So we already talked about how Congress can get electoral support from interest groups, but what can it get from a bureaucracy? Congress passes laws and a budget, but a bureaucracy, for the most part, decides how to execute on that.
And so if they are aligned with Congress, they might execute on those laws with a little bit more energy. If the bureaucracy, for one reason or another, is not as gung ho about those laws, they might drag their feet a little bit. And from the bureaucracy point of view? Well, we already talked about how they could get funding and political support from Congress.
You see that on that part of the triangle there. What do they get from the interest groups? Well, we already talked about the congressional support, which they can do by supporting congresspeople who might support favorable policies for the bureaucracy. The interest groups might be able to directly lobby Congress, which means, hey, we're going to meet with Congress. We might even draft some things for the policy agenda. Now a related idea to an iron triangle in interest groups that you might also hear in an American government course is the notion of issue networks.
One way to think about issue networks is they are essentially more informal than interest groups. Interest groups can be part of an issue network, but an issue network can be, let's say, you and I start to get really activated about something we get on TV, and then we start mailing our congresspeople, and we start blogging about it, and we start getting a following, and then that starts to influence an interest group. Or an interest group joins with us, and then we start to send messages to Congress.
We start to provide more scrutiny on the bureaucracy. Then we would be an issue network, and as I mentioned, issue networks might not be formal. A policy process that is dominated by actors with specialized issue expertise or knowledge. Numerous studies have shown that the policy process and its key actors may differ considerably across policy domains. Introduced and reviewed by this chapter, the concept of the issue network Heclo is now part of a broader literature that is devoted to making sense of the key actors, including who participates, who wields the power, and how they organize to exert influence on the policy process.
Although a radical departure from the traditional conceptualization of this process, for a host of policy domains, the Skip to main content Skip to table of contents. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. Editors: Ali Farazmand. Contents Search. Authors Authors and affiliations J. Travis Bland Kofi Abaidoo-Asiedu.
Living reference work entry First Online: 18 July How to cite. Synonyms Policy subsystem ; Policy network. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. Atkinson M, Coleman W Strong states and weak states: sectoral policy networks in advanced capitalist economies.
Iron triangles are composed of people from the same agencies that create issue networks, but they are working toward a far different goal. Issue networks work for what they perceive to be the common good, and iron triangles focus only on private interests. Iron triangles and issue networks compete with each other. This competition is important in order to maintain the balance between private and public interests.
An example of this competition is when iron triangles who work for oil companies want less environmental regulation, in order to decrease their costs, while issue networks work for more environmental regulation of oil companies, in order to protect the environment. Constance Simmons. Please enter the following code:.
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