Chapters 11, 6-7

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Unit 5�Interest Groups

1. Interest Groups are groups of persons or businesses who have a common goal of making the political system change public policy. The change in policy is aimed at helping the members of the group.
• EXAMPLES
• NRA – National Rifle Association
• A.A.R.P. – American Association of Retired Persons
• Any combination of manufacturers
• 1. The American Home Builders Association
• 2. The American Automobile Manufacturers Association
• 3. Groups of professionals – teachers, lawyers, doctors
• a. Teachers – National Education Association
• b. Lawyers – American Bar Association
• c. Doctors – American Medical Association
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1. Note: Interest groups (special interests often have names which are designed to disguise the purpose of the group – e.g. Citizens for Legal Reform – a group of manufacturers trying to limit damage suits.
2. Pluralism – any political system which allows:
1. Interrelationships of interest groups and government
2. Who are separate from, and independent of any government control,
3. Who operate from outside the system
4. Through access points of the system to affect public policy

IV. The Politics of Faction is Interest Group Politics

A. The main concern is whether interest groups are putting their group interest over that of the country.

B. All interest groups claim to speak for the benefit of the entire country while just speaking for themselves.

C. Is the power of the individual vote being manipulated by the power of the special interest?

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1. Buckley v. Valeo
1. The Court upheld FECA but declared unconstitutional on the grounds of free speech that section which limited spending on behalf of a candidate
2. Money cannot be given to a candidate but spent independently for advertising for a candidate. This money cannot be limited because it would restrict free speech.

1. The Consequences

1973 ---- there were no PACS

1974 ---- 74 PACS

1980 ---- 954 PACS

1982 ---- 3500 PACS

1988 ---- 4000 PACS

1982

• Corporations ---- $47 mil
• Trade associations ---- $43 mil
• Labor ---- $37 mil
• Ideological ----$64

1978 -- $54 mil in PAC contributions to House and Senate candidates

1986 -- $132 “ “ “ “

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1. The Effects of PACS
1. PAC monies are concentrated on incumbents
2. Candidates claim this special interest money should be done away with – obviously they don’t want to because we still have it
3. The only way to rid Congress of PAC money is to public finance Congressional elections and limit spending just as for Presidential elections – Congress has killed every attempt at reform.
4. MOST PAC MONEY GOES TO THE HEADS OF COMMITTEES
5. 107^th Congress – 2001-2001
1. The House: All committees are headed by Republicans
2. The Senate: Committees are evenly divided because of 50/50 split
6. PACS can work either in the open or behind the scenes
7. Challengers are sometimes funded by PAC’s if the incumbent is an enemy, or the PAC isn’t sure who will win
8. Challengers are sometimes funded by PAC’s if the incumbent in an enemy, or the PAC isn’t sure who will win
9. Some PAC’s based on group interest:
• US Chamber of Commerce – business
• Savings and Loan Industry
• US banking Industry
• The Edison Institute - The electrical power industry
1. The atomic energy industry – don’t count them out; the Greenhouse effect
• The Sierra Club – the environment
• COPE – labor unions
• American Federation of Teachers – educators
• Ideological PACS – Moral Majority, NCPAC, GOPAC, Christian Coalition
• Public Interest Groups – Common cause
• You name it they got a PAC for it

1. How effective are Interest?
1. Factors:
1. Overlapping memberships
2. Crisscrossing interests
3. Cohesion
1. Formal leaders
2. Activists
3. Free riders – members in name only
4. Money
5. Issues – mass member single issue groups: AARP’s, NRA
2. The Techniques of Interest Groups
• Lobbying
• Persuasion – propaganda
• Litigation – amicus curiae briefs – the friend of the court brief
• Rule Making – attempting to sway the regulations that regulatory agencies make and enforce.
• Election Activities
• Canvasing
• Telephones
• Fund Raising
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1. Possible System Bias
1. Pluralist systems could violate majoritarianism
1. Interest groups could be more important than a majority of individual voters
2. The poor don’t generally belong to interest groups and don’t have money to influence policy makers
1. They are represented by groups who have the poors’ interests as their goal
1. The Children’s Defense Fund
2. Reform?
• Public financing of Congressional elections
• Ending soft money contributions
• Further limitations on contributions
• Subsidizing political advertising (the reason modern campaigns are so expensive

Unit 6�Movement Politics

1. The Difference b/w Group and Movement Politics
1. Groups work within the system – movements work outside the system
1. Movements are frustrated by the system
2. Don’t trust the system
3. Try to change the system by using pressure from outside
4. They attempt to sway public opinion to their cause
5. Therefore they tend to try to make issues moralistic (the Christian Coalition is a religious right movement…SCLC, NAACP)
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B. Groups use transactional techniques in getting what they want

1. movements are transformational in techniques – they sometimes want to change the system

a. The Native American Movement

b. The Women’s Movement

c. The Civil Rights Movement

d. The Perot Movement – United We Stand America now The Reform Party

e. Third Party Candidates tend to be ideological – McCarthy – anti- war movement

f. Movements are sometimes conflictual in technique

g. In the U.S., conflictual movement politics is dangerous because the message is overshadowed by technique

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1. Techniques of Movements
1. Marches
2. Petitions
3. Rallies
4. Concerts – you can’t tell anything about the numbers and supporters
5. Sit-ins
6. Sit down strikes
7. Non-violent disruptions – chaining together
8. Use of spokespersons – Hollywood – Redford and Sierra Club and environmental movement

Political Socialization and Public Opinion

1. The Agents of Political Socialization
1. Family
1. Greatest single determining factor for party and ideology
2. Birth and family upbringing usually determines religion, ideology, and party
3. Religions formally socialize better than parties – Sunday school, Bible School; Parties don’t have schools
2. Schools
• Concentrate on indoctrination and citizenship
• Colleges teach opposing values to stimulate critical thinking and challenge held views
• Teachers have little effect on previous held beliefs even in college

1. Ideology and/or religion often linked; from family and church teachings
1. Positions on abortion
2. Positions on gay marriage
2. Job
• The type of employment could strongly affect party affiliation
1. Blue collar labor – democrat
2. Medical doctors – republican
3. Teachers – democrat
4. Business persons – republican
3. Level of Education
• The more education, the more liberal, until more money is earned, which could cause higher taxes, resulting in conservatism
4. Race
• Affiliation based on freedom-equality issues and socioeconomic condition
• African American: overwhelmingly vote democrat
1. Over 90% voted democrat in 2000
5. Ethnicity
• Differences among European ethnic groups have disappeared
• Cubans affiliate with Republicans
• Republicans appear more anti-Castro
• Other Hispanics affiliate with democrats
• Socio-economic and freedom-equality issues

1. Religion
1. Protestants tend to be more conservative than Catholics who tend to be more conservative than Jews
2. Gender
• Women tend to be more liberal
1. They favor government action to promote equality and spending for social programs
3. Regions
• Northeast, Great Lakes states and West Cost tends to be more liberal and democratic than the Mid West and South
4. Crisscrossing Interests
• Multiple influences on voters tend to blur clear differences.

1. Characteristics of Public Opinion
1. INTENSITY – strong reaction, e.g., crime, abortion
2. LATENCY – doesn’t effect you now but it could in the future, e.g., loss of your job
3. SALIENCE – effects you personally
4. CONSENSUS – most people agree – need about 75% to make this claim
5. POLARIZATION – splits public opinion; cannot get compromise; abortion
6. STABILITY – public opinion remains the same
7. FLUIDITY – public opinion is changing
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1. Polling
1. Exit Polls
1. Questioned right after voting
2. Census Tracks
• Questioning targeted groups
3. Universal Polls
• Questioning everyone
4. Sampling
• Questioning a representative cross section
5. Random Samples
• Questioning a cross section of a targeted group (18-24 year old voters)
6. Sampling Errors
7. Accuracy and Questioning
2. Election Patterns (Election Patterns measured over time)
• Coattail Effect
• Maintaining Elections
• Pattern of party control remains the same
• Critical Election
• A shift in a specific election year of party control at ALL levels of government
• Deviating Elections
• The other party briefly gains control until the next election
• Realigning elections
• A shift in coalitions which make up the 2 major parties resulting in a long term change of party control of all levels of government, local, state, national
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1. Group factors in voting
1. Reinforcement
2. Cross pressuring – crisscrossing patterns
3. Party
4. Class, occupation, income
5. Religion
6. Gender
7. Race/ethnicity
8. age

Unit 8�The Media

1. Media – two kinds:
1. Print: magazines and newspapers
1. In decline since the 1960s because of radio and TV
2. Highest daily circulation newspapers
1. Wall Street Journal (national distribution): 1.8 mil.
2. USA Today (national distribution): 1.6 mil
3. New York Times (considered top newspaper in country): 1 mil
4. National Enquirer (weekly): 2.6 mil

1. Electronic – cable, satellite, broadcast (free), radio and TV, the Internet
1. Radio
1. Left and right talk radio shows polarize political issues by broadcasting extreme positions
2. TV
• Claims larger audience
• Engenders salience for major issues
3. Internet
• A vast warehouse of political information
• Unclear evidence yet that many use net for political information; in 1996 only 3% used net for presidential election information

1. Ownership
1. In totalitarian systems all media is government owned and operated (China)
1. Used as an organ of state power to socialize
2. Information is censored to manipulate mass public opinion
1. Chinese papers claimed 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre never happened
2. In western democracies (Europe) print is privately owned and electronic is either privately owned or there is a mix of private and public ownership
3. In the US the only public electronic media is Public Radio and Television with their affiliated local stations
• Conservatives want to end public electronic media
• All US electronic media requires licensing and must follow rules set by Congress and Federal Communications Commission
• Assigning station broadcast frequencies and power ratings
• No obscene language
4. The impact of private ownership
• More freedom
• Reliance on advertising for profits
• Ratings (audience share) determines profitability
• Could result in an audience or advertiser induced censorship
• News, advertising, and entertainment are intertwined – entertainment increases audience
• Newsworthiness is often determined b audience appeal
• The bigger the audience the more the advertising rates
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1. All Media lives off of profits – profits rely on Audience Ratings – ratings determine how much audience share for programming therefore how much can be charged
2. Regulation of Content
1. One of the most difficult of all legal standards for a plaintiff to make
2. Prior restraint
1. To censure before publication because of irreparable harm
1. Secrets during wartime or a national emergency
2. Rarely granted
3. The first amendment is preferred
• If there is a conflict with other constitutional protections the first will prevail
4. Broadcasting in the national interest
• Equal opportunities rule
• If broadcast time to one candidate, station must offer time to others
• Reasonable Access Rule
• Access for responsible persons with conflicting points of view
• Access is what is required not free time
• Fairness Doctrine repealed under the Reagan administration
• Mandated broadcasters to provide all views of public issues.
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1. Implicit and Explicit Messages
1. What constitutes social order
2. Is the national news homogenizing political agenda
2. The Media Coverage of National Politics
• Institutional Coverage
1. Presidential Press Secretary (part of the Office of the White House) gives daily news conferences
2. C-SPAN coverage of Congress
• Coverage of Political Campaigns
• Elections covered as horse races
1. Contests b/w individuals not between parties and policies
2. Excessive use of polling to determine daily standings (whose ahead?)
3. Political Effects of the Media – The Limiting effects of the media
• Reinforcement
• Supporting positions already held
• Filtering
• Audience’s values determine whether to agree or disagree with policy positions reported (the effects of political socialization)
• Selective Perception
• The interpretation of messages so that they agree with already held beliefs
• Selective Exposure
• Screening out those messages disagreed with

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1. The Media Seems to Have Little Effect on Policy Preferences
1. They are only reporting what is already going on
2. The new data contradicts what was previously thought about the media determining the outcome of elections and reporters influencing events
3. Modern campaigns require use of the electronic media
1. Very expensive
2. Candidates place heavy emphasis on raising money
1. Requires PAC money with the potential for corruption
3. Can cause electronic “disconnect” between candidates and electorate
4. Agenda Setting
• What’s important and what’s not
5. Issue Framing
• How issues are discussed affects the outcome
• Abortion is murder
• Abortion is the right of free choice over one’s body without politicians becoming involved
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1. Use of the Media
1. Leaks to change public attitudes
2. Leaks because of disagreement over policy
3. Sensationalization because of ratings
4. The use of talking heads – academics, media consultants, opinion leaders
5. Free media coverage for making news
6. Use of the media by President in news conferences and speeches, the oval office as a bully pulpit
7. Photo opportunities
8. Spin doctors
9. Direct face to face communication has more impact than TV filtering
1. Time slots
2. Lead-off stories
3. Story line