Linkage institution- a place that links you to the policy-making institution

• Political parties- broad-based

• Elections

• Media

• Special interest groups

• Because of winner take all- why there’s a 2 party system

• Third parties do not amount to anything- they can keep one of the major parties from winning, issue co-option, restrictive ballot access rules

Interest groups- a linkage institution a group of people that are organized to try to impact public policy. They do not run people for office.

• They try to impact all of the policy-making institutions

• They send lobbyists to congress, and campaign contributions, not buying a candidate you are buying access. They can and will write a check to opposing candidates bc one of them will win and they want to access.

• Bureaucracy- send a lobbyist

• Judiciary- they file friend of the court brief, lobby the president to get a good nominee, Lobby the senate to get a nominee confirmed or denied, paying for or supporting litigation of others.  Brown v. Board of Ed.

Iron Triangle

• The relationship between, Intrest goruop, congressional committee, bureaucracy

  • Permanent

Effectiveness of an interest group

• Free rider- a person who benefits from it but is not affected by the impact

• Access to resources

• Size of the group

• The prestige of the groups

How interests work through political parties

• A valued constiuteancy-

Media- tells the people what is going on in the gov. And the gov thepeople'ss opinion

• Scorekeepers- horse-race journalims- they cover who is ahead and you os ahead

• Gatekeeper- decide what going to get addressed in the political system

  • Agenda setter - acts as a gatekeeper for which issues enter the political arena.

• Ex: toxins in the drinking water

  • Media has focused the attention on this particular issue

    • Not talking about something else

    • Functions as a watchdog- holding the system accountable

      • Could have gov self report but wont when it screw up

      • The media is an outside party that reports on the government to let you know what is going on

      • Bias in the media- media- means newspapers, social media, tv, satellite, cable, tv broadcast, radio -

        • the purpose of their existence is to make money- the biggest bias in the media is profit-

      • Narrowcasting- not going after a broad market, they are going after a small portion of it.

  • Watchdog

    • Mismanagement

    • Self-report

      • They will not self-report if they screw up

        • Transparency where you have to have rules to make sure everything is accessible.

Is the media bias? = PROFIT

• News broadcasting channels provide service to viewers and the amount of viewers they have the more money they get.

  • FOX NEWS

    • They are not going to show viewers things they don’t want to see

• Conservative oriented news

• Liberal oriented news

• Talk radio

• USA Today

  • Ideologically tends to be centered left and own other newspapers that have a conservative.