Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

PUBLIC POLICY
ANALYSIS
UNOFFICIAL ACTORS AND THEIR ROLES IN PUBLIC POLICY
Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy
• Why unofficial actors are important in the policy making

process?
- Any democratic system cannot function well without the
existence of these groups.
- Their existence makes a great impact on the nature of
politics and the reforms and changes in the constitutional
order.
Individual
Interest groups
Citizens
Communications
Political parties
media
Think tanks
• Why it is called unofficial actors?

INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS
▪ Who are the individual citizens? What they want?

- Generally speaking, individuals want the most
services for ourselves while paying the least taxes
for those services.
▪ How they influence the policy making process?
- Voting
- Citizens can be mobilized.
COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA
• The news media are important actors in the policy process.

• The fourth authority or the watchdog – conducts check and balance.
• Informing the citizen about the performance of the government
• Newspapers – National versus regional versus local.
• TV is the central news medium. Older population VS younger population
• Entertainment programming can be equally important.
• Media’s primary function in policy process is agenda-setting. Media

coverage correlates with institutional attention.
COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA.
• News media are not just passive actors in
covering news
• Interest try to arouse media focus.
• Covering events means may mean
uncovering the another event
• Profit-driven businesses.
• Competitive biases of news gathering:
dramatic and narrative qualities of the
story.
Interest Groups
Interest group a collection of people or organizations

that unite to advance their desired political outcomes in
government and society.
• AIPAC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_qJiid6l1k
• Friends of Earth:
https://www.youtube.com/user/FriendsoftheEarthInt
• National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)

https://www.youtube.com/user/NAMvideo
Types of Interest Groups
• Institutional Interest Group
• Economic or Private Interest Groups:
• Public Interest Groups

• Institutional Interest Group: A group of people usually not

formally constituted, whose members are part of the same
institution or organization. Students at a university are an
example of such a group.
• Economic or Private Interest Groups: Groups formed to

promote and defend the economic/private interests of their
members, for example, industry associations.
ECONOMIC OR PRIVATE INTEREST
GROUPS - THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
MANUFACTURERS (NAM)
• The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is an advocacy group

headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, with additional offices
across the country. It is the nation's largest manufacturing industrial trade
association, representing 14,000 small and large manufacturing
companies in every industrial sector and in all 50 states.
AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS
COMMITTEE (AIPAC) - PRO-ISRAEL
LOBBYING ORGANIZATIONS I
AIPAC
• Fortune Magazine once labeled the AIPAC the second most powerful lobby in America. According to
AIPAC’s website, the 100,000-member group has championed the passage of more than a dozen
bills to impose tougher sanctions on Iran and bolster security assistance to Israel in the past 15
years. Israel has been by far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II, to the tune
of almost $3 billion per year over the past quarter-century. AIPAC certainly deserves some of the
credit for that continuing cash flow. While AIPAC doesn’t officially make contributions to
candidates, it does coordinate a political financing network of sorts, mobilizing wealthy Jewish-
American donors on both sides of the political aisle — including tycoons Sheldon Adelson and
George Soros
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_qJiid6l1k
PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS
• Public Interest Groups: Groups formed to promote what its

members believe is the broader interest.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FriendsoftheEar
thInt
• They also know that nonmembers constitute a potential

force of supporters, and, as mentioned earlier, when many
such people are mobilized, a social movement may result.
Lobbying
• The term applied to the organized and ongoing process of

persuading the legislative or executive branches to enact
policies that promote an individual’s or group’s interest
• Lobbying elected and appointed
• Negative concept: secret ,campaign contributions, bribes.
While , some interest groups aim to increase transparency
• There remain perception that vote can be bought by the
most powerful group
INTEREST STATES IN US
• https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/
PEAK ASSOCIATIONS
• The largest and most influential groups in a policy domain.

These tend to be the groups that lead other like minded
groups in advocacy coalitions. The American Medical
Association is an example of peak organization.
THE AMERICAN PETROLEUM
INSTITUTE (API)
• The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S.
trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It
claims to represent about 650 corporations involved in
production, refinement, distribution, and many other
aspects of the petroleum industry.
FREE-RIDER PROBLEMS
THE POWER OF INTEREST GROUPS
VARIES
• Knowledge and information

• Communication with key decision
makers
• Group size, money, and peak
associations.
• Attracting non members based on :
direct economic interest, ideological
commitment, or interested in the issue.
INTEREST GROUPS
• Interest groups are important – perhaps central – to the

policy process because the power of individuals is greatly
magnified when they form groups.
• Why it is called unofficial actors?

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND
MOBILIZATION
• A broad based group of people that come together to
press for political or policy goals.
• A social movement is broader than an interest, often
encompassing many groups and otherwise politically
unorganized people.
• Recent social movements include the civil rights movement,
and the women’s rights movement.
MACRON ON ENVIRONMENT:
"THERE IS NO PLANET B"
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGS4-sIMDqo
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND
MOBILIZATION
• Conservative and Liberal movements
• When movements suffer political setbacks, they
can sometimes recruit new adherents to their
cause, but when goals are achieved coalitions
often break up and the social movements loses
momentum.
WHICH ACTOR WE ARE GOING
TO TALK ABOUT?
POLITICAL PARTIES
• Functions
• Organization of the legislative
branch based on the political
parties.
• Transmission of political preferences: Creation of packages of policy
ideas to appeals voters and to shape legislation.
POLITICAL PARTIES IN UK
Think tanks and other research organizations.
• Greater analytical capacity can use to make better policy

• Rise of ideological think tanks
• Think tank, universities, and policy process
• Carnegie Endowment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq5Erhz_z7E
• https://www.brookings.edu
• https://carnegieendowment.org
• https://timep.org // https://timep.org/about-us/
• http://acpss.ahram.org.eg

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PUBLIC POLICY

• Why unofficial actors are important in the policy making

• Why it is called unofficial actors?

▪ Who are the individual citizens? What they want?

• The news media are important actors in the policy process.

• Media’s primary function in policy process is agenda-setting. Media

Interest group a collection of people or organizations

• National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)

• Institutional Interest Group

• Economic or Private Interest Groups:

• Public Interest Groups

• Institutional Interest Group: A group of people usually not

• Economic or Private Interest Groups: Groups formed to

• The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is an advocacy group

• Public Interest Groups: Groups formed to promote what its

• They also know that nonmembers constitute a potential

• The term applied to the organized and ongoing process of

• The largest and most influential groups in a policy domain.

• Knowledge and information

• Interest groups are important – perhaps central – to the

• Why it is called unofficial actors?

• Greater analytical capacity can use to make better policy

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