Soviet Interest Groups and the Policy Process: The Repeal of Production Education

1969 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip D. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Group Theory ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Democratic Politics

The role of interest groups in the policy process has long engaged the attention of students of democratic politics. Only recently, however, have Soviet interest groups been studied systematically. This lag can be explained by two facts: the employment of the totalitarian model, emphasizing hierarchical controls and ignoring or denying significant political conflict; and the considerable difficulties of applying group theory to nondemocratic societies.

Parliamentary Committees

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingvar Mattson
Keyword(s):  
Policy Process ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Swedish Politics ◽  
Opposition Parties

This chapter describes the role of the Swedish parliament, and parliamentary committees in particular, in the policy-making process. The role depends on the parliamentary situation: whether there is a majority government or minority government in power. In essence, the chapter shows that Parliament mainly approves governmental bills and seldom initiates legislation. It is an arena for both political conflict and consensus. Political negotiations between governmental parties and opposition parties occur in which the opposition has influence on parliamentary decisions in the policy process. Due to increased conflict between the two blocs in Swedish politics, the importance of the committees as grounds for negotiating compromises has, however, decreased.

Capitalism, Institutions, and Power in the Study of Business

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pepper D. Culpepper
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Preference Formation ◽  
Power Resources ◽  
Democratic Capitalism

This chapter explores the contributions of historical institutionalist scholarship to understanding preference formation in business. It critiques the analytical drift of the literature away from some conceptual sites of essential political action in democratic capitalism: issues of power, common trends across capitalist countries, and the role of voters in structuring the character of political conflict among interest groups and political parties. The chapter proposes a governance space, defined by the two dimensions of political salience and institutional formality, as a way to combine insights about the importance of institutional context with the structurally uneven allocation of power resources in capitalism.

scholarly journals Have You Ever Seen the Void? Interest Groups Concerns Toward the Weakening Representational Role of Political Parties in European Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Chiara Fiorelli
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Democratic Life

Contemporary democracies face a trend toward the diffusion of the representational void left by under- legitimized political parties (Mair 2013). The essential functions of traditional political parties to organize and articulate political conflict and societal interests have been challenged both from the inside of the party system, by the emergence of populist habits of newcomers, and from the outside, by the progressive erosion of old political culture and corresponding increasing of hostility feeling. Intermediaries organizations of political and economic interests usually push their demands toward political actors in order to shape policy choices. What can happen when the traditional party system suffers from de- legitimation? In this paper, I will try to understand the level of concern of interest organizations toward the progressive detachment of civil society from political actors, in order to define if the risk of a void of representation is perceived as real and contingent. Thanks to a new original European dataset (the Comparative Interest Groups Survey), the analysis shows that different types of interest groups perceive the void to be real and with a possible impact on their activities and their own survival. As expected, in the regression model, differences emerge between countries with a traditional strong interests’ system and countries where groups activities are usually barely regulated. The results support the idea that the distance between civil society and political representatives should be considered a prominent focus of contemporary social and political investigation in order to understand the challenge for democratic life and the possible strategy of reaction.

The Telecommunications Policy Process

2000 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Barr
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
Telecommunications Policy ◽  
Power Shift ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Public Interest Groups

A fundamental power shift is underway in contemporary Australia — the deconstruction of the role of the state in ownership, policy and strategic thinking for the future. In telecommunications policy, we have replaced strategic thinking for the nation with ad hoc strategic planning by an array of intensely competitive companies. This article argues that we need to widen the framework of a plethora of public-interest groups pushing narrow sectional interest to much wider inputs in the overall policy process. We need to foster imaginative attempts at constructing national plans — of many different kinds — for Australia's communications future.

10. The European Commission

2019 ◽  
pp. 143-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Egeberg
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
International Organization ◽  
The European Union ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Recent Growth ◽  
Executive Body

This chapter provides a general introduction to the European Commission, the main executive body of the European Union (EU). It argues that it is more productive to compare the Commission to national executives or to a government than to a secretariat of a traditional international organization. It begins with a summary of the Commission’s functions within the EU’s policy process. It then considers the question of Commission influence and autonomy, before moving on to look at the structure, demography, and decision behaviour within the organization—that is, at the role of the President of the Commission and the Commissioners, at the Commissioners’ personal staffs, and at the Commission administration. It then examines the committees and administrative networks that link the Commission to national administrations and interest groups, and also deals with the recent growth of EU agencies. The chapter concludes by emphasizing that the Commission is much more of a European(ized) and supranational institution than it was at its inception.

Political parties and policy analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Albert ◽  
Raymond J. La Raja
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Policy Proposal ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
Formal Organizations ◽  
The Relationship

The role of political parties in developing public policy is a thoroughly understudied topic. We argue that, to understand the role of formal party organizations in the policy process, researchers must examine the relationship between parties and ideologically similar but informally affiliated groups – called the ‘extended party network’ (EPN) – such as interest groups and think tanks. We show that parties are focused on electoral pursuits and should thus be viewed as demanders of policy ideas. The organizations in their extended network, however, have the resources and incentives to invest in developing public policy ideas. We argue that groups in the EPN supply their preferred party with policy ideas, and formal party actors filter these ideas and choose a policy proposal acceptable to these supporters. Conceiving of parties beyond their formal organizations should therefore clarify their role in the policy process.

scholarly journals Have You Ever Seen the Void? Interest Groups Concerns Toward the Weakening Representational Role of Political Parties in European Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Chiara Fiorelli
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Democratic Life

Contemporary democracies face a trend toward the diffusion of the representational void left by under- legitimized political parties (Mair 2013). The essential functions of traditional political parties to organize and articulate political conflict and societal interests have been challenged both from the inside of the party system, by the emergence of populist habits of newcomers, and from the outside, by the progressive erosion of old political culture and corresponding increasing of hostility feeling. Intermediaries organizations of political and economic interests usually push their demands toward political actors in order to shape policy choices. What can happen when the traditional party system suffers from de- legitimation? In this paper, I will try to understand the level of concern of interest organizations toward the progressive detachment of civil society from political actors, in order to define if the risk of a void of representation is perceived as real and contingent. Thanks to a new original European dataset (the Comparative Interest Groups Survey), the analysis shows that different types of interest groups perceive the void to be real and with a possible impact on their activities and their own survival. As expected, in the regression model, differences emerge between countries with a traditional strong interests’ system and countries where groups activities are usually barely regulated. The results support the idea that the distance between civil society and political representatives should be considered a prominent focus of contemporary social and political investigation in order to understand the challenge for democratic life and the possible strategy of reaction.

Thucydides on the Political Passions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Wohl
Keyword(s):  
Political Conflict ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Reason ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
Imperial Politics

This chapter discusses the political passions in Thucydides’ History. Focusing on the seminal antithesis between emotion and (political) reason, it argues that this antithesis is itself inherently political: the nature and role of the passions in politics are themselves political questions; their answers, the stakes of political conflict. The chapter examines this contention within Thucydides’ analysis of Athenian democratic politics, particularly Pericles’ affective governance of an angry demos; and within Athenian imperial politics, in which disastrous expansion is fueled by the irrational passions of the demos, Athens, and mankind as a whole. In both domains, Thucydides uses emotion (performatively as well as analytically) to construct a particular vision of political rationality and to secure the authority of his own rational and dispassionate historiography.

Border clashes: the distributive politics of professional liberalisation in Greece, 2010–2018

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Francesco Stolfi ◽  
Natalia Papamakariou
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Organisational Structure ◽  
Eu Legislation ◽  
Tourist Guides

AbstractThis article studies the political conflict surrounding the implementation of the European Union’s Services Directive in Greece between 2010 and 2018, the period in which the country was subject to external conditionality by external institutions. Focusing on the opening of jurisdictional boundaries for four professions (tourist guides, taxi owners, lawyers and engineers) that differ in terms of power and of organisational structure, we find that power differences, including control of the professions’ institutions of interest aggregation and representation, explain the liberalisation outcomes across the four professions. This article thus puts the spotlight on the role of domestic interest groups in the implementation of EU legislation and directs researchers’ attention to the broader issue of bias in interest intermediation, a classic, but lately understudied, issue in the study of politics.

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