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Does public policy disproportionately reflect business interests? - Coggle…
Does public policy disproportionately reflect business interests?
Introduction
Thesis statement
While a rational outlook on public policy might suggest that it reflects the interest of the median voter or the party in power, business interests have played an increasingly prominent role in this process. This essay argues that public policy disproportionately reflect business interests because of their ability to vertically and horizontally integrate in the policymaking process
Defining key terms
Business interests
One shareholder among many in the democratic process of public policy
Business interests are usually translated through lobbying groups, but also through citizens directly or indirectly upholding the interests of a given company
Public policy
Sum of all government activities (Peters, 1999) that create public value (Meynhart, 2009
Scope of the essay
Mainly focusing on present day business interests, particularly with the significance and weight of the GAFAM across American and European policies
Structural advantages of business interests
Culpepper & Thelen (2020), Feldmann & Morgan (2021)
Business interests are translated through policymakers
In situations of 'quiet politics' policymakers tend to uphold the interests of business elites because of the high level of technical information and the fact that there are less popular involvement that impede or question the policymaking process
Either directly through traditional means such as campaign contributions or lobbying (F&M, 2021)
Or indirectly through the threat of exit (C&T, 2020) and its effects on the market (F&M, 2021)
Culpepper & Thelen (2020)
Business interests are upheld by consummers
Political capital derived from the attachment of consumers (voters) to services and conveniences from certain companies
Similar to the threat of exit, only in this case the deterrent is business interests' influence on voter mentality and behaviour
The problem with the pluralist view
In a healthy democracy, interest groups should have an even playing field, but there are disadvantages facing other non-business interest groups
Olson (1968)
Other groups are not able to organise as well
Business interests are better suited to intervene directly in public policy thanks to their
because they have to overcome the free-rider problem. It is true that the problem is more pronounced in larger interest groups
Lohmann (2003)
Other groups are not as well informed
Link with Feldmann & Morgan (2021) and Elsässer, Hense, Schäfer (2021)
business interests tend to be better informed than the median voter + other interest or pressure groups
Revolving door, socio-economic circles, closed elite networks
Generally too costly for the general public to access the same pool of information as other special interest groups, therefore generating in a significant information asymmetry
The overrepresentation of business interest is contingent on the sector and particular contexts
Big Tech and industries over-clouding the structural inequalities of business interests in public policy
Feldmann & Morgan (2021)
On the fragmentation of business elites and the limits of structural power
The political capital that allows for business interests to be disproportionately reflected in public policy is inherently unstable
Fragmentation of elite in the 2016 Brexit referendum vs 1975
Distrust in Facebook following Cambridge Analytica
Runciman (2023)
Some business interests currently move at a faster pace than the bureaucratic constraints of public policy
Business interest is sector-dependent because lots of literature talk about the Big Tech precisely because its development outpaces the bureaucratic management of public policy as opposed to a sector like the pharmaceutical industry
Whether this problem affects political systems equally
Finnegan (2022)
Proportional representation systems are better suited to counter the disproportionate influence of interest groups
Because majoritarian systems have to avoid putting the burden of cost on voters while PR systems have more freedom to diffuse the political cost
Relates to the argument surrounding the cheap and convenient incentive that pulls voters towards business interests' centre of gravity
Elsässer, Hense, Schäfer (2021) and Soroka & Wlezien (2012)
There is a need to weight the structural power of business powers and the structure channels that allow the median voter (one of the other shareholders to whom public policy is responsive to) to effectively convey their interests
The influence of business interest is contingent on the clarity and 'noise' of politics. Public policy seemed to have consistently represented the interest of the middle class and median voter because there were times when their demands were very clear: the need for a post-war welfare system for example
However, the demands of the median voter is less clear now and there is a need to create sustainable feedback channels so that their interests are not drown out