POLI 212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Arthur F. Bentley, David Truman, Gout
17 May 2018
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POLI 222: Section 3 2018-03-15 7:08:00 PM
Tuesday March 13- Midterm 2
Thursday March 15th
Public and Private Interest Groups
Public interest groups VS private interest groups
o Private goods vs public goods
• Difference in the basis of kind of goods they are influencing the
protection of
• Rhetorical value → both appealing to public
o Rise of influence in courts in determining role of interest groups
Interest/pressure groups
▪ Schatt Schneider “politics is the mobilization of bias”
• Politics doesn’t happen until there is mobilization,
• not a spectator sport
• you cant assume your concerns will be naturally vocalized
▪ Key Question
• Where do groups come from
• How and to what degree are they organized
• How and under what conditions do they exert influence?
• What role do they play in democratic politics
▪ Interest group pluralism
• pluralism: there isn’t just one general will, there are many interests
and therefor many different organizations competing in a political
system of field
o assumes field is competitive
▪ somehow organizations will have a voice
▪ all are involved in a particular policy domain
see all voices as equal (which is untrue)
o first generation of scholars: Arthur Bentley, David Truman
• State as a neutral arbiter: objective of state is to ___ competing
voices neutrally
• Problem: where do interest groups come from?
▪ Maneur Olson: the logic of collective action (1965)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Economist working in the US during the civil rights movement
o This was a significant time for public mobilization
• Why would public interest groups form in the first place?
• Central conundrum: public goods are distinguished by central
characteristics, non excludability and non-rivalrous
• Non Excludability
o The person who pays no costs (doesn’t join/participate or pay
into the costs) of developing the good cannot be excluded
from joining the good once its produced
▪ Get to benefit
• Non rivalrous
o One persons use of the good doesn’t diminish the other
persons use of the good
• Free riders attracted
o Individual rationale to not pay costs of participating in groups,
o So why do we still see these groups?
• Olson’s answer→ external inducements
▪ The functioning of an interest group system
• Neo-intuitionalism
o Paul’s policy community model an organizational field of a
number of different actors
• Complexity of a policy field
o Who are the central actors
o What are the relationships between them
o Not just “business” or “gout”
• Corporatism
o Interests are organized in a mere rigid, elite level structure
o Ex: Europe, China
o Much more hierarchical
o example that leads is based in labour and business groups
(rather than central periphery)
o umbrella organizations representing business’ interests
• Neo-Marxist
o Capitalist class, actors themselves defined in class inspired
terms
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find more resources at oneclass.com
▪ Think about interest groups as another way in which collective demands
are formulated and presented to governments
• A way of linking demands and authority
▪ Common critique of interest group politics
• Democracy in peril/regulatory capture theory
• Mandate to speak on behalf of someone, worry that state will be
captured by interests of regulator
o Fear based in accountability (buying gout/regulatory capture)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
