POL S101 Study Guide - Final Guide: Robert A. Dahl, Harm Principle, Negative Liberty

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Document Summary

Peter bachrach and morton baratz (1970) first introduced the concept of nondecision- making, contesting the dominant explanation of the use of power in decision-making by asking how issues are suppressed and the scope of decision-making restricted. This was a challenge to robert dahl"s conceptualization of power, which tended to focus on how decisions are made. Bachrach and baratz suggested that to fully understand power, researchers should also consider decisions that are not made nondecisions. Nondecision-making involves suppressing challenges to the status quo and suppressing the addition of new issues to an agenda. Issues are excluded from an agenda because they are threatening in some direct way, or because of the competition for the limited space for agenda items. Harm principle becomes a central debate issue for censorship of porn. Liberals resist censorship to porn as a matter of principle, skipper support other material like porn not censored therefore cannot limit to specifically censoring porn.