Agenda

1
Agenda

• Discussion of In-Class Essays
• Note Second In-Class Essay this Friday!
• More Actors What do they do? How? Why do they do
  it?
• Bureaucracies
• Interest Groups
• Social Movements

2
In-Class Essays

• How to Improve Your Performance
• Answer the question
• Re-read and revise your essay in class
• Use your notes and texts
• Think carefully
• One point extra credit for taking one of the
  first two essays to the writing lab and handing
  in a revised version. Max two pts.

3
Writing Lab

• Free service
• Everyone needs and editor
• 226 Heavilon Hall
• 494-3723
• http//owl.english.purdue.edu

4
Bureaucratic Policy Making

• What are the advantages of bureaucratic
  policymaking?
• Administrators make policy on the ground, close
  to/knowledgeable about consequences
• can develop responses to problems as they
  develop longer term perspective
• specialization(increasing need for expertise)
• coordination

5
The Dark Side of Bureaucracy

• Rigidity and Homogeneity (Iron Cage(Max
  Weber)/Red Tape)
• Agency Capture
• Fragmentation
• Too much distance from clients
• Bureaucratic momentum(focus on agency itself)/ego
  of bureaucrats

6
Interest Groups

• What is an interest group? Examples?
• Interest Group is generally used to refer to the
  organized means/creation of organizations by
  which individuals, businesses and private groups
  try to influence policy/government.
• What do interest groups do?
• Lobby
• Influence public opinion (advertisements, etc)

7
Interest Groups

• What is good about interest groups?
• Clarifying and Articulating What Citizens Want
• Helping set Agenda (Squeaky wheel)
• Monitoring governance (env. groups)
• Interactive Problem Solving
• Coalition building
• Critical mode of participation?- civil society

8
Interest Groups The Dark Side

• Influence not equally distributed
• upper class accent(Schattschneider)
• Subordination of Common to Segmented Interests ?
  
• (Does it depend on group? Self-Interest or
  Justice)
• Too Much Access? (unelected people)

9
Social Movements

• What is a social movement? Examples?
• a form of political mobilization in which
  membership and action is based on claims of
  justice
• How do social movements affect politics?
• Protest
• Cultural politics (magazines)
• Everyday politics
• Professional politics/lobbying (SMOs)

10
What is Good about SMs?

• Voice for excluded
• Expand participation to new groups
• watchdogs
• transform society
• difficulty to coopt
• not self-interested
• An avenue for participation/representation?

11
Social Movements The Dark Side

• Informal organization/fuzzy lines of
  accountability and authorization
• Time commitment makes this avenue inaccessible to
  some
• Ideological purity/impractical/ unwilling to
  compromise
• May refuse to form coalitions

12
Conclusion

• Insider Politics (Bureaucrats and Interest
  Groups) vs. Outsider Politics (SM)
• Self-interested model of politics versus vision
  of politics as discussion of justice
• Mechanisms of participation, representation and
  coordination have advantages and disadvantages
  Which areas are most promising? Which most need
  reform?

13
Social Movements vs. Interest Groups

• Goals Changing Policy Versus Changing the world
• Tactics Insider Tactics versus Broader tactics
  of disruption, protest, everyday politics
• Form of organization Formal vs.Informal