KJ

  • 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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