INTEREST GROUPS AND PARTIES · Web viewThere was a quote from Mario Cuomo, he was the mayor of...

INTEREST GROUPS AND PARTIES

Slide 1

Text: America and Arizona Government for Elementary Teachers

Presentation 17: Interest Groups and Parties

Audio: Welcome to America and Arizona Government for Elementary Teachers. This is presentation 17, "Interest Groups and Parties." This presentation looks at how people can work together to achieve their goals and attain their political ends. In last presentation, we talked about public opinion and political socialization and where preferences come from. We now look at how people with like-minded ideas or similar preferences work together to be effective. Political scientists call this "aggregating preferences." And the success or failure of a group in aggregating their preferences and translating those preferences into policy can explain a lot of politics. In this presentation, we'll look at interest groups first, and then political parties. And what we'll find is that in function, they're quite similar to each other.

Slide 2

Text: Presentation Objectives

AEPA Objectives0006 Understand various governmental systems0013 Understand the development of political parties in the United States

AZ Social Studies Standard, Strand 3Concept 4: Rights, Responsibilities, and Roles of Citizenship

Audio: This presentation will focus on concepts contained in the AEPA Objective 6, Understand Various Governmental Systems and 13, Understand the Development of Political Parties in the United States. We'll also look at Arizona Social Studies Standards, strand 3, Concept 4, the Rights, Responsibilities and Roles of Citizenship. As usual, I recommend that you look at the Social Studies Standard articulated by grade level document for strand 3, Civics and Government and look at the objectives that are listed by grade level under concept 4. After the presentation, go back and review this document and make sure that you have attained the necessary level of competence for those objectives.

Slide 3

Text: What are Interest Groups?

Any organization that seeks to influence public policy

[Image of AARP logo] [Image of National Rifle Association logo] [Image of American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio]

Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies 1


Audio: America has many interest groups operating within it. Indeed, one of the measures of the health of a democracy and of a civil society in a democracy are how many interest groups can form and the freedom that groups have to be able to form, to try to influence the public policy process. So any group that does seek to influence that policy process can be considered as an interest group. So the sample groups that I have on this slide are the National Rifle Association, which many argue is one of the most powerful political interest groups in America, the AARP, which is the American Association for Retired Persons, which is also a tremendously powerful interest group, and the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union. This also is a very active group -- not as powerful as the other two, but is constantly engaged in the public debate.

Slide 4

Text: Impact of Interest Groups

Pluralist-Competition between groups insures that no one group dominates Elitist-pluralism doesn’t work because it is the monied interests which have the loudest voice Hyper-pluralism—groups are so numerous and powerful that it is impossible to make a

coherent public policy

Audio: There are a few different ideas on the impact of interest groups and whether that impact is a positive thing for our democracy. Now the first argument is the pluralist theory which we've discussed before in these presentations. Remember that pluralism is the notion that different groups compete with each other for power and influence and that in a pluralist society, no one group dominates, that the contest is a fair contest, that some groups may win more than others, but the system is not rigged to privilege one group over another. In that competition, the government is a referee between those groups to make sure that it is a fair contest. Now this is contrasted with an elitist view of society that elitist view is that some groups do win more often than others, that some groups have privileges with other groups do not have. And in our society, that tends to equate to money. That groups that have money are able to purchase access to the media, to politicians, to decision makers and with that access they're able to change people's minds. They may be changing the minds of politicians, they may be using the media to change the opinions of the public, but they're able to have a louder voice and a more influential voice than other groups do, because of the monetary resources that they have. And so that would suggest that we don't really have a pluralist society, rather we have an elitist society where groups that have access to power and money are able to maintain their access to power and money because of their power and money. Now, that sounds like a worse thing than it may be. There is a defense for elitism actually, and that is that elitist groups tend to go to the best schools, because their parents can afford the best education. They tend to have the connections and networks to other powerful groups which makes them effective advocates and policy makers and they tend to have the training and socialization to be competent leaders and managers. And so the argument is that an elitist society runs smoothly and as long as it still holds elections so that the, everybody else gets a say in which elite leader they're going to choose, then everybody



benefits because the elite want the system to work because they benefit by it and so they maintain the system and that benefits everybody else. So that's the defense of elitism. But in the context of interest groups, the argument here is that some interest groups have an unfair advantage in the contest of ideas with other interest groups. There is a third theory of how interest groups impact and it is hyper-pluralism. Now just as pluralism says competition between groups is healthy because no one group dominates, hyper-pluralism argues that that competition actually hurts the society because the groups have become so powerful and their voices so shrill that it is difficult, if not impossible, for the government to engage in coherent public policy. Now this is because the groups are competing with each other to capture government, but it's also because these groups are so well organized and so well-funded that they can block action, even if they're not able to successfully enact action. So the argument is that any time government tries to do something, they're guaranteed to be opposed by highly organized, highly effective groups, and if that group is successful, and the government instead shifts in a different direction to keep that group happy, then a different set of highly organized, highly funded groups will oppose that action. So no matter what action the government takes, there will be groups that effectively oppose that action. The result then of hyper-pluralism is incoherent public policy or a complete lack of action. So these are three different views of the role that interest groups play in American politics today. And there is strong evidence for all three of these viewpoints. And so as we discuss interest groups, and as you look at the practice of politics around you, it would be useful to think through these three different theories of the role of groups in society and see which are in play.

Slide 5

Text: Why are some groups powerful?

Small groups tend to be more effectiveo Small overheado Narrow focuso Large groups have free riders

Audio: Let's begin by asking why some groups are more powerful than others. Why do some groups succeed in the public policy arena and other groups fail? Why do some groups persist, meaning they're organized over time and they become household names? Where other groups either fail to organize or are ephemeral. They come and they go and nobody really knows why they're there or what they're doing. If we look at why some groups are more powerful than others, there's a couple of factors that play into an effective, powerful group. One of those is group size. And while a larger group can often be more powerful, because it has more resources at its disposal, smaller groups are often more effective. There's a couple reasons for this. But the largest is the organizational cost of creating groups. When a group puts itself together, somebody has to be willing to pay the organizational costs for the group, meaning the time to bring people together, drafting a charter, putting materials together, contacting like-minded people; it all takes



time. And it also might take a little bit of money, particularly if the group's going to have a permanent headquarters where they have a mailing address where stuff gets sent to. So the smaller the group, the smaller those overhead costs are and that makes it easier for that group to shift their organization or move their organization around or maintain their organization because they don't have large overhead costs associated with that organization. Also small groups tend to be single issue groups. They have one issue that is extremely important to them and that issue becomes an organizing principle that determines everything else that that group does. That group doesn't get lost on a myriad of issues or lose its effectiveness by trying to do too many things at once. It can focus in on a particular issue, a particular policy debate and become quite effective in that policy arena that it has narrowed itself down to. A third reason why small groups are, can be more effective than large groups is because large groups suffer from free riders. Now a free rider is someone who belongs to the group, benefits from the group's outcomes but contributes nothing to the group. So for example, if I believe that clean air is a good thing, and so I want to have clean air to breathe, and I rely on my colleagues to ride their bicycles to work to keep the air clean and then I drive a 1972 Cadillac to work, I'm not contributing to clean air at all. My colleagues who are riding their bicycles to work and are breathing in the blue smoke as my Cadillac idles next to them by the light, they are contributing to clean air, but at the end of the day, we're both breathing the same air whether I am contributing to its cleanliness or not. So driving my '72 Cadillac makes me a free rider when it comes to clean air. Now groups have this same problem. When someone turns, I think it's 55 these days, the AARP mails them a membership card. So the AARP claims that everybody who's 55 and older belongs to their group, The American Association of Retired Persons. And they work to secure health and Social Security and other welfare benefits for older people, and they're quite effective at it. But if someone gets a card for that, from the AARP, and never actually pays any dues or follows the AARP's suggestions on how to vote, and yet the AARP secures benefits for old people, all old people, then that means they're tolerating lots and lots of free riders, people who aren't contributing to assist the AARP in its political agenda and yet benefit from the outcomes of those struggles that the AARP is engaged in. So, the larger the group, the more likely it is to have free riders. I'm sure you've experienced this yourself, as you've had to do group work in schools and inevitably, someone in your group project or your group presentation doesn't carry their weight and yet they expect to get the same grade that everyone else who actually did the work does. That's a free rider. And small groups are able to identify free riders and either force them to contribute to exclude from the group. The larger the group, the easier it is for a free rider to tag along and benefit from the group. Now this discussion of small groups needs to be countered with why large groups can be quite powerful. They may not be as effective as a small group, but they are nevertheless powerful. And if they can have some group willing to pay the organizational costs and therefore tolerate the free riders. And the reason that a large group is more powerful is because in American politics, there are two currencies of power in America. One is money and the other is votes. And if you can deliver money to the table, in the form of advertisements or campaign contributions to assist a politician who agrees with you to be elected or maintain their office, having access to that kind of money with the ability to generate that kind



of large money, gets you a seat at the table. That makes your voice one that people want to listen to, to keep you happy so that money continues to flow in. The other currency of power is votes. If you can deliver votes, then you can command the attention of elected officials because in America, while money is incredibly important, money cannot buy an election. And there have been many cases of very wealthy, well-funded candidates losing because they couldn't come up with the votes. And so, if you or your organization can promise that if your organization is kept happy, you can deliver votes for a politician or alternatively, if a politician enacts policy that you disagree with, then you will deliver the votes to their challenger and defeat them. If you can deliver on that promise or threat, that also earns you a seat at the table. And the policy makers will want to take your viewpoint into account. So a large group, if it can successfully solicit funds and mobilize their membership to vote the way they recommend, can be tremendously powerful. But again, because of the free rider problem, those large groups have to have somebody willing to pay the organization costs and the overhead and tolerate the free riders that are in that larger group. Now that might be a corporate interest who's interested in maximizing profit or it might be an ideological interest in that people are willing to finance groups that back their ideology. But, in the absence of someone willing to pay the organizational costs, large groups will implode and not be effective.

Slide 6

Text: Collective Action Matrix

[Chart of collective action matrix]

Audio: Another explanation for why some groups are more powerful than other is to look at their relative costs and benefits that are associated with their actions, and what the outcome of the policy debate will mean for that groups members. And one way to think of this is to put down the cost and benefits on this collective action matrix that is before you. We can think of cost is being concentrated or defuse. If they're concentrated then that means that a particular group pays the bulk of the cost for that policy, or subject area. If the costs are defuse, then that means that society at large pays for the costs of that program or policy. Likewise, with benefits, if benefits are concentrated, then that means that a particular group receives the bulk of the benefits of that policy, and if the benefits are defuse, that means that society at large benefits from those policies. And, we can put a matrix here of, that identify different cells of policy arenas that have different mixes of costs and benefits. So, for example, in the cell that has concentrated costs, and concentrated benefits, we have policies like flood insurance. Now with flood insurance, the people who pay for flood insurance are the homeowners or businesses who actually purchase the policy, and we're talking about government subsidized flood insurance here. The people who benefit from flood insurance are when a flood happens, and wipes out a particular area, the people who purchased insurance get the benefit, the people who did not purchase this insurance, do not get the benefit, so it's a concentrated benefit. Likewise, user fees, and toll roads are in the same category. The Grand Canyon, for example, everybody owns the Grand Canyon, it belongs



to the people, but who actually uses the Grand Canyon? Who can actually benefit from the fact that a Grand Canyon exists? Well, that would be people who go and visit it, who hike it or look at it from the side. In order to do that, you have to pay a fee to get into the park, which means not everybody benefits from the Grand Canyon, only the people who pay the fee can participate in the joys and beauty that is the Grand Canyon. So, it's a concentrated cost and a concentrated benefit. Now, on the other hand, we have policies that generate a concentrated cost but a defuse benefit. These would be safety regulations, environmental regulations. In these policy arenas, certain industries or individuals have to pay the cost of regulation. If it is an environmental regulation, let's say carbon emissions, and the utility wants to build a coal-fired electrical power plant, and so they're going to be pumping tons of carbon dioxide into the air, as well as other pollutants that are generated when you burn coal. Well, we have regulations that require that utility to place scrubbers on the smoke stacks of the generator, and those scrubbers will remove most of the pollutants from the emissions of burning the coal, and that way fewer pollutants are spewed into the atmosphere. Now, everybody benefits from having cleaner air, if that utility has to put those scrubbers on, but the utility has to pay for the scrubbers, the utility pays the cost for that regulation. Now, of course, the utility will pass that cost along to their consumers, but as the price of electricity increases, people will use less electricity, and the overall profitability of the electricity per watt produced will decline because of the cost associated with adhering to the environmental regulations, so that's an example of a policy arena that's in that type of box, where a few people pay the bulk of the cost, but society as a whole benefits. Now, we have other policy arenas were the costs are defuse, meaning society at large pays the cost to engage in a particular action, a policy action, but the benefits are focused on a particular population in that society. So, an example here would be tariffs. Right now, there is, and has always been, a sugar tariff placed, that protects the sugar beet growers in the American south. Now, as a result, Americans pay about twice as much for sugar as the rest of the world does, because the rest of the world buys sugar from, sugar that's produced by sugar cane in the Caribbean or Latin America or Africa. If the world's sugar was able to be sold in the United States at the world's price, the sugar beet growers in the United States would immediately go out of business, because they cannot profitably compete with sugar cane sugar. So, there is a tariff placed on sugar, we force people to sell sugar in the United States for twice as much as they sell it to everybody else. By setting that price level, it makes it so that the sugar beet growers can grow sugar at a comparative disadvantage, but still make enough profit to stay in business. Now, the benefits of the sugar tariff then are concentrated, only the sugar beet growers benefit from that tariff, but the costs are defuse, all of the Americans pay for that tariff. The estimates vary, its, you know, it depends on how much sugar you eat, but it runs around 25 to 50 dollars a year per person, that we spend more in sugar than we otherwise would, if there wasn't a tariff, so that's an example of a policy domain in that cell. Finally, we have the other cell where everybody benefits from the policy and the costs for that policy are spread out so that everybody pays those costs. National defense is the classic example here. We all, through our taxation, pay for the Apache attack helicopter, that is flying around, or the aircraft carrier that's tooling around the ocean. The costs for our national defense infrastructure are born by everybody. Now the benefits for that infrastructure are also



benefiting everybody. We enjoy our freedoms and we enjoy our security because that aircraft carrier is out there preventing an enemy from being tempted to harm our interests. We enjoy our freedoms and our liberties because that Apache helicopter is flying around in the hills at Afghanistan, blowing up terrorists before they can come to the United States and threaten us here. So, everybody benefits from national defense, and everybody pays for it, so that's an example of a policy domain that is in that fourth quadrant there.

Slide 7


Interest groups that seek specific benefits or avoid specific costs are effective because members are willing to pay organizational costs

Oppositional groups have difficulty organizing

[Chart of collective action matrix with “Diffuse” boxes circled in red]

Audio: speaker 1: Now, if we divide policies into these quadrants, what we find is that interest groups that are in the [inaudible] policy, in the two quadrants that have the red circles around them, tend to be highly effective interest groups. And that is because interest groups that seek specific benefits, meaning the benefits are concentrated, or seek to avoid specific costs, meaning the costs are concentrated, are highly effective in organizing, because their group membership will directly benefit from that policy. They're either going to enjoy the benefit or avoid the cost. On the other hand, groups that might organize to oppose those policies have to face all of the organizational costs and yet they have difficulty finding a membership willing to pay those costs because the costs are diffuse; everybody pays the costs, or maybe everybody enjoys the benefit, and so very few people are willing to contribute to those costs or those benefits. The free rider problem is paramount here. So if we look at the category on the bottom left, going back to the sugar tariffs... the reason those tariffs exist is because sugar beet growers are highly motivated to maintain those tariffs. If those tariffs go away, they go out of business because they are not competitive with the global sugar prices. Again, it's cheaper to make sugar out of sugarcane than it is out of sugar beets. And so they're willing to spend almost their entire profit margin in campaign contributions in order to keep politicians, who are willing to maintain those sugar tariffs in office. Now, in contrast, the bulk of society that pays the price of that tariff, again it varies, but it's about $25.00 - $50.00 per person per year, most people are not aware that they're paying that higher cost. They think that's just the normal price of sugar. And even if they become aware of the fact that they're paying twice as much for sugar as the rest of the world, it's probably not worth their time or their money to send a campaign contribution to the anti-sugar tariff lobby or to devote hours of their time and walk door-to-door on weekends to try to elect officials who will vote against that tariff. It's difficult to organize people because it's simply not worth their time or money to oppose that policy, because the per-person cost for that policy is sustainable, whereas the concentrated benefit means that the people who are in favor of those policies are



really, really motivated to get those policies to go through. Now, on the flipside are the people in the upper right-hand, make the sale there. Those people, the groups that pay the concentrated costs, are highly motivated to defeat those policies to prevent them from having to pay those costs, whereas the benefit is diffuse, everybody benefits. And so individuals are not particularly motivated to work to achieve or maintain that benefit. So we all like clean air, but the incremental increase in pollution that might occur, if a utility plant is able to build a factory without a scrubber, is very small, perhaps not even noticeable. And so, while we might benefit from that factory having that scrubber, we're perhaps not motivated to contribute a large amount of money to an environmental organization that will advocate for scrubbers. And maybe we're not particularly motivated to go walk the streets to elect politicians who will vote for environmentally-friendly regulations. On the other hand, the utilities are highly motivated to contribute to groups that will focus on minimizing those regulations and minimizing the costs that might be associated with those regulations. Another example might be gun control. This is one explanation for why the NRA is such a powerful, effective interest group. If the public good, being considered here, is a reduction in gun violence, where the cost of that good is a reduction in the sales of firearms and the reduction of availability of firearms to gun enthusiasts, then it makes sense that an interest group that is organized to oppose gun safety regulations would be highly effective because the group that is protecting the gun manufacturers' ability to sell guns and the gun enthusiasts' ability to have access to guns, those people are highly motivated, whereas the general populous that may have some small marginal gain in safety, if there are fewer guns floating around society, are not motivated to oppose that interest group in favor of gun regulations. So, Handgun Control Incorporated is an interest group that advocates for gun control. It is simply not a very effective group. Whereas the N.R.A., which is organized to oppose gun control, is a highly effective group, and this thinking in terms of collective action and concentrated costs benefits helps explain why some groups are more powerful than other groups.

Slide 8


This means that a vocal, motivated minority will always have more influence on public policy than a complacent majority

[Photo of protestors]

Audio: If we've combined what we've learned about small group effectiveness versus large group effectiveness with the collective action matrix, which explains the varying motivations for some groups versus other groups, what this tells us is that a vocal, highly-motivated minority group will always have more influence on public policy than a complacent majority will. Now, that may sound troubling from a democratic theory point of view, which is that the government should always enact or engage in the will of the majority, that it should reflect the will of the majority. But it is consistent, though, with democratic theory, because government responds to



the public groups that seek to influence it. And if a majority becomes engaged and active, then the government with respond to that majority. But if the majority is complacent and silent and incapable of organizing or unwilling to organize, then that vocal minority group will have a disproportionate impact, an impact that is larger than their numbers may suggest. And that is I guess as it should be by democratic theory point of view, because citizens that engage the system are effective; citizens that don't engage the system are not effective. There was a quote from Mario Cuomo, he was the mayor of New York City in the 1980s and early 1990s. And he had a statement that was a fairly accurate assessment of American politics. He said, "In America, we have a system that rewards participation and punishes nonparticipation." And there's a lot of truth to that.

Slide 9

Text: Lobbying

Provide information to policy makers to persuade them to enact favorable legislation

[Photo of people talking in a hallway]

Audio: Let's now look at the tactics or strategies that interest groups use in order to affect the public policy debate or the policy process. The first tool that they use is that of lobbying. Now lobbying has a very negative connotation in our culture. People don't like the notion that groups influence our elected officials. They like to keep a romantic notion that elected officials are following that delegate model that they're faithfully executing the will of their elected or the trusty model where they are using their sound judgment or ideology to make their decisions. Now both of those models do, in fact, operate. But if we remember that in a complex society and a large nation of three hundred million people there is a lot of things going on. And the legislators, the elected officials, whether they're in the legislator or the executive branch, they have to make many many decisions that have long term consequences. And impact areas that they may not be familiar with. And so the primary job of a lobbyist. The primary role that lobbying plays is to give information to legislators and executive officials that they might not otherwise have. A lobbyist then is not a sort of secret agent, seeking to subvert democracy, rather it's more useful to think of lobbyist as a voice for a particular interest group. Now a lot of lobbyist are hired guns. They'll work for which ever group will pay them the most money. But the actual job that they engage in is to be a voice for that group. To advocate for that group. And to educate policymakers what the effect of their policies are going to be on the group that the lobbyist is working for. So lobbying when it is done right is a practice of persuasion. It's a skill set that is used to persuade a policymaker to make a decision that is in line with the wishes or the preferences of the interest group that sent the lobbyist to work on behalf of them. Now there are things that lobbyist need to do to be able to have that kind of access, to be listened to by a policymaker. And that leads to some of the other strategies that we'll talk about in a few minutes here. But an effective lobbyist is one who has a connection of some kind with the policymaker



they're talking to. So that when they pick up the phone and say hey can I speak to Representative Smith. Representative Smith is going to take that call. And actually listen to them. So an effective lobbyist is one who is able to maintain their credibility and their persuasive ability so that their policymaker will listen to them and that they can have an impact on that policymaker.

Slide 10

Text: Electioneering

Help friendly politicians stay in office and defeat unfriendly politicians

[Photo of election signs outside of a building]

Audio: The next strategy or tactic is electioneering and this is because in order for an interest group and their lobbyist to be effective, to use our other example, Representative Smith has to be willing to pick up the phone when the phone rings. Will they listen to that lobbyist? If that policy maker does pick up the phone and is open to hearing that interest group's point of view and maybe enacts policy that accords with that interest group's point of view and that interest group has an interest in allowing that elected person to stay where they are. So they're going to actively work for the re-election of policy makers who are friendly to them and they are going to actively work for the electoral defeat of policy makers who work in opposition to their interests. So, all of the electioneering tactics that interest group engaged in are designed to create a situation where when the phone rings, the policy maker will pick it up and listen to them. There's a couple of tactics that interest groups engage in to affect the outcome of election. One of the most dominate is to provide campaign contributions to friendly politicians. And now as we will learn in the subsequent presentation on campaigns, it's very expensive to run an effective campaign in the modern era. So politicians, who like their job and would like to continue in office, have to gain access to the resources that are necessary to run an effective campaign. One source for those resources are interest groups, who are willing to give donations to politicians who again will pick up the phone and listen to them when they have an opinion on a policy issue. Now this aspect of interest group lobbying is the most distasteful for everybody involved, the public doesn't like the idea that lobbyist are buying politicians, the interest groups don't like the fact that politicians will call them up to shake them down for contributions, and the politicians don't like having to spend large amounts of their time running around looking for resources as oppose to doing what they were elected to do and what they wanted to do which is attend meetings and craft policies. So, nobody's really happy with the process we have, but nevertheless, it's a very real part of the process and any interest group that wants to be effective, needs to keep an electioneering strategy as one of the tools in their arsenal to effectively advocate for their policy. Now one thing to note here is that there is a, a perception that lobbyist are buying politicians when they, they make their campaign contributions. Some of that does occur, but it's illegal if there is a quid pro quo of this or that agreement between an interest group who gives money to a politician and the politician then acts in a certain specified way, that's called bribery and it is illegal. Politician are caught



engaging in that kind of behavior or demanding bribes where they will...a politician will call an interest group and say you need got give me x amount of money or else I will vote such and such way and then that type, type of behavior is unethical and in many cases illegal. So the vast majority of electioneering that occurs by interest groups is not that kind of crass quid pro quo, buying of elections that is so roundly criticized by the public. I was speaking to a lobbyist once who indicated that if lobbyist go around acting that way, giving campaign contributions and then demanding a certain behavior from the people that they are giving their contributions for have...politicians tend to avoid those people because it's only a matter of time before that behavior will catch up to them and no politicians wants to get caught up being associated with the that kind of a lobbyist. We only look at the Abramoff scandal of the mid 2000's to see that lobbyist who engaged in that kind of behavior do get caught and the politicians associated with them are punished and politicians know this so they try to stay above the table as much as possible to avoid the stink that would come with being associated with a below the table arrangement. So I'm defending politicians and lobbyist more than I probably should, but the point is that electioneering is a legitimate tactic and the vast majority of electioneering that occurs is not an unethical practice despite the public's perception to the contrary.

Slide 11

Text: Influence Public Opinion

Bypass the policy process to affect behavior directly

Also affects politicians, if they like their jobs

[Photo of simulated car crash with “Always wear your safety belt” written across the image] [Image of American Cancer Society” logo] [image of pink ribbon]

Audio: The next strategy or tactics that interest groups use to affect the policy process is to influence public opinion. Now this is an attempt to bypass the decision makers altogether by altering the mass public's perception of an issue or the mass populations behaviors. So, rather than trying to convince a policy maker to make a law to require a certain type of behavior, the interest group will try to influence the overall population to voluntarily engage in that kind of behavior, that they're seeking for. Now, an example of this would be the anti-smoking campaigns that were...are continually put forth by the American Cancer Society. That campaign is not seeking to make smoking illegal, although the American Cancer Society certainly supports measures that make, for example, indoor smoking illegal, but that's not their tactic, their tactic is to try to make it un-cool to smoke, to change the public's perception of smoking because as they are successful in that mass campaign, smoking will decrease and cancers will decrease and that can be even more effective than trying to lobby a policy maker to make cigarettes illegal or make indoor smoking illegal. The other example I have on the slide is the seat belt safety campaigns those are paid for often by insurance companies. They aren't trying to pass a law mandating seat belt use although again they would be in favor of such a law, but what the campaigns are trying



to do is get people to voluntarily begin to wear seat belts because as their behavior changes then the outcome changes. So there are fewer accidents or when there's accidents people do not have as serious of injuries which means the insurance companies are able to maintain more profitability, if they do that. Now in addition to influencing the public just to change the public's behavior, to achieve their goals that way, sometimes interest groups will attempt to influence public as a roundabout way of influencing politicians. So, if you're calling the politician and Representative Smith won't answer the phone because he doesn't agree with your interest group and so you've engaged in an election campaign and back a challenger to Representative Smith but your challenger lost, well one thing you can do since you're not able to influence Representative Smith, is to try to change the public's opinion of the issue you're trying to get Representative Smith to change on. That way, if Representative Smith likes his job and the public's attitude shifts, then Representative Smith's position on that issue might shift along with the public attitude this would be particularly true if Representative Smith sees himself as a delegate that wants to accurately reflect the will of the constituency, so by changing the will of the constituency, you can change the attitude of the representative. An example here would be the Iraq war, for several years after the war the public backed the war and politicians were very careful to not criticize the war or least not criticize it very loudly. There were several public awareness campaigns put forth by opponents to the war, for example, would be the Code Pink Group that would interrupt public hearings and discussions about war and talk about why the war was bad or the death toll for the war. The group move on dot org engaged in a fairly extensive public campaign criticizing the Iraq war and over time and not necessary because of these campaigns, but certainly in line with those campaigns, the public attitudes on the war did begin to shift so that by 2006, three years after the war had been initiated, the public attitude to the war was no longer overwhelming in favor of it and still a majority did favor of it, but that majority was much more slim than it had been in 2003 and 2004 and as a result, politicians began to publicly opposed the war and call for an end to the war. To the extent, that by 2008 candidates on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat were not talking about whether or not to continue the war, they're were talking about how best to end the war, so the politician's position on the war shifted as the public's position on the war shifted and that's because politicians who liked their jobs need to stay in line with public opinion. So this is why this can be an effective strategy for an interest group is to speak directly to the public and change public opinion.

Slide 12

Text: Litigation

Last ditch resort to block policy

[Photo of court in session]

Audio: The last tactic or strategy to discuss is that of litigation. Now litigation is...can be highly effective strategy because if you recall the presentation on the courts, the courts are a last refuge



for a minority viewpoint because they're not subject to or vulnerable to public opinion an unpopular position can succeed in a court where they would not be able to succeed in an electoral setting. So, if an interest group has failed to effectively lobby Representative Smith won't pick up the phone or is not swayed by their arguments, they have failed in their electioneering, their challenger to Representative Smith was soundly defeated, and they have failed in their attempts to influence public policy, the rest of society agrees with Representative Smith, the interest group is then forced to resort to the courts to try to block Representative Smith's actions or force policy to go against the will of the majority. Now, this is a last ditch resort, interest groups will typically try the other strategies first, but if they fail in all those, they will attempt the courtroom. Another reason why it's last ditch is because it's quite expensive. As we discussed in the presentation on the court system, you have to hire attorneys, the process takes a long time and attorneys charged by the hour and so it can rack up costs of your policy preference quite quickly. So, unless an interest group has fairly deep pockets, it's not typically a preferred outcome, a preferred strategy to change public policy is resort to the courts. On the other hand because of its very expense, it's expensive for both sides, and it's time consuming for both sides which means sometimes just threat of litigation is sufficient to get a policy maker to change their policy. They would rather accede to the wishes of the interest group than go through the time and expense and shear hassle of having to go through a court process to fight off that threat by the interest group. So, groups that readily use litigation, particularly groups that have lawyers on hand which decreases the out of pocket cost of a lawsuit can effectively use the threat of litigation to get policy makers to adopt their policy viewpoints at the expense of sometimes what the majority will might be, because again looking at that collective action matrix vocal motivated minority that maybe has members who are lawyers which decreases cost to them can easily turn to litigation whereas a policy arena that the benefits are diffuse or the costs are diffuse may have a hard time getting enough people to donate money to pay for a legal defense and so that vocal motivated minority group will succeed in a litigation arena where the majority will not, simply because of the organizational cost that stand in the way of, of a complacent majority from defending its interest. So, these are all strategies that interest groups use to affect public policy, lobbying, electioneering, influencing public opinion and litigating and using these tools, groups in the United States are able to advocate for their preferred policy outcome. Now, again going back to the beginning of this presentation, it's useful to think about what that means for the kind of society we live in. Is it a pluralist society where these groups use these tools to compete for power? Is it an [inaudible] society where some groups have more access to these tools than other groups do? Or is it a hyper-plural society whereby groups using these tools at their disposal, it prevents coherent policy from actually moving forward.

Slide 13



Text: Political Parties

[Image of Democratic Party logo] [Image of Republican Party logo]

Audio: Now when we're talking about groups that aggregate preferences, one of the most potent groupings that exists to do that are political parties. And so we're going to move our discussion to talk about the way political parties operate in our system. Now parties have broader policy platforms than do single interest groups. But their overriding platform, their reason for existence is to elect members of their party to public positions. Now in order to effectively do that, political parties follow many of the same strategies that interest groups do.

Slide 14

Text: What are Political Parties?

Act the same as Interest groupso Lobbying


o Electioneering Help friendly politicians stay in office and defeat unfriendly politicians

o Influence Public Opinion Bypass the policy process to affect behavior directly Also affects politicians, if they like their jobs

o Litigation Last ditch resort to block policy

Audio: Like interest groups; parties lobby, they lobby decision makers, parties have vested interest in maintaining their brand, what their brand means, and so party leaders will try to get elected officials to follow the parties lead and vote in ways that are consistent with the party's principles so that the party brand is meaningful to the voters. They also engage in electioneering that is their explicit goal as a party is to elect members of their party and oppose members of the opposite party. They attempt to influence public opinion; again there is a branding issue here, party's attempt to get the public to side with them to think of themselves as belonging to their party. What are you? Well, I'm a Republican, if you say that then the Republican Party has successfully branded their image so that you associate your values, attitudes and beliefs with that of this political party, so the parties attempt to influence public opinion. Finally parties also litigate, parties will sue members of the other party, they sue elected officials to try to influence the outcome of a political struggle, perhaps they will be suing Secretary of State to prevent a ballot measures from being put on the ballot or they are suing to disqualify a candidate because the voters signatures are not valid or maybe as was the case 2000, they can take a suit all the way



to the Supreme Court to decide the outcome of an election when it is in doubt. So, parties engage in the same strategies to succeed and achieve their ends that interest groups do.

Slide 15

Text: What are Political Parties?

One additional activityo Lobbying


o Electioneering Help friendly politicians stay in office and defeat unfriendly politicians

o Influence Public Opinion Bypass the policy process to affect behavior directly Also affects politicians, if they like their jobs

o Litigation Last ditch resort to block policy

Select and Support Candidates for election

Audio: There is one strategy that makes political parties stand out from interest groups, and that is the political parties select and support candidates for election. They put someone forward as a candidate, and this is what distinguishes a party from other groups in our society. Now, any time a group puts a candidate forward for election, they then cross a line and transform from an interest group into a political party. Many thought that in the 1990s the Christian Coalition would do this. That was a group that - it was an interest group that was attempting to influence the outcomes of elections to promote their policy preferences, and they were not particularly satisfied with the establishment Republican Party, and in local races in some parts of the South, candidates began to run as a Christian Coalition candidate, not a Republican or Democrat candidate. So it looked as if that group might transition into a separate political party, but it didn't. The Republican Party ended up absorbing that group. Now, it's an open question right now whether the Tea Parties will do this. The Tea Party Movement in the summer of 2010, as I'm recording this presentation, seems to be quite strong, has a lot of followers, is endorsing candidates but has not yet put a candidate forward as a Tea Party candidate. Typically they are Republican candidates who are running with Tea Party endorsement. So until the Tea Part organizes itself and puts forward a candidate under their name, it is best to view the Tea Party as an interest group not a political party.

Slide 16

Text: What do parties do?

[Black and white drawing of men arguing in front of colonial building]



Audio: There is a lot of discussion in our society over the role that political parties and partisanship in general plays in the public discourse and the policy debates, and there's a lot of criticism over the role that parties play. The feeling is that parties are too acrimonious, that partisanship is too severe, and the divide between the parties is too steep to enable coherent rational policy discussion. About a third of the electorate is registered as independent, meaning they have chosen not to join either of the two major political parties but still registered to vote. That is a measure of the frustration and dissatisfaction with the two political parties. Now it's useful, then, when thinking about political parties to make a list of what parties actually do and separate that from what parties do not. Because sometimes people have an unrealistic expectation about what political parties are supposed to be doing, and then when parties don't meet up to those expectations, people become disillusioned by them. So let's look at what parties actually do, what role they play in our electoral system.

Slide 17

Text: Why have parties?

Aggregate Preferences

Like minded folds getting together to turn their preferences into policy

[Photo of crowd at a protest]

Audio: Probably the most important role that parties play is to aggregate preferences. Again, this is a term that political scientists use to mean people who have similar preferences band together because when those preferences are collected together or aggregated, they can have a larger impact on the policy process, and those individuals could [inaudible]. So to put it in normal English, parties are when like-minded folks get together to turn their preferences into policy. Again, to quote the New York Mayor Mario Cuomo, we live in a system that rewards participation and punishes non-participation. By participation, the most effective way to engage in participation is to engage in collective participation so that your voice is one of many that are working towards a common goal. If your voice is a solitary voice, and you're working in isolation, the odds of success are remote, if not impossible. So parties are a way for people who agree with each other to coordinate their actions and elect like-minded people so that those representatives will engage in policy that you agree with.

Slide 18


Give Candidates the ability to govern

The party acts as a government in opposition, enables winning candidates to quickly fill positions



[Photo of 2008 transition team for Missouri’s new governor]

Audio: Another important role that parties play is to give candidates the ability to govern. Political scientists refer to the party in the electorate and the party in government as a way to distinguish between two different roles that parties play, but what that means is that when a party takes power, that party has to fill lots of positions. If you recall the discussion of patronage, when we talked about the executive branch, the president or the governor or even the Congressional leadership has to fill positions of authority in government to, and they would like to put people in that position of authority that have similar viewpoints. And so when they're elected, they have to hire all those people. When they're not elected, when the party is out of power, that party functions as a government in opposition, so to speak. So all of the component and qualified people who could work in government instead are outside of government. They probably are going to be criticizing what government's doing, but those people don't just go away. They have to have the ability to be quickly mobilized should the party gain power. An example of this would be when Janet Napolitano resigned her position as governor to take a position as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security of the Obama administration, and when she did that, she took several of her trusted advisors with her to have government jobs in Washington, but beyond those people, she had filled the State of Arizona with her political appointees. People who were loyal to her, and who were not loyal to the new governor. So when Jan Brewer, who was Secretary of State, became governor, the control of state government shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Now the new Governor Brewer has to hire a whole bunch of people in a short period of time. That there wasn't, Jan Brewer did not campaign to be governor. So she did not draw up who she wanted to work in the various executive offices prior to the election of 2008, and, yet, when Governor Napolitano left, the new Governor Brewer had just a matter of weeks to identify and hire lots and lots of people to be put in the executive branch. Well, when that happens, the governor doesn't just put an ad out on monster dot com saying I need a new head of the department of economic security. What happens is the party facilitates this process by keeping track of the people who worked in state office last time a Republican controlled the government, or people who are party loyalists who have worked for campaigns and have written opinion essays and maybe they've worked on commissions or the governors appointed them to be on a task force. All those people are known to the party, and the party then can deliver those names to a transition team that finds people to hire. So the party label becomes a way for a newly-elected person to identify people who are qualified for a job who are likely to have similar political viewpoints as the politician who's hiring them because they belong to the same party. So the organization of the political party and the identification of people into one party or another gives the candidates the ability to govern, to populate those appointed positions with qualified people who can be reasonably relied upon to follow the leadership and the direction that that elected official wants to take.



Slide 19


Provide Information to Voters

They keep track of the minutia, educate the public on the important issues

[Photo of voter booth with people inside]

Audio: The next role that parties play is to provide information to voters, and this is an important role because voters need to be given information on which candidate stands for what particular issue or what a candidate's overall philosophy is towards the role of government and taxation and government services, things of that nature. And so when a citizen goes into a voting booth, they're going to be faced with making a decision on multiple candidates. Now perhaps they paid close attention to the presidential race or the governor's race or maybe the Senate race. They might know who their Congressional representative is and who the challenger is, but as they move down the ballot, they're going to come to more and more offices that they don't really understand what that office does or who the people are that are competing for that office. They may not have attended a debate on the school board or city council, or in Arizona's case the mine inspector, and they may not know what the policy differences are between the candidates. Nevertheless, the person can use party label as an information shortcut to make an educated guess as to what kinds of policies that person might do in that office based on their party label. So parties provide that information shortcut to voters. In addition, they also provide a wealth of information to people who are interested in keeping track of the details, who want to educate themselves on the various platform positions of the state's mine inspector race. Where would you go to find that information? Well, political parties are happy to provide that information on what their candidate will do if elected, and then [inaudible] voters with a negative image of what the opposite party will do if elected. So while voters tend to pay attention to politics on a periodic basis, you know, for a few weeks before each election, the political parties keep track of what's going on in the political arena all the time. And so the public can go to the political party to find out what the voting record was of a particular individual and whether on the whole that voting record corresponds with the ideological preferences of the voter. So this is a useful function that parties give to the American electorate.

Slide 20


Provide a way to maintain the election machine between elections

Most important function, historic origin

[Image of black and white advertisement for Whig meeting]



Audio: Finally, another role that parties play is to provide a way to maintain the election machine between elections, and this is actually why we have political parties in the first place. If a party can't do this, it is doomed to electoral defeat. The reason we have political parties is because the first generation of Americans had a few key debates. Some of them wanted a strong central government. Others wanted more states' rights. Some of them wanted a central bank. Others did not want a central bank. Some wanted to ally with England in the super power struggle. Others wanted to ally with France in that super power struggle. And these groups that opposed, had oppositional opinions about what direction the country ought to take centered, rallied around the personalities of Adams and Jefferson, and these two men competed with each other for power, and the people who supported them competed for power at the state levels as well as the presidential level. They competed to elect people to Congress that would back their side and not the other. They competed to elect governors who would back their side and not the other, and these groups coalesced into what became known as the Whigs and the Democratic Republicans. It's simply difficult to run an election. You need a lot of volunteers. You need a lot of people with deep pockets who are willing to make contributions. You need a lot of people who are actually going to show up and vote on Election Day. Now it's possible for an independent person to find and recruit and mobilize enough of those people to make a go at an election, but two years later, you're going to need to do the exact same thing, and it's cumbersome to have to start over trying to locate, recruit, and motivate those people to help win an election. What is a much more efficient way to go about it is to maintain a list of who those people are, and group those people into a common organization, again, an aggregated preference where those people, those like-minded folks will want to associate with one another and will actively work for each other's benefit. This is why political parties formed with the first generation of Americans, and it's one of the more fundamental roles that political parties still play today.

Slide 21

Text: What don’t they Do? Are they worth the trouble?

Build Consensuso Good policy often requires compromiseo Compromise takes campaign issues away from parties and candidateso The party needs to stand FOR something and Against somethingo Expect gridlock in congress before an election

[Photo of crowd, with people arguing]

Audio: So those are the things that parties do, let's now turn out to attention to things that parties do not do, things that we should not expect from political parties. The first of these is to build consensus, parties are not in the business of crafting good public policy. Individual politicians may want to do that and the public may want to do that, but a political party doesn't benefit from



a compromise outcome that leads to good public policy. Often coherent policy requires compromise from two sides, if one side sticks its heels in and refuses to budge, that frequently prevents policy from moving forward. It's difficult to get the votes necessary to gain passage of a particular policy for example, unless both sides are willing to give in a little on their demands. They can then having both got...given in a little bit, they can find some middle ground policy that neither is particularly satisfied with, but both can live with. That type of policy is able to garner support and move forward. Now while compromise may make good policy, it makes terrible politics because a political party has to stand for something, it has to be against something, if a party compromises or is willing to encourage compromise then it's difficult for that political party to use that issue in a future election. For example, right now immigration is a very hotly contested political situation in Arizona where Republican candidates tend to favor a strict enforcement of the border and in efforts to normalize a presence or legalize the presence of immigrants is decried as amnesty. On the other side, Democrats tend to favor some comprehensive solution that legalizes the status in some way of the illegal immigrant and characterizes the efforts to deport or police the border as racist or xenophobic. Now from those two sort of extreme positions, it's difficult to come up with a coherent policy that...it would actually work in either extreme case. If there was compromise outcome where there was a solution that solidified border enforcement that had a penalty for those who had broken the law by entering the country illegally but provided some mechanism for labor and industry to meet their labor needs and have a legal pathway for people for...foreigners to come into this country to meet those labor needs, that middle road solution might solve the illegal immigrant problem. So let's say that happens and [inaudible] there is no illegal immigrant problem, so now what issue is the Republican or Democratic parties going to run on, they cannot no longer criticize the other party or promote their party on the issue of illegal immigration. They have to find some other policy domain that there still disagreement in order to convince voters to vote for them, to distinguished their brand from the other brand, there has to be some policy areas that there are clear differences on. And so the point of all of this is that political parties aren't interested in building consensus and that if we want to find consensus, we need to look some place other than the partisan advocates for their parties. This is another explanation for why Congress rarely gets substantive work done in the months before an election or some say even in the year before an election because the politicians of either side, Republican or Democratic can't afford to compromise or make out reach towards the other party right before an election, because if they do so, then the other political party is able to say that there's no reason to vote for that person, so you can expect gridlock in Congress before an election and you can expect partisanship to prevent compromise from occurring.

Slide 22


Have the national interest paramount



Parties exist to further their fortunes

May or may not coincide with the national interest

[Image of anti-Republican propaganda] [Image of anti-Democratic propaganda]

Audio: Another thing that we cannot expect is for a political party to have national interest paramount. Remember, the job of a political party is to elect candidates. It is no the job of a political party to protect the nation. There are times when a partisan interest will run counter to the national interest. Not always, and In fact, parties have to be careful to promote the national interest, particularly when they are in power because if they sacrifice the national interest through their actions, then that will destroy the brand that is that political party because voters will no longer support them. But when the interests of the party and the interest of the nation do not coincide, then it is unreasonable to expect the political party to sacrifice its partisan benefits in the name of benefiting the country. That very rarely occurs. What is much more often the case is that the political parties will pursue their partisan interests even when the country may be damaged by doing so. The slides that I show, or the pictures on the slide are illustrations of how partisan activists within both of the major political parties are accusing the other political party of treason, that they're saying that their political agenda has actually sacrificed the national interests of the country. And I include both because both parties are accused by the other party of doing this. But the point I'm trying to make is that we should not expect a political party to act other than a self-interested actor, and that self-interest for the party, that the partisan interest may or may not coincide with the national interest.

Slide 23


Provide unbiased information

Parties are election machines, not educational institutions

[Screenshot of Arizona Democratic Party website with ad against Governor Jan Brewer]

Audio: The next thing that parties do not do is provide unbiased information. While parties perform a necessary and useful role in providing information to voters, that information is skewed to serve one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is to elect members of their party to public office. Never forget that that is the only reason political parties exist, is to elect members of their party to public office. So for example, the picture on this slide is a screenshot from the Arizona Democratic party, and it is providing information to the voters on Governor Brewer. Now the picture of Governor Brewer there is a pretty unflattering picture. It's in black and white, her facial expression is showing disdain, or I don't know, perhaps she ate something bad that day. It's not a very flattering picture. The Democrats have chosen that picture, and that quote, in order



to portray Governor Brewer in the worst possible light. Again, the objective here is not to provide unbiased information, it is to elect a Democrat to the office of Governor.

Slide 24


Provide unbiased information

Parties are election machines, not educational institutions

[Screenshot of Arizona Republican Party website with ad against President Barack Obama]

Audio: Not to be outdone, here is a screen shot from the Arizona Republican party, taken on the same day. And you see that their home page has a picture of President Obama, again in black and white, but cropped in such a ways with a rather bizarre background around him to give a sort of visual impression of this sinister, other worldly forest. It's evoking the Wizard of Oz motif, so that the President is standing behind the machine belching fire. Again, a pretty unflattering view of our nation's President, and this is because of a calculation that the Arizona Republican party has made, that rather than telling people why they should vote for Governor Brewer, or even against Goddard, the Democratic opponent, what they're trying to do is get their viewers to vote against President Obama, by electing Republicans in national, state, and local office. So the point here is that parties are election machines, not educational institutions, that if you want unbiased information about candidates or policies, you need to look elsewhere, from other than a political party. Or another strategy is to look at both political parties, expose yourself to the bias in both directions, and by doing so you can attempt to triangulate between those two biased positions to find an accurate picture of what's actually going on.

Slide 25

Text: Why Two parties?

System is set up to perpetuate itselfo Who makes election rules?

[Photo of presidential debate between Bill Clinton and George Bush, Sr.]

Audio: Let's turn our attention now to why we only have two political parties. We've talked about the role the parties play and the things that we can't -- or shouldn't expect from political parties but why are there only two of them? If you recall, about a third of the electorate register as independents. So they're not particularly excited about either of the two major political parties. It would stand to reason that with a full third of the electorate not interested that another political party or combination of political parties should arise to capture that electorate that is dissatisfied. And maybe there are lots of people in both the Republican and the Democratic party that aren't particularly keen on those parties but feel they have no alternative. And so there's even a larger



group of Americans that might join another political party should a viable party be present. So why is that not the case? Why are there just the two parties? Well, the first answer is that the system, the two party system is set up to perpetuate itself. If you ask yourself who makes the rules for ballot access, for deciding who gets federal campaign funding, for deciding who gets to attend debates, for deciding how to register as a political party in the first place, where do those rules come from? Well, they're made by state legislatures. State runs elections in America. Who controls the state legislatures? Well, the Republican and Democratic parties control those state legislatures. Who is the opposition party, the minority group and in those legislatures? Again, it's the Democratic or Republican parties. And so those two parties together, are the ones who make all the rules. And so it stands to reason that the rules are stacked against third parties candidates. The picture on this slide is the 1992 Presidential Debate with Bill Clinton, George Bush and that's Ross Perot in the background there. That 1992 debate was the last time that a third party candidate was afforded the privilege of debating on the same stage with the other two parties, that was 20 years ago. So why is that? And how have the rules been rigged to prevent third party candidates from gaining any traction?

Slide 26

Text: 3rd party Barriers

Ballout rules

Winner-take-all system

Congressional rules

[Image of ballot template]

Audio: Some examples of some of the barriers that the rules put in place are the ballot rules. That means that -- what are the requirements that need to be met in order for a candidate's name to be placed on the ballot? Now, there are some things like deadlines that have to be met. That any party would have to meet. But there are other requirements such as voter signatures. A minimal amount of voter signatures that have to be met. Have to be turned in in order for that candidate's name to be placed on the ballot. Well, it's fairly easy for the two political parties to generate that many signatures to get on the ballot. It's much more difficult for third party or minor party to go out and get the number of signatures. Now, the number of signatures required varies from state to state as the ballot rules, again, are determined by state legislatures. In some states if you were on the ballot the previous election and had, you know, some minimal vote -- 10 percent, 5 percent of the vote. Then that party's candidate is automatically allowed to be placed on the next ballot. Again, an -- a situation, the privileges, the two existing parties and puts a barrier to a third party. Now, another rule that is a barrier is the structure of the way elections are done in America. We have a winner-take-all system. Meaning we elect people on a plurality vote, not just a majority vote. So if you have three candidates, and they're running to represent a



state and one candidate gets -- I'm talking in particular about presidential elections and the electoral college here. The winner-take-all system. One presidential candidate gets 35 percent of the vote. Another candidate gets 25 percent of the vote. And the third candidate gets 30 percent of the vote. In that election, the candidate that got the 35 percent of the vote would get all of the electoral votes for that state. Even though they only got 35 percent of the vote. That's because in a plurality system, the person who gets the most vote is the one who wins the race. A majority system would require a runoff between candidates until somebody got 50 percent plus one or a majority. Our presidential elections are a plurality system. And in all but one state are winner-take-all systems. So that makes it so that, even if a third party does a respectable showing and garners a fourth of the vote, they come away from that contest with nothing. And so it's difficult to gain momentum for that party. The single-member district system also is a barrier. Because when we elect members of Congress, each district elects one person. And those 435 separate individual elections determine the composition of the federal congress. Parliamentary systems, systems such as are in most of the world and in Europe in particular. People have one nationwide election for their congress. And each party gets the number of seats in congress that corresponds to the percentage of the vote they received. So for example, in the United States. If the Republican candidate in a district gets 40 percent of the vote. And a Democrat gets 30 percent of the vote. And a, let's say, a Green Party candidate gets 25 percent of the vote. Then the Republican in -- because it's a plurality system. The Republican wins the election at 40 percent. And the Republican goes to Congress to represent that district. That contest then repeats itself 435 time around the country. And Republicans go to Congress. Democrats go to Congress. But in no single district do the Green Party get a plurality. Because they're getting 25, 30 percent in each district. And so they're coming in second or third throughout the whole country. And they end up sending nobody to Congress. Now, on the other hand, if we had a proportional system and there was a nationwide election. And the Republicans got 40 percent. The Democrats got 35 percent. And the Green Party got 25 percent. Then that would mean that the Green Party would be allotted 25 percent of the seats in Congress. Which would be 108 or 109 seats. Well, the Green Party would be delighted to send 108 people to Congress. But because of our winner-takes-all and single-member district system, the Green Party can win 25 percent of the electorate and send nobody to Congress. The final rule-based barrier here are rules within Congress itself. And if you recall the way Congress is organized is the majority party determines who gets to go to what committees. They determine who the chairs of those committees are going to be. The majority party determines what bills will be heard. What bills are assigned. What committees. The majority party runs everything in Congress, in the House, and the Senate. Minority parties have very little influence or power in the Congress. Now, if a third-party candidate went in, they would have even less power than the minority party does. Because they would only have a handful of seats. Which means they would never achieve a leadership position in Congress. They would never be able to determine what committees they wanted to sit on. They would constantly be at the whim of the majority party for their committee assignments. Which would make it very difficult for them to have any impact on legislation even if they made it to Congress. So these rules that are in place create serious barriers to the electoral success of a third or minor party.



Slide 27

Text: Co-option

Parties cop-opt successful movement to prevent losing ground to themo Leadershipo Issue position

[Photo of Ralph Nader at a podium] [Photo of Ralph Nader speaking to a crowd]

Audio: Now for this reason, people are reluctant to vote for third parties because they know that if they vote for those third party candidates that they may be throwing their vote away. And so the wasted vote syndrome prevents people who might actually support the ideals the party is promoting to vote for one of the two main party candidates instead. Now even when a third party gets itself organized and convinces voters to vote for them, they actually have a hard time surviving because if a third party is able to mobilize a large amount of the electorate, then that draws the attention of the two main parties. Remember that I said there's two currencies in American politics, money and votes. A minor party can gain power over policy by demonstrating that it can mobilize votes so the Green Party, represented by Ralph Nader here on the slide, was able to gather enough votes, between 5 and 7% of the votes to sway the 2000 election and result in George Bush being elected, rather than Al Gore. Now that garnered the attention of the Democratic Party because they don't like losing elections, it's not the point of a political party but they were able to mobilize around 5 to 7% of the American public. So what has typically happened in the past and is occurring now with the Democrats and the Green Party, is that as a third party demonstrates its electoral success that the two major parties move in to coopt those positions, to take those policy positions and adopt them as their own so that the activists in the third party can look at the main parties who are adopting their same policies and jump ship and go back to the main party. So the Democratic party worked after 2000, to adopt a much more pro-environmental stance than had under Bill Clinton's presidency. As a result, many of those who voted for the Green Party in 2000 voted for the Democratic Party in 2004 and 2008. A similar type of situation is happening with the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party has not formed a third party but as shown in the slide underneath -- the second slide on this frame, they are able to mobilize large groups of people around the country. And so the Republican Party is taking aims to coopt that movement into their own party. And what you're seeing in this picture is a Republican legislator addressing a Tea Party rally in an attempt to garner and take advantage of that mobilization. So major parties coop successful movements to prevent losing ground to them. They offer leadership positions to the members of the third party and they adopt their issue positions. Another example from history would be the Progressive Era. The Progressive Movement was actually forming its own political party and they were achieving considerable success at the state and local level. And so the Democratic Party co-opted the progressive agenda and as a result, all of those progressive activists became part of the Democratic Party and that helps explain how the Democratic Party overtook the Republican Party in Congress in the late



1800s. So if a third party wants to survive, it needs to not only be successful electorally. But once it’s proved its success and its viability as a real movement, it has to resist cooptation by the two major parties.

Slide 28

Text: Cross-Cutting Issue

Cross-cutting cleavage creates opportunity for 3rd party to gain followers

[Chart demonstrating Reinforcing Cleavage Gun Control] [Chart demonstrating Cross-cutting Cleavage Entitlement Reform]

Audio: Now, there is one situation where third parties have an opportunity, a narrow window, to seize electoral success while avoiding co-optation, and become a major political party. And that is when there is a crosscutting issue. And what I mean by that is an issue that does not neatly fall along the lines of the existing political parties. The examples that I have here on the slide is reinforcing versus a crosscutting, a division or cleavage in society. A reinforcing cleavage is that of gun control. There are anti-gun control democrats. And there are pro-gun control republicans. But by and large, democrats tend to be more in favor of gun control. And republicans tend to be against gun control. So that position on gun control has a reinforcing effect. So the NRA gives the vast majority of its campaign contributions to Republicans. And that issue reinforces the partisan division. Now, we can contrast that with the current desires for entitlement reform. Now, entitlements are government programs that you qualify for by your condition. So when you're age 65, you're eligible to Social Security. That's an entitlement. So Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Pell grants. Those are entitlement programs. Now, there are many people who are concerned with the state of the national budget. Who argue that our entitlement spending is bankrupting the nation. And they advocate for entitlement reform. Now, republicans and democrats who advocate for entitlement reform may have different proposals for how to reform those entitlements. But they agree that entitlement reform needs to happen. At the same time, there are Republicans and democrats who will resist entitlement reform at all cost. So partisanship is not an accurate predictor of one's position on entitlement reform. So entitlement reform is then a crosscutting issue. Your position on that doesn't necessarily correlate to your membership in a political party. This then would create a possibility of a third political party. Let's see, the Entitlement Reform Party, to make one up. And that Entitlement Reform Party, were it to be successful, would be able to get both democrats and republicans who are in favor for entitlement reform to side with that party. Whereas, the democrats and republicans who are opposed to entitlement reform will not be on the same party. They'll -- democrats will vote for a democratic candidate. Republicans will vote for a republican candidate. And the pro-reform democrats and republicans will vote for the Reform Party. Which would enable the Reform Party to actually win the election. Now, this has happened once in our country's history. And that was the issue of slavery. Slavery was a crosscutting issue. The Whig Party sought to avoid a



discussion of slavery because it was so divisive. And the Democratic Party was divided. Northern democrats were against slavery. And Southern democrats were in favor of it. And so neither party was united on this issue of slavery. So a new party formed, the Republican Party. And the Republican Party was organized to combat the twin evils of slavery and polygamy, was its original platform. And it then sprung to the scene, and the Whigs all joined the Republican Party and the Northern democrats voted for the Republican Party. The Abolitionists voted for the Republican Party. So the only people who voted for the democratic candidate were the Southern democrats. So by exploiting that crosscutting issue, the Republican Party defeated both the Whig Party and the Democratic Party and seized power. And as a result, the Whig Party completely ceased to exist. Because it was not seen as relevant to the issues of the day once the Civil War broke out. The last major third-party movement in our country was when Ross Perot in that '92 election came to the scene. And the crosscutting issue there was balancing the budget. Neither party was doing anything to balance the budget. And so Ross Perot went on Larry King Live at CNN with a bunch of charts and graphs. And discussed to the American people the danger the of the budget situation. And that crosscutting issue of balancing the budget became so popular, it launched Ross Perot into a viable Presidential bid. As a result, both parties adopted balancing the budget into their platforms. And so Ross Perot's party was not able to sustain itself as a crosscutting issue because the two political parties co-opted that issue.

Slide 29

Text: Conclusion

[Image of Democratic Party logo] [Image of Republican Party logo]

Audio: So what we've learned then is that individuals will aggregate their preferences as a way to be more effective in the political arena and that as they advocate those preferences and form groups, those groups can then engage the policy process to effectively bring about policy change. Political parties as organized groups work to advocate their party preferences and to elect members of their party to office. They perform some essential functions in our electoral environment while they're doing that and there's some things that parties don't do that we shouldn't expect them to do. Finally, we talked about why we have a two party system and some of the very real barriers that are in place for third party candidates. Now there are sources that you can go to find out about candidates and find out about parties and those will be located in your textbook. The point to consider with interest groups and political parties is to not expect them to be unbiased, that they are actors on the political arena pursuing their own electoral agenda and it's important to take that agenda into account as you seek information from them.

Slide 30

Text: This presentation is courtesy of Brian Dille, Professor of political science at Mesa Community College.



[Photo of Brian Dille]

Audio: This presentation is courtesy of Brian Dille. I am the speaker, and I'm professor of political science at Mesa Community College, a college of the Maricopa Community College District in Mesa, Arizona. I hope you've enjoyed this presentation.


INTEREST GROUPS AND PARTIES · Web viewThere was a quote from Mario Cuomo, he was the mayor of...

Documents

Transcript of INTEREST GROUPS AND PARTIES · Web viewThere was a quote from Mario Cuomo, he was the mayor of...