Policy Networks

State–Interest Group Relations

In political science, there are two basic assumptions about the nature of the relationship between the state and civil society, known as the pluralism-corporatism dichotomy. Under the first assumption, pluralism, open-access competition between a large number of interest groups to gain influence on the policy-making process is expected. In corporatism, by contrast, close cooperation between the state and a small number of recognized interest groups who are integrated in policy implementation and legitimation is assumed. However, in the face of an ever-growing complexity of the policy-making processes, both assumptions, whose features [Page 710]had been never found in a pure form, proved themselves as insufficient and demanded more comprehensive approaches.

The recognition of the importance of networks in policy making is based on the conception of subgovernments, which dates back to 1939, when U.S. political scientist Ernest S. Griffith acknowledged the participation of interest groups in the governmental process by building “whirlpools,” or “centers of activity,” focusing on particular policy areas. Originally, a subgovernment or subsystem was supposed to consist of three main actors with interest groups joining administrative agencies and political entities (such as congressional committees) in interacting on a relatively stable basis—a notion that was called an “iron triangle.” In the 1970s, this notion was further developed and, finally, replaced by the more flexible mesolevel concept of a policy network for examining interest intermediation. However, the basic assumption of policy subsystems as a cluster of actors in a particular area, formed to affect the instruments and goals of public policy and generating specific structural patterns of interaction, has continued to be implicitly or explicitly upheld in policy network research.

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