AN EXAMPLE OF AN ESSAY PLAN*
Essay Question
Who Governs?
Introduction
Context
- Basic question of politics = question of power
- "Governs" = here defined as who determines the shape of public policy
- Democracy, as an institutional arrangement, is about distribution of power and therefore makes important normative and empirical claims about who governs
- Scope of the answer = liberal/capitalist democracies
Theme or Hypothesis
No-One Governs: public policy as outcome of intended/unintended inter-institutional dynamics
Plan of Essay
Part 1 about the nature of the possible groups that could dominate, Part 2 about the importance of institutional interaction to political process, Part 3 about the output of the policy process.
Section 1: SOCIAL GROUPS
Point
- No single group dominates
Suggested groups (capitalist class for Marxists [e.g. Miliband, 1976]/business for neo-pluralists [e.g. Lindblom, 1977], or social elites for elitists [e.g. Mills, 1956]) that dominate are in fact internally divided (therefore lacking agreed goals) and unable to control entire outcome of political system
Evidence
- Capitalists/Business = fragmented along national/international lines (e.g. division over whether protectionism is promoted or decried)
- Social elites = lacking homogeneity with changing nature of class (e.g. new middle class interests in public sector conflicting with old middle class defence of private sector entrepreneurialism)
Section 2: INSTITUTIONAL INTERACTION
Point
- Public Policy is often determined by institutional interaction which no single group could control (even if it were unified)
Although social groups can (and do) dominate institutions, it is the interaction between the institutions that determines the overall contours of public policy and it is that interaction which is so hard for social groups to control because it is a dynamic process
Evidence
- Division between different institutions of government with differing agendas (e.g. legislature, executive, judiciary and bureaucracy)
- Division between institutions of politics apart from the formal institutions of government (e.g. market/state interaction, government/economy interaction)
- Different levels of politics (e.g. national vs. local)
Section 3: POLICY OUTCOMES
Point
- Public Policy does not have a unified character
Public policy favours different social groups in different policy arenas and even favours different social groups in the same policy arenas at different times
Evidence
- Labour favoured in welfare/social policy and business favoured in fiscal/taxation policy (e.g. policy in the 1990s)
- Different regions getting different policy preference (e.g. contrast between the policy towards the North in the 1960s and 1980s)
Conclusion
Statement of Argument:
- No-One Governs because (1) no social group is unified enough; (2) the complexity of institutional interaction mitigates the possibility of a dominant social group; and (3) public policy is essentially diverse in its outcomes
Implications
- Essentially negative conception of power (form of anarchy perhaps?)
- The conditions for one group to dominate might exist if the scope (and therefore complexity) of state action is reduced and is society becomes dichotomised (rather than fragmented). This might be the way politics is going and so we are nearer the potential of the dominance of a social group but are currently under the reality of no-one governing