LINKAGE MECHANISMS

BENJAMIN N MUEGO, PHD

PROFESSOR of POLITICAL SCIENCE
BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY
 POLITICAL PARTY
•

 A political party is “a group of individuals,

often having some measure of ideological
agreement, who organize to win elections,
operate government, and determine public
policy”
 The makeup of the groups and individuals that
comprise a political party is not permanent and
intra-party coalitions and alignments may shift
and change from time to time
 The “shifts” in the composition and makeup of
a political party may be temporary as in the
1980 and 1984 presidential elections when
rank and file trade-union members chose to
support Ronald W Reagan, the Republican
standard-bearer, not James E Carter and
Walter F Mondale, respectively, who were both
endorsed by the trade-union leadership led by
the late George Meany of AFL-CIO
 SHIFT IN PARTY MAKEUP

 In certain cases the “shift” is permanent as

was the case when African-Americans who
had voted Republican up to that point, moved
over to the Democratic Party by supporting
Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1932
presidential elections and have remained as
Democrats ever since
 Indeed, so strongly committed is the African-
American vote to the Democratic Party that
even in the lopsided presidential elections of
1972 (when Richard M Nixon trounced George
S McGovern), 1980 (when James E Carter lost
to Ronald W Reagan) and 1984 (when Walter F
Mondale lost also to Ronald W Reagan), over
90% African-Americans voted Democratic.
 In the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections,
over 90 per cent of African-Americans voted
for John F Kerry and Barack H Obama
 TRADITIONAL FUNCTIONS

The functions of a political party are as follows:

 Organizing and managing political campaigns

and if successful, running the government
 Organizing and coordinating fund-raising
efforts in behalf of individual candidates and
the party as a whole;
 Advocating general and specific policy
choices or options;
 Organizing and framing campaign issues and
cueing in voters at election time;
 Coordinating the formulation of public policy;
 Mediating intra-group conflicts and
disagreements; and,
 Helping develop or reach consensus on a
whole range of issues
 ORGANIZING POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

 Of these traditional functions, that of organizing

and running political campaigns is perhaps the
most important in that it invariably determines
who “captures” the White House or gains control
of the US Congress, which in turn, indirectly
determines the composition of the federal
Judiciary and for that matter, the entire federal
bureaucracy
 The latter is true because under the American
constitutional system, all federal judges—in both
constitutional and legislative courts—are
appointed by the president of the United States,
with the “advice and consent” of the United
States Senate as are other “high government
officials,” such as cabinet secretaries, heads of
government bureaus, constitutional commissions
and the like
 PARTY SYSTEMS

 There are essentially three political party

systems in the world today, namely: one-party
system, two-party system, and multi-party
system, although Anthony Downs, a Canadian
political scientist, suggests a fourth category,
the so-called two and a half party system
 Each party system has its own distinct
characteristics and depending on one’s point of
view, ideological orientation or bias, its own set
of “advantages” and “strengths” as well as
“disadvantages” and “weaknesses”
 While arguably, some of these “advantages” and
“disadvantages” are politically and culturally
subjective, other evaluative criteria such as
party organization, administrative structure,
bylaws, and the like, does help in differentiating
one party system from the other
 ONE-PARTY SYSTEM
 A party system where all political power is vested in a
single political party; other parties are outlawed by the
State
 Individuals who engage in underground political activity
are often harassed and persecuted by the State’s
security apparatus or shunted off to insane asylums as
was the case in the former Soviet Union
 While several former one-party systems like the Soviet
Union, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland have since
abandoned communism and embraced western-style
democracy and free-market reform, a handful of hard-
line one-party nation-states remain
 The most prominent one-party systems are the People’s
Republic of China, the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam
and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, where
the Communist Party enjoys a total monopoly on power
 Not all one-party systems are socialist States; some
countries like the Republic of Singapore, while
theoretically a parliamentary democracy, is in reality a
one-party dictatorship (the ruling party since 1965 has
been the People’s Action Party founded by former prime
minister Lee Kuan Yew and current prime minister Lee
Hsien Long)
 PROS AND CONS OF ONE-PARTY SYSTEM

 Supporters and advocates of the one-party

system cite: (1) centralized policy-making
(partisan obstructionism is unheard of); (2)
continuity of public policy; and, (3) ease in fixing
responsibility for policy successes or failures,
as among the strengths of the one-party system
 On the downside, critics of the one-party system
point out that because of the absence of an
organized opposition, the potential for abuse of
authority tends to be greater
 Critics of the system also point out that it is
more difficult to modify or abandon a flawed or
failed course of action or deviate from official
public policy in a one-party system
 The ruling political party like the Communist
Party of China (CPC), Korean Workers’ Party
(KWP), Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV),
etc., are by their very nature, highly ideological
and party leaders, cadres and apparatchiks are
rigidly wedded to the official party line
 TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
 A political party system where only two parties
have a “reasonably good chance” to gain control
of the government (federal, State and local) or a
political party system where two political
parties, poll at least 75% of the total votes cast
 While there are several political parties that exist
in the United States, such as the Farm Labor
Party, Green Party, Libertarian Party, Natural
Rights Party, and Socialist Workers Party, etc.,
and do manage to get on the ballot in most of the
States, the reality is that only “official” or
endorsed candidates of either the Democratic or
Republican party, have a “reasonably good
chance” of getting elected
 For a variety of reasons, third-party candidates
have not won any national elections in the
modern era; even H Ross Perot’s impressive 19%
popular vote total in 1992 was, technically
speaking, not a third-party effort (Perot ran as an
“independent,” which is not a political party)
 PROS AND CONS OF TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
 Supporters of the two-party system contend that
“two is better than one,” and that the two-party
system is a “happy medium” between the one-
party system and the multi-party system
 In other words, the two-party model is neither as
unwieldy as the multi-party system nor as narrow
and limited as the one-party system
 On the other hand, critics suggest that it is
“artificial,” and contrived; that in reality, the
Democratic Party and Republican Party are mere
“factions” of the same party
 According to the late Hubert H Humphrey, Lyndon
B Johnson’s vice-president and the party’s
presidential nominee in 1968, the two major
parties are “like tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee”
 And because the two-party system does not
allow for a genuine latitude of choice, American
voters often end up opting for the so called
“lesser of two evils” instead of voting for the
“best and most qualified” candidate
 MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM

 A party system where more than two political parties,

either by themselves, or in coalition with other political
parties, stand a “reasonably good chance” to gain control
of the government
 The multi-party system is quite common in eastern and
Western Europe, in former socialist countries like
Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, as
well as in established western European democracies
like Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and Italy
 The multi-party system is also the norm in other
parliamentary systems worldwide like Israel, India and
Japan
 Unlike the two-party system, a multi-party system affords
voters a maximum latitude of choice and instead of being
restricted to two “serious candidates” for any given
office, voters are offered a wide array of candidates
running under various platforms and causes that run the
gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous
 In one recent election in Poland, for example, the “Beer
Drinkers Party” which ran on the platform of
guaranteeing the availability and affordability of beer,
won several seats in the Zgromadzenie Narodowe,
Poland’s national assembly
 PROS AND CONS OF MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM
 Since political parties in a multi-party system are
usually narrowly focused, highly ideological and
reluctant to compromise, and since legislative
seats are usually spread out relatively evenly
among several political parties, multi-party
systems tend to result in something called hyper-
pluralism, a political phenomenon characterized by
perpetual gridlock or even chaos
 From the ancien regime to the French Fifth
Republic (1958), the French polity is illustrative of
what could occur when no single political party (or
coalition of parties) is able to muster a working
majority in the National Assembly, France’s
principal legislative body
 Unable to function and mired in perpetual gridlock,
the government invariably collapses and dies as
was the case in Israel when the so-called “unity
government” comprised of the Likud Party
(conservative), Labor Party (liberal) and a whole
host of other smaller religious and secular political
parties, collapsed and failed
 NATURE OF AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES
 In contrast to their British (Labour Party and
Conservative Party) and Canadian counterparts (Liberal
Party, New Democratic Party and Progressive
Conservative Party, among others), American political
parties are by and large: (1) loose and undisciplined; (2)
decentralized; and, (3) non-ideological
 American political parties are “loose and undisciplined”
because neither party forces its members to strictly toe
the party-line and those party-members who occasionally
cross party-lines and join forces with the opposition are
hardly, if ever, punished or disciplined for doing so
 In contrast, a Labour MP (member of parliament) in the
British House of Commons who votes against his party
especially on a crucial party-line issue, may be expelled
from the party or at the very least, banished to the “back-
bench;” even worse, an MP may be forced to resign and
replaced by someone else in a by-election held to find a
replacement for the disloyal party member
 The reason for the strict and highly disciplined behavior
of political parties and party members in the United
Kingdom is the key role played by party cohesion in the
legislative process specifically, and in the British
parliamentary system of government generally
 AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES ARE DECENTRALIZED

 American political parties are considered highly

decentralized because State and local party chapters
enjoy considerable autonomy vis-à-vis the party’s
central party organization—the Democratic National
Committee and Republican National committee
 State and local chapters are responsible for day to day
operations and for the recruitment and selection of
candidates for State and local elective offices as well
as in the organization of election campaigns
 The only time the party’s national committee gets
directly involved in the actual organization and
administration of campaigns at the State and local level
is during the presidential elections
 In the latter case, a liaison officer from the party’s
national committee or the official nominee’s campaign
committee may be assigned to local party headquarters
for the duration of the campaign
 In addition, the two major parties also have specific
national committees responsible for coordinating and
monitoring federal congressional and senatorial
campaigns, including the recruitment, funding and
promotion of “suitable and viable” candidates
 NON-IDEOLOGICAL AMERICAN PARTIES
 American political parties are “non-ideological,” or are
ideologically and philosophically indistinguishable from
one another, compared to political parties in Canada,
France, Israel, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom
 Note, for example, that the Democratic and Republican
parties are both for a “strong free-market economy,” a
“strong national defense,” “lower taxes and tax-cuts,”
etc., and conversely, opposed to “creeping socialism”
 In contrast, there are clear-cut ideological and
philosophical distinctions between Canada’s socialist
New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Progressive
Conservatives (PC), a political party committed to such
and “reduced spending”
 The same thing is true in the United Kingdom between
Labour (socialist) and the Conservative Party, the party
of laissez faire capitalism
 In Germany, the two leading political parties—the ruling
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Chancellor Angela
Merkel and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of former
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder—are as distinguishable
ideologically as Nicholas Sarkozy’s conservative Rally for
the Republic (RPR) party and the opposition Socialist
Party (SP) in France
 FUTURE OF TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

 In spite of apparent public disaffection with the

Democratic Party and Republican Party, it
appears that for the moment at least, the two-
party system is here to stay
 Interestingly enough, H Ross Perot’s 19% vote
total in the 1992 presidential election remains
the best performance registered by a “third-
party” presidential candidate so far
 Ralph Nader’s much publicized and controversial
presidential run in the 2000 and 2004 general
elections mustered a scant 7 per cent of the
popular votes
 Because of the way the 2000 general election
turned out, however, that is, with George W Bush
winning the electoral college vote but losing by
over 500,000 votes to Albert Gore, Jr., in the
popular vote, many believe that Nader’s 7 per
cent vote total, especially in Florida and New
Hampshire where Bush’s margin of “victory”
were razor-thin, may have inadvertently helped
deliver the presidency to George W Bush
 FAILURE OF THIRD PARTIES

 The inability of third parties to gain any

headway in electoral politics and to
establish themselves as serious contenders
for political power is due to the following:
 Current federal and State election laws
tends to favor the two established political
parties
 Historically and traditionally, there have
always been two political parties in the
United States
 The American electorate tends to be
centrist
 Election by plurality and the single district
system (cf., election by “majority”) in the US
Congress
 Richard E Hofstadter’s so called “bee
analogy”
 CENTRIST ELECTORATE

 Current federal and State election laws tends to favor the

Democratic Party and Republican Party by making it
difficult for third parties to get on the ballot (in most
States, a third party gets on the ballot by polling a certain
percentage of votes in the preceding election or securing
a certain number of voter signatures, both of which
require a lot of money, organization and effort)
 To make things even worse for third parties, American
voters tend to be centrist in their voting behavior,
rejecting candidates and political parties regarded as
“extremist” in their ideological orientation
 To illustrate, Barry N Goldwater (R) in 1964 and George S
McGovern (D) in 1972 were viewed by voters as
“extremist” (Goldwater to the “extreme right” and
McGovern, to the “extreme left”) and lost in lopsided
fashion to their opponents
 Third parties like the Libertarian Party, Natural Rights
Party, Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party and Green
Party are generally viewed by voters as “too ideologically
extreme” and beyond their “comfort zone”
 BEE ANALOGY

 According to Richard E Hofstadter, American third

parties fail because “like bees, they sting and
having stung, they die”
 A third party, usually a single-issue political party,
enters a political campaign not knowing how its
one solitary issue is going to fare with the voters
 If the third party’s campaign rallies draws large and
enthusiastic crowds and the third party’s single
issue resonates with the voters, the two
established parties quickly “co-opt” the third
party’s single issue by incorporating it into their
own party platforms
 When this occurs, the third party’s reason for
existence vanishes and the third party falls by the
wayside because potential supporters who might
have voted for the third party’s candidate have a
tendency to go through a “last-minute conversion”
in the polling booth, and end up deciding “not to
waste their votes” on a candidate who “never had a
prayer” to begin with
 INTEREST GROUPS

 An interest group (also called “pressure group”)

is “an organized group of individuals who share
common views, objectives, or even an ideology,”
and “are mainly interested in influencing the
determination of public policy that directly or
indirectly affect their members”
 Unlike a political party, however, an interest
group does not field candidates for political
office, although interest groups do endorse
individual candidates or entire slates of
candidates and perform a myriad of election-
related activities, such as fund-raising and
campaigning for individual candidates,
disseminating campaign literature, organizing
focus groups and ferrying voters to and from
polling areas on election day
 There are five types of interest groups, namely:
(1) economic interest group; (2) professional
interest group; (3) ideological interest group; (4)
political action committee; and (5) citizen lobby
 ECONOMIC INTEREST GROUP
 An economic interest group is an interest group whose
primary objective is to work for, and promote the
economic well-being of its members
 Trade or labor unions like the American Federation of
Labor-Congress of International Organizations (AFL-CIO),
United Auto Workers (UAW), American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), United
Mine Workers (UMW), etc., are economic interest groups.
 The trade union movement or “organized labor” as the
group is commonly referred to in the print and broadcast
media, lobbies hard for legislation and public policy that
protects the right of workers to establish or join trade or
labor unions of their choice, to be paid a “decent living
wage,” to be assured of safe working conditions in their
places of employment and “workmen’s compensation” for
workers who suffer job-related injuries
 The institution of the minimum wage and establishment
of the Office of Occupational Safety and Hazards
Administration (OSHA) which regulates safety conditions
at the workplace several decades ago is undoubtedly one
of the crowning achievements of the trade union
movement
 PROFESSIONAL INTEREST GROUP

 A professional interest group is restricted to members of

a given profession
 For example, the American Bar Association is exclusively
for attorneys and membership in the American Medical
Association is open only to medical doctors
 In most respects, a professional interest group is similar
to an economic interest group in that both work for the
economic well-being of its members
 One difference between a professional interest group and
an economic interest group, however, is that the
professional interest group is also involved in enforcing
professional Code(s) of Conduct and Ethics in conjunction
with appropriate State and federal authorities
 In the State of Ohio, for example, the American Bar
Association (ABA) through its local chapters, has
disciplinary powers over its members and after an
investigation, may recommend appropriate sanctions on
a member of the bar to the Ohio Supreme Court.
 IDEOLOGICAL INTEREST GROUP

 This interest group is primarily geared to promote a

specific ideological point of view
 To illustrate, members of the Sierra Club are bound
together by a deep and abiding concern for the
environment; the National Organization for Women is
dedicated to the advancement of the feminist agenda;
the National Rifle Association “defends” the right to
bear arms;” and the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation are
white supremacist groups
 Like other interest groups, ideological interest groups
run the gamut of the ideological spectrum—from the
“mainstream” to the “extremist” and “radical”
 For example, environmental groups like Greenpeace
Foundation that have been known to “act out” their
deeply-held views about “protecting endangered
species” by interdicting whaling ships in the open ocean
or spray-painting harp seal pups in advance of the
government-approved seal hunt in Newfoundland
 POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
 A political action committee is an interest group that solicits
donations from the general public and their members to help
fund designated candidates and political parties
 Political action committees was made possible by the Political
Campaign Act of 1974 which allowed business corporations,
labor unions and other special interest groups to solicit
voluntary contributions from their members
 These individual contributions which may not exceed $5,000
could be donated to a maximum of 5 candidates in a federal
election provided the money was received as contributions
freely given by a minimum of 50 donors
 The 2001 Campaign Finance Reform Act, co-authored by John S
McCain (R-Arizona) and Russell H Feingold (D-Wisconsin) limits
the amount of “soft-money” that individual and corporate donors
may contribute to political parties and candidates
 The US Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the 2001
Campaign Finance Reform Act against claims that it violated the
freedoms of speech, press and association
 The AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education (COPE) and the
AMA’s American Medical Political Action Committee (AMPAC) are
also excellent examples of this type of interest group
 PUBLIC CITIZEN LOBBY

 A public citizen lobby is a non-profit, non-partisan

interest group that serves as an advocate in behalf of
the general public in relation to the government and
government officials
 Perhaps the best known and best organized citizen
lobby, “Common Cause,” has been at the forefront of the
fight to stop congressional pay raises and efforts to
institute “meaningful” campaign spending reforms
especially at the federal level
 Ralph G Nader’s public interest research groups, on the
other hand, have been active in, among other things, the
campaign to identify and ban the use of known
carcinogens like DDT and Alar, a substance that apple
growers in Washington’s Yakima Valley and grocers
nationwide spray on apples to make the fruit look more
visually appealing and attractive
 Over the years, a large number of young graduates from
the nation’s most prestigious educational institutions,
such as medical doctors, lawyers, etc., have offered
their services pro bono, as PIRG volunteers and
activists
 INTEREST GROUP ACTIVITIES

 The best known interest group activity is lobbying;

attempting to influence how government formulate and
implement public policy
 Other interest group activities are: (1) education on
issues like bio-diversity, sustainable development and
climate change; (2) public relations; and, (3) political
propaganda like the anti-Dukakis “prison furlough-
revolving door” political ads orchestrated by media
consultants Ken Brown and Roger Ailes during the 1988
presidential elections
 The anti-Dukakis propaganda campaign centered
around a convict named Willie Horton, on furlough from
the Massachusetts State Penitentiary—who later went
on a crime spree in Maryland
 The irony of the anti-Dukakis propaganda ad is that
Dukakis was not even the governor of Massachusetts
when the controversial prison furlough program was
instituted (the governor at that time was Francis
Sargent, a Republican)
 SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF INTEREST GROUPS

 It is obvious that not all interest groups are alike—

some are extremely effective while others just
barely squeak by or are totally ineffectual
 The various reasons that account for the
unevenness in the effectiveness of interest groups
are:
 The size, degree of commitment and dedication of
the interest group’s membership
 The type of interest group, including its overall
reputation
 The goals and objectives of the interest group
 The stature and personality of the interest group’s
leaders
 The extent of the interest group’s financial
resources
 The interest group’s relationship with, and access
to, the print and broadcast media
 QUALITY OF MEMBERS AND LEADERS
 All things being equal, interest groups with a large and
committed membership will have an edge over other
interest groups
 Numbers alone, however, may not suffice, since
interest groups like the Teamsters, perhaps the largest
labor union in the country has been less effective than
the much smaller United Auto Workers (UAW)
 Arguably, the “ineffectiveness” of the Teamsters as an
interest group is partly due to questionable leadership
(at least three former Teamster leaders were either
indicted on various felony charges while in office or are
currently serving jail time for felony convictions)
 The current president of the Teamsters, James Hoffa,
Jr., (son of the controversial James Hoffa, Sr., who
disappeared without a trace in 1978) for example, rose
to the top position of the labor union after the
expulsion and permanent disqualification of former
Teamsters president Ron Carey, James Hoffa, Jr.’s
bitter political rival
 MONEY AND ACCESS TO THE MASS MEDIA

 While the importance of money in any lobbying or public

relations campaign is obvious, “relationship with, and
access to, the broadcast and print media” is not as
readily apparent
 If one looks at successful interest groups like the
American Bar Association, American Medical
Association, Common Cause, Green Peace Foundation
and Ralph Nader’s PIRGs, however, it is clear that their
successes are partly attributable to extensive media
contacts (especially in the broadcast media), and the
free publicity resulting from such extensive media links
 And so it is, for example, that when a Ralph Nader
associate like Sidney Wolfe, a medical doctor, calls a
press conference to identify and issue a health advisory
on yet another carcinogen, the press conference is
treated as a legitimate news event (cf., a similar “press
conference” organized by the Ku Klux Klan or some
other disreputable interest group)
 WARNING!!

THIS POWER-POINT PRESENTATION ON

“LINKAGE INSTITUTIONS” IS THE
EXCLUSIVE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
OF DR BENJAMIN N MUEGO,
PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
AT BOWLING GREEN STATE
UNIVERSITY AND MAY NOT BE
DUPLICATED ELECTRONICALLY OR RE-
TRANSMITTED WITHOUT THE PRIOR
CONSENT OF THE AUTHOR