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Unofficial Actors in The Policy Process
Unofficial Actors in The Policy Process
The policy studies scholars have divided the players in the policy process
into two main categories such as official and unofficial actors. Official actors
are those involved in public policy by virtue of their statutory or
constitutional responsibilities and have the power to make and enforce
policies. This does not preclude the possibility of these people being
influenced by others, like political party bosses or other interest/pressure
groups. The actors belonging to legislature, executive (including
bureaucracy), judiciary and regulatory agencies are clearly the official
actors.
Besides the official actors, there are many other groups and
organizations which do participate in the policy-making process. These
actors are called unofficial because their participation in the policy process
is not a function of their duties under the Constitution or the law. This is not
to say that these actors have no rights or standing to participate in the
process. Rather, it means that their mode of participation in policy
formulation is not specified in law. On the other hand, it has evolved and
grown as the nation has evolved and grown. So the unofficial actors refer to
those who play a role in the policy process without any explicit legal
authority to participate, aside from the usual rights of participation in a
democracy. These groups include the interest/pressure groups of various
types, political parties, individual citizens, research organizations and think
tanks, and the mass media. They considerably influence policy formulation
without possessing legal authority to make binding policy decisions. While
the previous chapter focused on the role of official actors (legislature,
executive and judiciary) in policy formulation, the present chapter discusses
in detail the role of unofficial actors in the policy process.
Interest Groups
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At the societal level, interest or pressure groups play a significant role in the
policy-making in many countries. While policy-making is a preserve of
the government, and particularly of the executive and bureaucracy,
the realities of modern politics enable groups formed specifically to
promote the interests or positions of specialized social groups to play
a significant role in the policy process. One of the most important
resources that differentiates such actors from others is the specific
knowledge they have at their disposal. The possession of specific
information that may be unavailable or less available to others
constitutes a very important advantage for them. The members of
specialized groups often know a great deal about their area of
concern. Since policy-making is a highly information-intensive
process, those with information may normally expect to play an
important role than the other. Politicians and bureaucrats often find
the information provided by interest groups indispensable for
performing their tasks. Government and opposition parties at times
curry favour with such groups to secure the information required for
effective policy-making or for attacking their opponents. Bureaucrats
similarly often need these groups help in developing and
implementing many policies (Baumgartner and Leech 1998).
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Third, some groups are well funded which enables them to hire
permanent specialized staff and influence parties and candidates during
elections.
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chosen to join. If one happens to be a student at a university, he or she is a
member of an institutional interest group university students union
because he or she shares some interests with the fellow students, such as
affordable tuition fee and quality education. If one joins the NCC or a Public
Interest Research Group (PIRG), he or she becomes part of a membership
group because he or has chosen to join the same deliberately.
In both public interest and economic groups, people join because they
gain some benefit. The challenge for public interest groups is to make clear
what those benefits are in order to attract and keep members. As a rule, it is
easier for economic groups to do so because their members have their
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economic security at stake, and the benefits are then more tangible. Public
interest groups, on the other hand, must appeal to other motivations than
economics. Most public interest groups make an appeal to peoples desire to
do good, augmenting it by material benefits like discounted nature tours,
glossy magazines, calendars, etc. These benefits seem trivial, but they help
to attract new members and promote group cohesion. Still, they are not as
powerful as economic inducements in promoting group unity.
Finally, it is important to note that some groups do not fit neatly into
the public interest-economic dichotomy. In particular, the United States
contains many religious and ideological groups that come together without
being based on economics or a broader public interest mission. Rather, their
mission is to promote their religious, moral, and ideological values among
their members and, sometimes, in the broader society. These groups range
from the mainstream churches to the more fundamentalist churches, and
from the politically moderate to the politically extreme on both ends of the
ideological spectrum. Such groups can become important players in the
policy process, at least briefly, during times of social upheaval and crisis or
when issues of morality and values are paramount.
Business Associations
Among the various types of interest groups, business is generally the most
powerful, with an unmatched capacity to affect public policy. The increasing
globalization of production and financial activities, due to improvements in
modem means of communication and transportation and the gradual
removal of controls on international economic transactions, has contributed
tremendously to the power of capital in recent decades. It is possible for
investors and managers to respond, if they so wish, to any unwanted
government action by moving capital to another location. Although this
theoretical mobility is limited by a variety of factors including the
availability of suitable investment opportunities in other countries the
potential loss of employment and revenues is a threat with which the state
must contend in making decisions. Because of their potential to affect state
revenues negatively, capitalists both domestic as well as foreign have the
ability to punish the state for any action it might take of which they
disapprove (Hayes 1978).
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parties and candidates running for office to accommodate business interests
more than they would for those of the other groups. Similarly, the financial
contributions that businesses often make to public policy research
institutions and individual researchers serve to further entrench their power.
The organizations and individuals receiving funds tend to be sympathetic
towards business interests and can provide business with the intellectual
wherewithal often required to prevail in policy debates (McGann and Weaver
1999, Abelson 1999).
Labour Groups
Labour, too, occupies a powerful position among social groups, though not
so powerful as business. Unlike business, which enjoys considerable weight
with policy-makers even at the individual level of the firm, labour needs a
collective organization, i.e. a trade union, to have its voice heard in the
policy subsystem. In addition to bargaining with employers on behalf of their
members wages and working conditions, which is their primary function,
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trade unions engage in political activities to shape government policies
affecting them (Taylor 1989). The origin of the role of the trade unions in the
public policy process is rooted in late nineteenth-century democratization,
which enabled workers, who form a majority in every industrialized society,
to have a say in the functioning of the government. Given the voting clout
afforded to them in a democracy, it was sometimes easier for them to
pressure the government to meet their needs than to bargain with their
employers. The creation of labour or social democratic parties, which
eventually formed governments in many countries, further reinforced
labours political power (Qualter 1985).
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strong trade unions, and the lowest in pluralist political systems such as the
United States and Canada, where it does not.
Political Parties
Political parties are an intermediating actor existing on the margins or
border between state and societal actors. They have a significant impact on
public policy, though in the modern era this usually has been only indirectly.
Though they are not directly represented in the policy subsystem, the party
to which they are affiliated may influence many of the actors in the
subsystem. Political parties tend to influence public policy indirectly,
primarily through their role in staffing the executive and, to a lesser degree,
the legislature. Indeed, once in office, it is not uncommon for party members
in government to ignore their official party platform while designing policies
(Thomson 2001).
The idea that political parties play a major role in the public policy
process, of course, stems from their undeniable influence on elections and
electoral outcomes in democratic states. While vote-seeking political parties
and candidates attempt to offer packages of policies they hope will appeal to
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voters, the electoral system is not structured to allow voters a choice on
specific policies. The representational system also limits the publics ability
to ensure that electorally salient policy issues actually move onto official
government agendas. The official agenda of governments is, in fact,
dominated by routine or institutionalized agenda-setting opportunities
rather than by partisan political activity (Kingdon 1984, Howlett 1997).
Even when parties do manage to raise an issue and see it move from
the public to the official agenda, they cannot control its evolution past that
point. As Richard Rose (1980: 153) puts it:
The fact that the influence of parties on particular stages of the policy
process may be muted, or that any such influence may be waning, does not
necessarily lead to the conclusion that parties do not matter. That is, as
Richard Rose argued almost a quarter century ago in the case of Britain:
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Parties do make a difference in the way [a country] is governed, but
the differences are not as expected. The differences in office between one
party and another are less likely to arise from contrasting intentions than
from the exigencies of government. Much of a partys record in office will be
stamped upon it from forces outside its control...parties are not the primary
forces shaping the destiny of society; it is shaped by something stronger
than parties. (Rose 1980: 141).
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actually permits citizens to choose their officials and to some degree
instructs these officials on policy, but because the existence of genuine
elections puts a stamp of approval on citizen participation. Indirectly,
therefore, elections enforce on proximate policy makers a rule that citizens
wishes count in policy making.
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the National Institute for Economic and Social Research. In India too, there
are a few policy think tanks like Centre for Policy Research, Observer
Research Foundation, etc. which have come up in recent years. Literally
hundreds of such institutes are active in the Western, developed, and
developing countries, some with broad policy mandates, and others that are
more limited in their purview such as the Canadian Environmental Law
Association (Lindquist, 1993; Abelson, 1996). Many think tanks are
associated with a particular ideological position. While Brookings and Urban
Institute are center-left, the American Enterprise Institute is somewhat more
to the right, and Cato is libertarian. Others, like RAND, are more closely
associated with their methodological style. RAND uses very sophisticated
techniques in its analyses of a range of public issues.
Mass Media
Last but not the least, media constitutes one of the important intermediating
actors active in the policy-making process. While some regard the role of the
mass media in the policy process as pivotal (Herman and Chomsky 1988,
Parenti 1986), others describe it as marginal (Kingdon 1984). There is no
denying that the mass media are crucial links between the state and society,
a position that allows for significant influence on the preferences of
government and society in regard to the identification of public problems
and their solutions. Yet, at the same time, like political parties, their direct
role in the various stages of the policy process is often sporadic and most
often quite marginal.
The role of the media in the policy process originates in the fact that
in reporting problems they function both as passive reporters and as active
analysts, as well as advocates of particular policy solutions. That is, news
programmes do not just report on a problem but often go to great lengths in
locating a problem not otherwise obvious, defining its nature and scope and
suggesting or implying the availability of potential solutions. The medias
role in agenda-setting is thus particularly significant. Media portrayal of
public problems and proposed solutions often conditions how they are
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understood by the public and many members of government, thereby
shutting out some alternatives and making the choice of others more likely.
However, the mass media has the tendency to be a one-sided source for
setting the policy agenda, as it has an inclination toward the sensational
news and also a tendency to exaggerate some aspects of an issue, while
playing down others.
We must not, however, exaggerate the mass medias role in the policy
process. Other policy actors have resources enabling them to counteract
media influence, and policy-makers are for the most part intelligent and
resourceful individuals who understand their own interests and have their
own ideas about appropriate or feasible policy options. As a rule, they are
not easily swayed by media portrayals of issues and preferred policy
solutions or by the mere fact of media attention. Indeed, they often use the
media to their own advantage. It is not uncommon for public officials and
successful interest groups to provide selective information to the media to
bolster their case. Indeed, very often the media are led by state opinion
rather than vice versa (Howlett 1997).
Conclusion
To conclude, it can be said that while the official actors like the minister(s)
and bureaucrats by virtue of their central position in the policy subsystem
and access to abundant organizational resources critically affect and
influence the policy process, their societal counterparts like interest groups
(business and labour), political parties, research organizations/think tanks
and the media often play a significant role in many policy areas. All these
actors have their own objectives, which they seek to achieve through
subsystem membership and participation in the policy process. But what
objectives they pursue, how they do so, and the extent to which they
succeed in their efforts depend to a large extent on the institutional context
in which they operate. At the domestic level, the structure of political
institutions affects the autonomy and capacity of the executive and
bureaucracy, a situation paralleled at the international level by the structure
of international regimes and the role played by state resources within them.
These structures have a decisive effect on actors interest and behaviour,
and on the outcomes of the policy process.
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