POL 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: New York State Bar Association, Advocacy Group, American Civil Liberties Union
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POL 102
Lecture 16
Ch. 11 - Interest Groups
● Overview of Interest Groups
○ Organizations that try to shape policy go by many names:
■ Loyists
■ Vested iterests
■ Pressure group
■ “peial iterests
■ Priate groups
■ Puli groups
■ “ei-priate groups
■ PACs/“uperPACs
● Characteristics of Interest Groups
○ Multiple individuals
○ Shared attitudes towards policy
■ Making claims on others
● E.g. state or local government, Congress, SCOTUS, society, etc.
○ What do they want?
■ To change current policy
■ To protect the status quo
● Types of Interest Groups
○ Issue Oriented/Citizen Groups
■ e.g. ACLU
○ Economic/Professional Groups
■ e.g. New York State Bar Association
○ Foreign policy or aid groups
■ NGOs
● How To Tell Groups Apart
○ Group parameters
■ Who can join?
○ Resource strength
■ Do they have more money or more people?
■ More eers → ore poer → ore oey
○ Organization
■ How centralized is the group
○ Scope of Policy Goal
■ Public or private goods
● Issue/Citizen Groups
○ Open parameters
■ Voluntary/open membership
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○ Resource strength
■ Personnel
○ Organization
■ Bottom-up
○ Policy Goal
■ Public goods
● Economic/Professional Groups
○ Closed membership
■ Mandatory membership/professional gatekeepers
○ Resource strength
■ Money and policy expertise
○ Organization
■ Centralized
○ Policy goal
■ Private goods
● Public Policy
○ Keystone of study of IGs: public policy
○ Iforally, puli poliy: hat goeret does ad does’t do to address soial
problems
■ Act of government passing & implementing laws
■ Also act of government not passing and implementing laws
■ Inaction is also policy
● An Example
○ Voting age in the US: 18
○ Legal drinking age in the US: 21
○ Voting age in the UK: 18
○ Legal drinking age in the UK: 18
○ The decision to set off the cutoff at 18 or 21 is arbitrary.
● Minimum Drinking Age Act (1984)
○ Prohibition ends in 1933
■ State set their own legal drinking age
■ Many states pick 18
○ Study shows that states that had higher minimum drinking ages had lower fatalities
○ In 1984, we get the National Minimum Drinking Age Act
● Policy Changes
○ National Minimum Drinking Age Act = Public Policy
○ 50 years of national government inaction = Public Policy too
○ What changed?
■ Interest groups like MADD
● Which lobbied a lot
● Lobbying
○ The act of trying to influence policy
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Document Summary
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