Blog that supports USC Aiken APLS494I South Carolina Politics class taught in Summer Session I, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Interest Groups – Question 1
Question for Matt B and Kaycee D. What dilemma faced the Founding Fathers concerning interest groups (what they called “factions”), and how did they attempt to resolve the dilemma?
Sorry that no one attempted this one! The dilemma was that interest groups are a natural result of fundamental freedoms to associate and petition government, yet at the same time their activities often undermine the public interest and endanger the very existence of a free nation. So you cannot legislate them out of business because you would be destroying fundamental freedoms. But if you do not somehow control their ill effects you endanger the existence of the nation.
The answer was to let intrest groups be self-regulating by encouraging a lot of them in different kinds to form so that they will check the power of each other! This is what political scientists call democratic pluralism. It requires a diverse economy so that many opposing interests can form. In South Carolina that diversity did not really start to exist until a few decades ago.
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1 comment:
Sorry that no one attempted this one! The dilemma was that interest groups are a natural result of fundamental freedoms to associate and petition government, yet at the same time their activities often undermine the public interest and endanger the very existence of a free nation. So you cannot legislate them out of business because you would be destroying fundamental freedoms. But if you do not somehow control their ill effects you endanger the existence of the nation.
The answer was to let intrest groups be self-regulating by encouraging a lot of them in different kinds to form so that they will check the power of each other! This is what political scientists call democratic pluralism. It requires a diverse economy so that many opposing interests can form. In South Carolina that diversity did not really start to exist until a few decades ago.
Bob B
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