Interest

• Interest articulation: How individuals, groups, and institutions formulate and express needs, demands, and policy preferences. Suppose the government was preparing to pass an unjust or unfair law— how could you express your dissatisfaction and try to stop the legislation?

• Interest aggregation: Is the process by which political resources are combined behind policy issues or programs. For political ideas and preferences to be converted into policy, different interests and resources must be merged and proposals packaged into alternative visions or programs that can attract broad support

Interest Aggregation

• Interest aggregation can occur in many ways

  • Individual political leaders may have a considerable personal impact

  • In some countries the armed forces perform this function

Citizen Action

• One dimension of interest articulation- what individual citizens do:

  • Voting is most common activity

  • Working with others in community ex. Creating groups

  • Direct contact with government ex. Letter writing

  • Protests or other contentious action

  • Often happens by groups that do not have direct access to government ex. Environmental group

  • Political consumerism ex. Boycott

  • Protests

    • High pressure activities that can both mobilize the public and directly pressure elites

How Citizens Participate

• Most important is elections

• Grassroot politics— people working together to address a common problem

• Activity beyond elections:

  • Many activities identified with middle-class participation in affluent societies (grassroots politics)

  • Such as feelings of efficacy and a sense of civic duty

  • Skill and confidence

  • Frequent activity found in advanced industrial democracies

  • Direct action most expressive and visible form of citizen action

    • Protests generally increases with democratization, as governments become more tolerant of dissent

• Research shows better-educated and higher social class individuals more likely to use opportunities for participation

• Those more active in articulating interests are more likely to have interests addressed by policymakers

Interest Groups

• Interest articulation can occur through action of social or political groups that represent groups of people

  • Anomic Groups: spontaneous group/flash affairs ex. Ferguson, Missouri

    • No structure or planning of the event and the people involved disperse after the protest ends

  • No associational Groups: long-standing common interests, and identities of neighbourhood, ethnicity, region, religion, occupation, or kinship. Rarely well-organized, activity is episodic/no formal organization

    • Collective action problem: Difficult to organize such groups, as those who would benefit have little incentive to organize and contribute. This is because their individual costs outweigh their expected benefits

  • Institutional Groups: formally organized, political parties, business corporations, bureaucracies, churches. Usually have designated groups or offices. Influence drawn from the strength of their primary organizational base ex. Finances

    • Non-political institutional groups can also participate in the political process

  • The military and interest representation: Depends on power

  • Associational Groups: Formal Associations. Ex. trade unions, chambers of commerce, ethnic associations (association of labour unions_

    • Motivated by a political ideology: human rights organizations, environmental groups, anti-immigration associations

Institutional Groups

• In developing societies:

  • Citizens become aware of larger collective interests; have resources and skills to work for them

  • Personal networks are regulated, limited, incorporated with broader organizations

• Institutional Groups:

  • Bureaucratic agencies and military groups are important interest aggregators

  • Government agencies may be “captured” by interest groups and used to support their demands

The Military and Interest Representation

• Military has instruments of force and organizational capacity

• Absent strong constitutional tradition, it is effective contender for power

• Major limitation in interest aggregation is that military is not designed for this-not set up to accommodate internal differences, to build compromise, to mobilize popular support, or even to communicate with social groups outside its command hierarchy

• Lack legitimacy in the international community that elections provide

• Ex. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, military regimes have been replaced by competitive party regimes

Civil Society

• A society in which people are involved in social and political interactions free of state control or regulation

• Access to free communication and information

• Global civil society associated with interconnectedness

• It is important that society’s network of interest groups creates a civil society— a society in which people are involved in social and political interactions free of state control or regulation.

  • Participation in civil society groups can socialize individuals into valuable political skills and cooperative relations.

  • People learn how to organize, express their concerns, and work with others to achieve common goals.

Interest Group Systems

• Relationship between interest groups and government policymaking institutions is important feature of political process

• Three major groupings:

  • Pluralist

  • Democratic Corporatist

  • Controlled

Pluralist Interest Group Systems

• Multiple groups represent single interest

• Group membership is voluntary, limited

• Often have loose or decentralized organizational structure

• Clear separation between interest groups and the government

• Pluralist systems tend to draw a clear line between the government and private interests, to make the government neutral and independent of organized interests, and to prevent the government from regulating or controlling private interests.

• Consequently, there may be many different interest groups clamouring for attention and government action within any given policy area.

  • For instance, not only may different social sectors (such as labor, business, and professional interests) have different groups, but there may be many labor unions or business associations within each sector

Democratic Corporatist Interest Group Systems

• Single peak association represents each societal interest

• Membership is often compulsory and universal

• Centrally organized and directs actions of members

• Groups are systematically involved in making, implementing policy

  • Such as union group

• Ex. Mexico and Brazil -). However, the trade unions and peasant associations in both countries were organized by the state during authoritarian regimes and remain closely tied to political parties or religious interests.

  • Usually these groups mobilize support for the political parties or social institutions that dominate them, and they are closely tied to the state when their party is in power

Controlled Interest Group Systems

• Single group for each social sector

• Membership is often compulsory

• Each group is hierarchically organized

• Groups are controlled by government to mobilize support for government policy

• The best examples are the traditional communist system in which the party penetrates all levels of society and controls all the associational groups that are allowed to operate.

  • For instance, less than 10 percent of the adult citizens of China belong to a union. Unions and other interest associations in China are subordinate to the Communist Party, and they are only permitted to articulate the interests of their members as long as they don't challenge the party leadership

Channels of Access

• Interest groups must reach key policymakers through channels of political access

  • Legitimate, constitutional channels of access

  • Illegitimate, coercive channels of access

  • We distinguish between constitutional, and typically legitimate, channels of access (such as the mass media, parties, legislatures, and courts) and coercive, often illegitimate, channels. By constitutional, we mean informal and formal channels that people and policymakers consider appropriate for the political system in which they live and that are compatible with the rule of law

• Legitimate:

  • Personal Connections: effective means of shaping attitudes and conveying messages ex. education, family

  • Mass Media: mobilize support, generate donations, and encouraging sympathizers to support the group

  • Political Parties: represent interests (need financial and votes)

  • Legislatures: lobby target, include making appearances before legislative committees and providing information to individual legislators

  • Government Bureaucracies: policymaking authority, or where interests are narrow and directly involve few citizens

• Protest demonstrations, strikes, and other forms of dramatic and direct pressure may be either constitutional or coercive, depending on their nature and rules of the political system

• Coercive/illegitimate

  • Feelings of relative deprivation motive people to act aggressively

  • Frustration, discontent, anger yields greater probability of collective violence

    • Riots (spontaneous)

    • Strikes/Obstructions (coordinated)

    • Political Terror Tactics (assassinations, armed attacks, mass bloodshed)

      • More likely to have negative consequences

Competitive Party Systems and Interest Aggregation

• We refer to the number of parties, and the relationships among them, as properties of the party system

• Parties are primary structures of interest aggregation

• Political parties are groups or organizations that seek to place candidates in office under their label

  • Competitive party system— build electoral support

  • Authoritarian party system — parties direct society, seek to prevent alternation in power

• History and development of parties

  • Internally created parties (their founders were politicians who already held seats in the nation assembly or other political offices)

  • Externally created parties (they first organizes outside government and legislatures)

• Stable party families: Social Democrats, Conservatives, Christian Democrats, Nationalists, Liberals, etc.

• Party systems of democratic countries show stability

• Two-party systems are not exactly alike

  • differences emerge due to various factors, including electoral systems

Elections

• The role of competitive parties in interest aggregation depends not only on the individual party but also on the structure of parties, electorates, electoral laws, and policymaking institutions.

• Typically, interest aggregation in a competitive party system occurs at several stages:

  • within the individual parties, as the party chooses candidates and adopts policy proposals; through electoral competition; and after the election, through bargaining and coalition building with other parties in the legislature or with the executive

• In democracies, elections are important to parties:

  • Determine whether they survive

  • Voting is simplest and most frequently performed political act

  • Citizens make collective decisions about future leaders and policies

  • Elections aggregate diverse concerns into collective decision

• Autocrats often manipulate elections to legitimize their government

Electoral Systems

• Rules by which elections are conducted

  • Determine who can vote, how people vote, how votes get counted

  • Single-member district plurality (SMDP) election rule

    • First past the post — only to finish ahead of any of the others but need not win a majority of votes

    • Variation on this is majority runoff system

  • Proportional representation (PR)

    • the country is divided into a few large districts which votes for candidates

    • if a party receives 10 percent of the votes, then it gets 10 percent of the legislative seats

  • Primary elections

    • SMD elections: party officials select candidates

    • Proportional representation elections: party draws up list of candidates

Patterns of Electoral Competition

• Duverger’s law: single-member districts create 2-party systems

  • Mechanical effect- 3rd parties don't win

  • Psychological effect- voters anticipate mechanical effect

  • Strategic voting- support given to avoid worse situation

• Anthony Downs

  • 2-party systems: centrist pull or “convergence”

    • Parties are interested only in winning elections, and that all voters will choose the party that positions itself closest to their own policy preferences. The parties will moderate their policies so as to try to win the support of the median voter

      • Median voter result: target the centre of the electorate

• Effective number of parties

Competitive Parties in Government

• Ability to implement policies is determined by nature of electoral outcome

• Winning control of legislature and executive

• Coalition governments: a group of parties may join forces, agree to coordinate their election campaigns, or agree to govern together if they jointly win a parliamentary majority

• Aggregation of interests at executive level rather than electoral can have costs and benefits

Cooperation & Conflict in Competitive Party Systems

• Majoritarian two-party systems:

  • Dominated by two parties (U.S)

  • Have two dominant parties and election laws that create legislative majorities for one (Britain)

• Majority-coalition systems:

  • Establish pre-elected coalitions so voters know which parties will work together to form government

• Multiparty systems:

  • Election laws and party systems that ensure no single party wins legislative majority

  • No tradition of pre-election coalitions

• The degree of antagonism or polarization among the parties is another important party system characteristic

• Consensual party system:

  • Parties are not far apart on policies and trust each other and political system

  • Bargaining may be intense, but seldom conflictual

• Conflictual party system:

  • Parties are far apart on policies and are antagonistic toward each other and political system

• Consociational (accommodative) party system:

  • Some party systems have both consensual and conflictual features ex. Lebanon or South Africa

• Number of party effects political stability

Authoritarian Party Systems

• Can also aggregate interests

• Aggregation takes place within party or interactions with groups

• Exclusive governing party— which recognizes no legitimate interest aggregation by groups outside the party. Nor does it permit any free activity, much less opposition, from interest groups, citizens, or other government agencies

• Inclusive governing party— which recognizes and accepts at least some other groups and organizations, but may repress those that it sees as serious challenges to its own control

  • Authoritarian corporatist system: encourages interests but gives them no power

    • suppress independent protest and political activity outside of official channels

  • Electoral authoritarianism: facade of democracy providing “some space for political opposition, independent media, and social organizations that do not seriously criticize or challenge the regime”

  • In authoritarian party systems, aggregation takes place within the party or in interactions with business groups, unions, landowners, and institutional groups in the bureaucracy or military

The Significance of Interest Representation

• How interests are aggregated is important determinant of what government does for and to citizens

• Democratic countries’ competitive party systems narrow down and combine policy preferences

• Noncompetitive party systems, military governments, monarchies— aggregation works differently, but with similar effect of narrowing policy options

• Aggregation ultimately affects government’s adaptability and stability