Linkage institution- a place that links you to the policy-making institution

• Political parties- broad-based 
• Elections
• Media
• Special interest groups
• Because of winner take all- why there’s a 2 party system
• Third parties do not amount to anything- they can keep one of the major parties from winning, issue co-option, restrictive ballot access rules 

Interest groups- a linkage institution a group of people that are organized to try to impact public policy. They do not run people for office.

• They try to impact all of the policy-making institutions 
• They send lobbyists to congress, and campaign contributions, not buying a candidate you are buying access. They can and will write a check to opposing candidates bc one of them will win and they want to access.
• Bureaucracy- send a lobbyist
• Judiciary- they file friend of the court brief, lobby the president to get a good nominee, Lobby the senate to get a nominee confirmed or denied, paying for or supporting litigation of others.  Brown v. Board of Ed. 

Iron Triangle 

• The relationship between, Intrest goruop, congressional committee, bureaucracy
• Permanent

Effectiveness of an interest group

• Free rider- a person who benefits from it but is not affected by the impact
• Access to resources
• Size of the group
• The prestige of the groups 

How interests work through political parties

• A valued constiuteancy- 

Media- tells the people what is going on in the gov. And the gov thepeople'ss opinion

• Scorekeepers- horse-race journalims- they cover who is ahead and you os ahead
• Gatekeeper- decide what going to get addressed in the political system
• Agenda setter - acts as a gatekeeper for which issues enter the political arena.
• Ex: toxins in the drinking water
• Media has focused the attention on this particular issue
  • Not talking about something else
  • Functions as a watchdog- holding the system accountable 
  • Could have gov self report but wont when it screw up
  • The media is an outside party that reports on the government to let you know what is going on
  • Bias in the media- media- means newspapers, social media, tv, satellite, cable, tv broadcast, radio -
    •  the purpose of their existence is to make money- the biggest bias in the media is profit-   
  • Narrowcasting- not going after a broad market, they are going after a small portion of it. 
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• Watchdog
  • Mismanagement
  • Self-report
  • They will not self-report if they screw up
    • Transparency where you have to have rules to make sure everything is accessible.

Is the media bias? = PROFIT

• News broadcasting channels provide service to viewers and the amount of viewers they have the more money they get.
• FOX NEWS
  • They are not going to show viewers things they don’t want to see
• Conservative oriented news
• Liberal oriented news
• Talk radio 
• USA Today
• Ideologically tends to be centered left and own other newspapers that have a conservative.

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