Iron Triangle

4 Key excerpts on "Iron Triangle"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Politics of Defense Contracting

  The Iron Triangle

  • Gordon Adams(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  17

  The Iron Triangle

  Over the years the defense industry has become a de facto participant in the policy-making process. As in other areas dominated by powerful corporate interests, a policy sub-government or “Iron Triangle” has emerged.

  Political scientists describe an “Iron Triangle” as a political relationship that brings together three key participants in a clearly delineated area of policy-making: the Federal bureaucracy, the key committees and members of Congress, and the private interest.18 In defense, the participants are the Defense Department (plus NASA and the nuclear weapons branch of the Department of Energy); the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, as well as Congressional members from defense-related districts and states; and the firms, labs, research institutes, trade associations and trade unions in the industry itself.

  The special interests and the Federal bureaucracy interpenetrate each other. Policy-makers and administrators move freely between the two arenas and policy issues are discussed and resolved among participants who share common values, interests, and perceptions. As Senator Aiken has put it, “Agencies and their clientele tend to develop coincident values and perceptions to the point where neither needs to manipulate the other overtly. The confident relationships that develop uniquely favor the interest groups involved.“19 The distinction between public and private starts to disappear as a sector of industry begins to “appropriate” Government authority.20

  The creation of an “Iron Triangle” takes time and active efforts of its participants. All three sides work to maintain it as economic circumstances change. There is continuous communication between the Executive, Congress and the industry, creating a community of interest in which it becomes difficult to answer the question, “Who controls whom?”. Once molded, the triangle sets with the rigidity of iron. The three participants exert strenuous efforts to keep it isolated and protected from outside points of view. In time they become unwitting victims of their own isolation, convinced that they are acting not only in their own but in the public interest.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Encyclopedia of Governance

  • Mark Bevir(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  This concept of an interorganizational network has been used to describe and analyze interactions among diverse political actors, including parties, ministries, unions, business associations, and interest groups. The concept of governance by and through networks also draws on earlier studies of networks as interest intermediation. The predominantly American literature on interest intermediation is part of a broader tradition of pluralism that has devoted much attention to subgov-ernments. Pluralists disaggregated the study of policy making into subsystems within which bureaucrats, members of Congress and their staff, and the represen-tatives of interest groups interacted with one another. These clusters of individuals were said to make most of the routine decisions in any given area of policy. Typically, the pluralists concentrated on a few elite groups who had especially close ties to government and who often excluded other groups from access. In this view, government confronts innumerable interest groups. Some groups are considered to be extreme and unrealistic; they are kept away from the policy process. Others are deemed significant and responsible; they become insiders upon whom government relies to ensure its policies work appropriately. Over time, the interactions between government and the insiders become institutionalized. An “Iron Triangle” develops between the central agency, the Congressional Com-mittee, and the elite interest group; they develop an almost symbiotic relationship to one another. Although concepts of governance draw on the ear-lier literature on policy networks, they also transform 698 ——— Policy Network important aspects of this literature. Earlier studies of policy networks typically concentrated on analyzing relations of power around the central state. In contrast, concepts of governance are often tied to the idea of a decline in the power of the central state.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Japan's Dysfunctional Democracy: The Liberal Democratic Party and Structural Corruption

  The Liberal Democratic Party and Structural Corruption

  • Roger W. Bowen(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  But it will take only one partner in this triangle to smash it. In Japan's declining economy, business, ever less competitive and ever more anxious about its future health, appears to have decided that long-term economic growth will depend on avoiding the temptations to indulge in the short-term gains offered by the corrupt mini-Iron Triangles of money politics. Hence, if business abandons the Iron Triangles, it will happen not because of democratic dispositions but instead as a result of deducing coldly, dispassionately, and objectively that the best way to gain competitive advantage in the global market is to force the government to deregulate at home, demonstrate to investors a commitment to transparency in its own operations, and promote political leaders who will shepherd sound economic policies through parliament not because they have been given bribes but instead because they wish to advance the nation's interest.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Groups, Interests, and U.S. Public Policy

  • William P. Browne(Author)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • Georgetown University Press

    (Publisher)

  And as this book exemplifies, they liked analogies. What this tradition creates in interest politics is a whole collection of somewhat scary concepts: Iron Triangles, cozy little triangles, subsystems, triple alliances, sub-governments, and whirlpools of activity. There also are issue net-works, policy networks, sloppy large hexagons, policy domains, and amorphous clouds. And issue or policy niches, as well as hol-low cores, probably fit this collective genre as well. These concepts are scary because none of them are real things, as are interest groups and issues. They don't say enough about real politics, only abstractions about the means of organizing and winning. Let's not be too harsh, though, on policy making observers who've assembled this array of catchy terms and phrases. Criticism is not the intention. On the contrary, the work of previous schol-ars has indeed been done with a purpose that's akin to the effort in this book to explain public policy. That kinship pertains to the long-felt need of interest repre-sentatives to be selective about their targets. It's a need to be selec-tive about whom they lobby, with whom they work, and of course, which issues lobbyists will address with which policy-relevant Triangles: The Scariest Idea of All 211 participants. Interest scholars have, for years, intuitively grappled with ideas of who does what and why to the notion of which issues are winnable. Or, they've long looked to explain the search for the right issues in the right settings. It's just that interest theory has sought to be too simple, too tidy, too logical, and too fixated on the shapes of things. Accordingly, there exists only the rudi-ments of an interest/policy theory. Triangles: The Scariest Idea of All Poor old Arthur Bentley. All he did was to observe that small groupings of interactive participants make public policy. 1 Saying it, though, gave theory builders a chance to go explore while actu-ally being grounded in some previous logic.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book