Monday 11/3 Notes

In class Monday we talked about the field trip and the free response worksheets. Then we took more notes:

4.) Appealing to the public/Informative Campaigns are organized efforts to gain public backing by bringing the groups views to the public’s attention
A. Public Relations may involve advertising in newspapers (expensive), sending
speakers to meetings or disseminating pamphlets or fact sheets
B. Sponsoring research is another way groups press their case
C. Some groups publicize the voting records of Congress. Some publish indexes
of how members of Congress voted on issues of critical importance to the group.
5.) The “Ratings Game”
A. Groups of ten “rate” members of Congress in terms of the amount of support
they gave to legislation that is favorable to their causes. Many interest groups use
these voting systems to describe members’ voting records to interested citizens
and other times they use them to embarrass members
6.) Coalition Building takes place when several groups join together in a lobbying campaign

Is this interest group system biased?
1.) Lobbying can be evaluated through both the pluralist and majoritarian frameworks
A. Evaluating fairness in the pluralist framework requires that we take account of
two criteria
1.) Significant interest in the population should be adequately represented
2.) Government should listen to the views of all major interests