PS 101-American Government

Factions discussion questions

for Week 6 (Mon. Oct. 4, Wed. Oct. 6, and Fri. Oct. 8)

1. Bachrach and Baratz (from the Congress week) suggest that power does not always mean winning conflicts. Sometimes the true exercise of power enters when one can suppress conflict altogether, preventing a battle that otherwise one might have lost. Think about the last time you faced a decision for which the choice was yours, but in which you did not like any of the choices. Who shaped the options so that you did not have any desirable alternative? Who really held the power over your decision? Think about how interest groups that keep issues bottled up, by intimidating those who otherwise might challenge them, are operating in much the same way (vis-a-vis government) as the person or people who limited your choice.

2. James Madison, in Federalist #10, was scared of political factions, especially majority factions. Are political parties a faction of the sort he feared? What about interest groups? Are parties worse because they try to create majority factions? If so, why do people hate interest groups so much, which are clearly not majority factions? If parties are not worse, however, does that mean Madison was wrong to fear majorities?

3. Fiorina and Peterson describe several changes in the party system. The last clear change to which they can point is the Democratic takeover following the Great Depression, but they suggest that the 1960s truly constituted the last "critical realignment" of America's political parties. Read their argument closely. Do you believe the 1960s were a "realignment" as they explain the concept? Can you invent a term that might describe what happened in the 1960s, something more appropriate than the one they use? Have we had another realignment since Clinton took over the presidency, or not?

4. Olson describes what many political scientists and economists call the "free-rider problem." When people try to engage in "collective action" to solve a problem, the temptation is for everyone to slack off and wait for others to do the work-with the eventual result that no one ever gets anything accomplished. Try to come up with a few examples of the "free-rider problem" from your own experiences.