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Why can policy networks reveal the power game between the government and interest groups?
With the deepening of political science research, policy network analysis, as an increasingly important field, has gradually revealed the complex interactive relationship between government departments and various social actors. This research approach focuses on how different branches of government interdepend on interest groups and other social actors, and attempts to understand the policy-making process and its impact on public policy outcomes.
Policy networks consist of formal and informal links among governments and other actors around shared beliefs and interests that are negotiated in the process of public policy making and implementation.
Definition of Policy Networks
While there are many interpretations of the definition of policy networks, scholar Rhodes provides a relatively simple starting point. He believes that policy networks are the various formal and informal connections that constitute governments and other actors into an organism, centered around shared but changing beliefs and interests in the policy-making process.
Types of policy networks
In early studies, policy networks attempted to describe the various relationships between governments and interest groups, but no broad classification was formed. Scholar Thatcher points out that in the 1970s and 1980s, the most common paradigm analyzed only two specific types of policy networks: policy communities and issue networks.
Policy communities are relatively stable networks that define the context in which policy is made, whereas issue networks include a wider range of stakeholders who are more fluid and whose participants are constantly changing.
Comparison between policy communities and issue networks
Policy communities are often described as relatively slowly changing networks whose members are interconnected in a particular policy area. The boundaries of these networks are more clear and stable, and their members are mostly bureaucrats, politicians and representatives of interest groups. In contrast, issue networks are made up of looser participants, including scholars and professionals, and their membership changes frequently, making it difficult to identify dominant figures.
The role of policy network analysis
With the development of policy network analysis since the end of the 20th century, scholars have proposed a variety of descriptive, theoretical and normative viewpoints, each of which interprets and studies policy networks from different perspectives.
Through the analysis of policy networks, we are able to identify the main stakeholders that influence government decision-making and understand the dynamics of the decision-making process.
Descriptive and theoretical use
In the descriptive analysis, researchers focused on three main aspects: interest mediation, inter-organizational analysis, and governance. Theoretical analysis uses models such as power dependence and rational choice to understand and explain the behavior of actors in policy networks.
Changes and debates in policy networks
In this area, there is an ongoing debate about the theories that predict the emergence of specific networks and the corresponding policy outcomes. Although there have been some efforts to understand the dynamics of policy networks, effectively describing change remains a challenge.
Conclusion
Policy network analysis provides a new perspective for understanding the complex power game between the government and interest groups. By revealing their roles and influences in the policy-making process, we may be able to better understand how public policies are made. formed. In the future, how should we rethink the role of policy networks to more effectively promote interaction between government and society?
