Networks of Working Relationships or Coalitions: Policy Change - Literature review Example

 Question one Interest group societies are mainly contemplated by the issue of public policy to the political system and yet the irony of this is that the interest group participants have setbacks trying to demonstrate the interest group influence on the public policy and this leaves the interest groups failing to understand their impact to the public policies which affect the public at large. American domestic review policy which was enacted by the American federal government in some areas of the country including New York City which enabled the assessment of the issues of interest group influence as well as the variation across the venues, issue areas, groups, tactics and the periods. This aggregates and explains the significant policy enactments found in the histories of individual issues in areas such as environmental policy and also issues to deal with transportation. The authors tend to provide the narrative accounts of the development of the public policy due to this situation, there is the identification of the responsible individuals for policy change and the policy environment that made the change of the policy, and this offers the new role of the interest groups in the change of policy. The influence of interest group attempt to generalize suffering from the inherent difficulty of measuring the influence, Assessments done to the functional activities of the interest groups show that they do not incorporate factors unrelated to interest group that predicts the success or even failure of the function and the policy stipulated for their various initiatives. Further research has proved that, generated consistent evidence of influence is rare and tends to focus more on narrow policy goals rather than significant policy enactments with non ideological and non controversial issues. The interest groups have generally demonstrated the delivery of action only t the conditional and small effects often minor policy outcomes which do not have a large impact to the public domain, the groups are rendered lobby successful rather than influential touch and the demonstration to show the ability of stopping policy change as opposed to bring or the issue about without taking the proper actions. The influence of the interest groups is mostly realized in the major laws, administrative actions and also court decisions by they do not demonstrate the interest group activity that can lead to major policy enactments which will affect the public in a positive way, is best to say that the issues of administration policy the interest groups are very effective in them but when it comes to the implementation part of the process is where the interest group fails the public. The interest groups do not play a central role to ensure that there is policy influence while most of the network analyses are based on the endorsement lists under reported working relationships rather than the influence this has shown no efforts to look to the large number of significant policy enactments over a long period of historical injustices and this assess the ways of interest groups impact. History of the interest groups does not seek after the substantial evidence for the issue of the influence delivered by the interest groups. History just explains the extent the narrative of the outcome of the policy changes and brings out the convincing agenda of the crucial part the interest group play in the enactment of the policies which are public. To come to this conclusion of the important role of the interest groups the historians participate in doing their own research and strategies to come with these theories. The information can be obtained by the use of first hand interviews, media reports, reviews by the government agencies and also secondary sources. The historians also get some help from skilled personnel who include; journalists, political analysts and also policy makers. They combine and select explanatory information based on the relevant circumstances involving each policy enactment with attention to the factors that lead to the seemed different in successes as opposed to the failures. This system rarely systemizes the selection of the casual factors that lead to their conclusion across cases. Individual rely on the judgments of these professionals in the policy area where the search of the most relevant available evidence has been done, this is to give the people an easy work of not searching for evidence across all cases or independently to make one’s analysis since the experts have already done the honor. The benefit of this approach was that these historians do not do the search for evidence on the basis of the baggage of interest group theory or even intellectual history; they do not assume that the interest groups have a challenge in solving problems or also the resources are the main merit of some interests over others. The experts also take time to analyze rather than a single congress or presidential administration to give them specific information; they dig deep to the ground level and take a long period to come up with something which is complete and this allows the consideration of the policy developed and the review of many original inside documents from the policy makers. Historians bring out a different approach to the issue of interest group influence to the society by producing the reasonable account of interest group influence but also collectively a different position of the evidence based on an independent set of investigations that productively compared with the results from the interest group research. To extent that policy, history contributes a unique theoretical perspective on interest group influence it shows the interdependence of interest groups together with the political context and the vastly unequal capacity for influence they have among groups. Researchers of these interest groups are more sensitive to the point of the political context that the groups experience but are also less likely to consider the interest group deficiency influence in certain time periods or the issues because there are apart from the political fraternity other actors who predominate this will include powerful administrative agencies leader or even long serving member of the congress as to manipulate and assign credit to the interest groups. There is also the issue of differences in access or capacity across the groups which entail the possibility that only a few large and well known groups have the ability to decide the policy outcomes and this ensures that most interest groups and lobbyist never do enough to leave their legacy and imprint on the policy of the history. For one to access the interest group influence on policy enactments one has to use hidden narrative accounts of policy development. These sources cover some domestic policy issue which include; agriculture, commerce and finance, civil rights and liberties, criminal justices, education, energy, environment, housing and community development, labor and immigration, science and technology, social warfare, macroeconomics and transportation these are issues that affect the public but the information excludes defense, trade and the issues of foreign affairs but covers everything to do with the domestic policy issues or spectrum. The investigators obtained a larger number of resources for some areas than others but also still analyzing additional information covering the same policy where some resources covered most of the significant policy enactments. After the investigators compile information from some books and articles from the past one decade of the policy of the history of the interest groups, these sources cover the history of one of the domestic policies it was time to identify the significant policy enactments by using other assistants to identify the policy changes and the other assistants would code individual books for proper investigation and come up with the right and appropriate information. This was done by following the right protocols and tracking the enacted presidential directives, also looking inside the administrative actions widely and in details and the court rulings which were ruled at the time along with the legislation identified by each author or judge who was in charge as significant. Policy enactments are include for any author who suggested and indicated that change was important and also attempted to explain the reasons of the importance of change. This was redone by different investigators and found the same significant enactments from the congress, the president, powerful administrative figure or agency or department and also finally the court. Question two Any mention of factors was coded relating to interest groups that would have made an influence to the policy change. Questions were raised about each others explanation of the meaning of the change that each had indicated on the codebook, some of these questions concerned and involved interest groups for instance the writers referred to congressional lobbying, protest, group mobilization without even mentioning the specific groups that were involved in the same actions as mentioned earlier and even going to the extend of mentioning certain specific organizations. These references were all tracked to interest groups in the person concerned explanations for policy enactments. These interest groups corporations, trade associations, advocacy groups or any other private sector company or organizations indicated the type of interest group influence and the type of interest group required for the public policy. The information produced a specific database of the interest group where their factors were endorsed by the responsible individuals and reached an agreement on the majority of the codes which made different comparisons of different individuals indicating the explanations of the same enactments showing some of them recorded more explanatory factors and ideas more than the others. The explanation from all concerned considering interest group factors relevant when any source considered part of them for the reason of enactment this portrayed review potential biases in policy histories and potential problems facing the public policy. Some analyses were done through first hand interview acquiring information from an array of sources to look for patterns of findings. The use of qualitative accounts policy history produces some resourceful and reliable indicators from different authors who will produce similar information of relevant circumstantial factors in each enactment. The others get to cover policy enactments outside their area of focus and come up with the list of the same concluding information of the circumstances which are relevant to the specialist historians. The difference can also be based on the different interviews conducted by the authors, qualitative data or even the professional background of the author or even the period in which the events took place can make the difference of the final analysis. Interest groups are also involved in the process of the execution of the significant policy enactments more, and they were credited almost half the significant laws passed by the congress, significant executive orders, judicial decisions, administrative rules are among some of the groups that did the honor of approval of the law. Thus, the interest groups are credited to play a role in policy making in every perspective of federal policy and also making venue more often in the congress. The activities of the groups under the law are stipulated in combination with the factors such as focusing events, media coverage, negotiations among government officials and the support of the rest of the policy makers. The difference in explanatory factors for policy enactments in different government branches, interest groups are mostly credited among the branches of the government. This is to imply that if a company decides to make a profitable step that will concern the public policy but in the right manner but the government sees the step au offending to the public the interests groups have the right to lobby. That’s why interest groups are credited to policy changes in the courts as well to proclaim their rights and represent the public in the process for the public to fell their influence and presume their importance to the society and the country at large (Berry, Jeffery and Clyde Wilcox 65). Interest policy group is apparently more common in some policy areas compared to other areas. Reports the percentage of policy changes involving interest groups by major domestic policy domain, Interest groups were most frequently involved in policy changes in the environment and civil rights & liberties, where they were partially credited with more than two-thirds of policy changes. This is unsurprising given the large related advocacy communities. Interest groups like the American Farm Bureau and the Farmers Union were commonly credited with agriculture policy changes. Transportation policy is more frequently associated with corporate influence than other sectors. Factors related to groups were also credited in at least half of policy enactments in housing & development, labor & immigration, and macroeconomics. Groups were least commonly credited with policy change in criminal justice, but they reportedly played a role in at least 30 per cent of significant enactments in all areas. Reported group influence varies widely across issue areas but is never absent. Advocacy organizations were the most frequently credited type of interest group in most issue areas, although corporations and their associations were more common in energy, finance, macroeconomics, science and transportation. These issue areas feature substantial government financing and business regulation, but have not stimulated as many prominent advocacy groups (John 58). Another vital distinction between this analysis and previous interest group research is that the cases analyzed were of successful policy enactments. Though some authors do present in-depth studies of attempted policy changes that failed, most do not. Even when discussing failure to change policy, most authors refer to a general attempt to solve a problem or advance a category of solutions, rather than pointing to a specific bill or regulation that was never enacted. When they do point to a specific proposal that failed, they choose the proposal that came the closest to enactment, making them less helpful comparison cases. The inherent limitation is that the analysis is based on only enacted policy changes. Close analysis of policy change over long periods should provide some expertise in identifying causal factors, but the lack of inclusion of null cases has particular implications for comparing these findings with traditional interest group research. An analysis of interest group influence on failures to enact policy, for example, would be likely to show more common influence from business interests. Yet failure to enact policy is the easier case to explain; the status quo bias is widespread in policy making, affecting interest groups and government actors. Nevertheless, the findings reported here only apply to reported interest group influence on successful policy enactments (Hrebenar 52). There are also some inherent limitations involved in aggregating the explanations of policy historians via the content analysis used here. The compiled explanations across authors with varying breadth of focus and different standards for adjudicating influence. Some authors cite more explanatory factors and credit more actors than others. Although it was found some few significant differences in the crediting of interest groups based on author discipline, issue focus or research methods, any differences may be amplified by compiling across the authors and when more authors analyze some policy changes compared with others. Although it was found that these differences do not explain the results presented here, there remains unexplained variation in author judgments. Finally, the network analysis reported here relies on credit given to specific organizations for helping to bring about policy change. Not all ties in the networks convey political collaboration. The results are thus distinct from past research that analyzes networks of working relationships or coalitions (Bardes 23). Works cited Bardes, Barbara A, Mack C. Shelley, and Steffen W. Schmidt. American Government and Politics Today: The Essentials. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth, 2009. Print. Hrebenar, Ronald J. Interest Group Politics in America. Armonk, NY [u.a.: Sharpe, 1997. Print. Berry, Jeffery and Clyde Wilcox. The Interest Group Society. New York: Pearson Longman. 2009. Print. Write, John. Interests Groups and the Congress; Lobbying, Contributions and Influence. New York: Pearson Longman. 2003. Print.   Read More