gain information. The way government molds citizens behavior or if it wants to dispense information is done through the news.
• Politicians and reporters are interdependent (politicians set the content and use it to get information to citizens, journalists decide what’s interesting mostly on the basis on what will sell) → Politicians depend on journalists to educate the public on politics. Journalists depend on politicians to give them stories. |
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Term
| What does the media focus on? |
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Definition
| The focus is on individuals and the conflict between them, rather than policy issues and institutional process → if it doesn’t sell stories, it is not printed. This allows the media to construct a narrative over several days, weeks, or even months → a story is increasingly less costly to produce. |
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Term
| What is Max McCombs' theory on media? |
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Definition
| The media agenda setting theory states that media tells citizens what to think about, and thus, how to evaluate political candidates and government performance. NOT how to think. The media sets the agenda for the public and can alter public opinion. |
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Term
| What is Lance Bennett's theory on media? |
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Definition
| The indexing theory states that media indexes coverage to conflict among political actors. If there is not conflict, media does not report anything. Government officials determine the news. → This is good for the public, but the downside is that if both parties agree on an issue, the media will NOT cover it. |
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Term
| What is Michelle Wolfe's theory on media? |
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Definition
| The agenda negotiation theory states that both institutions co-evolved and are dependent on the other, knowledge of one institution constrains and influences actors within the other. The result is that agenda setting is a negotiated process, and that the media influential in the maintenance of the agenda over time. |
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Term
| What role do parties play in the electorate level? |
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Definition
Political parties organize citizens for political action.
○ Party image: perception of what D and R stand for.o
○ Party identification: a citizen's proclamation of which party they side with.
○ Relies on patronage, which was revived when Jimmy Carter took office, and responsive competence. Loyalty > Competence.
○ Platforms and campaigns: politicians generally do what they say they will do. They attempt what they say they will do, but it is not a guarantee they will get it done.
○ Media is the link on what politicians say they will do and what they actually get done. |
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Term
| What role do parties play as an organization? |
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Definition
Organizational strength has relocated from cities to counties because of the suburbs.
• Parties aggregate interests in society – and by doing so, moderate these interests. Parties serve a democratic function by moderating the bias that exists in modernize groups, they are generalists.
○ Primaries: closed (must be registered with the party), open (voters decide on election day), and blanket (voters get to vote for anyone).
○ In primaries, an individual votes in isolation vs. In a caucus, leaders will sway the way voters choose, vote is NOT independent. |
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Term
| What role do parties play in the government? |
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Definition
Parties organize members for action in the three branches of government. They exists to overcome collective action problems in government. Parties provide the glue that holds three distinct branches that would normally have nothing to do with one another.
○ Parties organize the institutions of government. Political actors look to the parties first for direction and for signals and cues on how to behave. Party elites represent the party itself, they are people who are both in government and who also occupy positions within the organization. |
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Term
| What is the difference between the American and European political parties? |
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Definition
In Europe, they have proportional representation. 5% → 5 seats. In comparison, the US has had a plurality system for electing, this means that there will never be a third party and they are representative of change in citizen preference.
○ PR is representative of mean preferences, but if the electorate changes preferences, the parties do NOT change. In the US, parties are representative and are sensitive of public opinion.
• Europe → mean preferences
• US → preference change |
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Term
| What is public opinion made of? |
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Definition
1. Identity: who you are.
2. Geography: where you're from.
3. Ideology: a coherent set of values and beliefs that organizes thinking about politics and public policies. In the US, ideology is NOT fixed, which means it does not necessarily tell you how an individual thinks about certain policies.
4. Opinion requires a reference, which is usually public policies, but can be political figures. |
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Term
| What is the online processing of political and policy information theory on public opinion state? |
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Definition
Citizen updates beliefs about policy and politics based on incoming information → Change vs. Rationality: update beliefs or use new information to rationalize beliefs they have already held.
• Evaluating politics and policies → Change.
• Citizens do not matter in politics and policy makers will not pay attention to them, if there is no variation then the system cannot respond → Rationality |
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Term
| What is the thermostatic model of public opinion? |
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Definition
citizens’ experience with policies induce opinion change through time, they also have a range of acquiescence, the policies of government have to exceed or fall some threshold before the public responds.
• Thermostat works on negative feedback.
• Parties are always more extreme than their members and push policies beyond what is acceptable, causing the public to respond.
• Policies vs. Performances → If government executes a policy poorly, it does not mean the policy was bad, it could be an implementation problem. |
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Term
| What is the attitude change and opinion instability theory on public opinion? |
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Definition
citizens’ preferences are dependent on available “considerations” in his/her head at any given point in time
• This means that opinion is random and therefore not influential or implies that opinion is highly maniple.
• Public opinion is based on recall and molded by elites. |
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Term
| What is the rational policy theory of public opinion? |
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Definition
| citizens’ opinions are responsive and rational or correct across the broad spectrum of the American public; people who are not paying attention become statistical errors and they do not matter. |
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Term
| What are the stages of policy process? |
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Definition
1. Problem identification.
2. Agenda Setting: which problems are selected for attention.
o Public agenda → what citizens think is important.
o Governmental agenda → government selects among the issues on the public agenda on which it will actually address.
3. Formulation: must formulate solutions to problems that made it onto the agenda.
4. Implementation: solutions don’t implement themselves.
5. Evaluation: must evaluate the performance of the solutions and start over. |
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Term
| What are the theories of policy change? |
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Definition
1. Garbage can model
2. Incrementalism
3. Punctuated Equilibrium
4. Advocacy Coalition Framework
5. Institutional Rational Choice
6. Path Dependance |
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Term
| What are the three streams of the garbage can model? |
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Definition
1. Problems Stream: conditions which must meet both technically feasibility and value acceptability → public opinion is random.
o People advocate government to pay attention to these problems, the problems may not be REAL problems.
2. Policies/Solution Stream: There is no link between the solution and the problem, problems and solution exist independently of one another.
3. Politics Stream:
o Policy entrepreneurs play a vital role: they support policies, problems, or both.
o Policy windows: both external events and created from within.
• Major policy change occurs when these streams are coupled, where change is not rational and predictive. |
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Term
| What is the incrementalism theory? |
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Definition
It is developed as a theory of the budgeting process and states that policy change occurs slowly and a little bit at a time.
• As a theory of budgeting, base and fair share is central. → A standard amount (base). Asking for a proportion, a base plus a fair increase (fair share).
• An institutional norm.
• Budgeting was also consensual, meaning that there's a general agreement on the overall direction of policy.
• Incrementalism and budgeting were processes of satisficing; decisions were too complex to allow for comprehensive rationality.
• Every organization has slack, very important in accordance to incrementalism, slack buffers an organization and its clients from drastic changes in policy. |
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