Respond to your colleagues who selected a different patient than you, using one or more of the following approaches:

1.Share additional interview and communication techniques that could be effective with your colleague’s selected patient.
2.Suggest additional health-related risks that might be considered.
3.Validate an idea with your own experience and additional research.

ANSWER

Political Science Questions and Answers

1. Who controls the bureaucracy? How do they do so? How does this competition affect the bureaucracy? Why and when do elected officials delegate power to the bureaucracy?

The bureaucracy is an essential body and system of the government with non-elected but appointed administrative or bureaucrats necessary in policymaking. Through the bureaucracy, federal rules and policies are developed that influence and affect how programs operate in the country, and compliance must be attained. Mostly, the bureaucracy is under two masters, namely the President and Congress who both control the bureaucracy. Congress makes oversight of the bureaucracies’ abilities to develop rules since it has high control power over funding and any presidential appointments (Do & OpenStax, 2017). Bureaucratic agencies must provide annual summaries, activities, and budgets for scrutiny and oversight to ensure accountability and act as a watchdog for the transparency and effectiveness of these bureaucratic agencies. Secondly, the president controls the bureaucracy by applying an oversight of the bureaucracy in two primary channels. First, the president appoints heads of all 15 bureaucratic agencies, that is the cabinet departments of the federal government including executives in the independent department and governmental agencies such as CIA and FBI, to mention a few. The resident thus has direct control of the bureaucracy. Second, through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which serves and enables the president, oversee the execution of policies and vision for the country throughout the Executive Branch, and becomes a channel for control of the bureaucratic agencies. Reports served to the president include annual budgets, performance levels, coordination of federal regulations, and executive orders all from the appointed executives and bureaucrats.

The competition between the two masters affects the bureaucracy in various ways. Primary, bureaucrats are torn between serving their mandates and responsibilities as heads of departments and presidential advisers. This confusion is brought about by the conflict of interests between the two masters. Having conflicts of interests results in distributive battles and bureaucratic politics that paint a divided government picture. The delegation of powers by elected officials in the Congress to the bureaucracy occurs when the bureaucracy can fill the law provisions and necessities through the intelligible principle that guides the delegated powers (ABA.org, 2018).

2. How do judges decide cases? Highlight several types of factors that contribute to their rulings. Why are the courts often considered the weakest branch? Why might this be wrong?

When evaluating how judges decide cases, two models and thoughts, namely the formalist and realist models, can be used. Using the formalist model, judges apply the governing laws and rules of a country to the facts presented in a case, making out the logical, mechanical, and deliberative manner of deciding cases. On the other hand, the realist model argues that judges will follow their intuitions to decide and make conclusions in a case hence later on rationalizing using deliberative reasoning. This way, realists say that judges will decide a case using feelings, hunches, and intuition guided by possible case outcomes, not via judgement, ratiocination, or governing laws and legal principles (Troop, 2018). Nevertheless, factors that contribute to their ruling include both internal and external influences, including personal, political, ideological, and legal aspects. Legally, decisions and rulings are constrained and guided by case facts, statutory laws, courts’ precedents, and the constitution. Judges must follow the law and use facts to rule in any case. Ideologically and personally, a judge is likely to rule in factors that influence their choices, personal beliefs, and ideological affiliations those that they believe define their role as judges. For instance, a judge that ascribes with the dominant ideology of heteronormativity will be influenced to promote heteronormativity and disfavor homosexuality or LGBTQ rights. Politically, political affiliations and attitudes highly influence a judge’s decision-making and ruling.

Courts and the judiciary branch are considered the weakest component due to the provisions on the powers of the judiciary presented in The Federalist No 78. According to this, the legislative branch controls the lawmaking process, through the Congress; it controls the annual budgets or purses while the executive branch enforces these laws, and holds the sword for community compliance (Do & OPenStax, 2017). Hence, the judiciary does not hold this sword, lawmaking, and budget powers but only the judgment powers, which explains the weak label. Explaining it this way and ranking the powers of the three branches of the government, the judiciary branch ranks third in authority. It has the most feeble powers and presence of political influences.

3. Describe the difference between insider and outsider lobbying tactics. What types of interest groups generally use each? Under what circumstances will one by more impact than the other?

Lobbying involves pressurizing policymakers aiming to achieve favorable policies and laws. Interest groups work out strategies and a plan to put this pressure on policymakers through diverse tactics, including insider and outsider lobbying tactics. Insider lobbying tactics are those lobbying activities conducted within closed doors and away from the public gaze. Interest groups that mostly use insider-lobbying tactic are mainly in the employment and corporate world (Bruycker & Beyers, 2019). Insider lobbyists mostly have business concerns where they lobby fellow employees intending to establish contact with a company’s top executive board and decision-makers. Insider lobbyists will influence colleagues on the need to have better policy outcomes in working conditions, compensation and remunerations, and other corporate policies. On the other hand, outsiders will conduct their lobbying activities in the eye and gaze of the public, who are mostly citizens of a country trying to capture the attention of the people and media to air their grievances. The interest groups could be consumers, environmentalists, health practitioners, and teachers, among others trying to lobby or pressure the policymakers mostly government officials to make changes on public policies, making them favorable or people-centered.

Both insider and outsider lobbying interest groups have one thing in common; policy change and the development of favorable policies by policymakers. Hence, no matter what tactics integrated (inside or outside), these interests groups influence each other under various circumstances. For instance, lobbying can start in two approaches; ‘inside then outside’ or ‘outside then inside.’ (Bruycker & Beyers, 2019). Either way, when employees such as doctors feel they are underpaid and working policies are unfavorable, they will conduct inside lobbying, and when the hospital or health organization does not respond they take up the outside lobbying tactic.

4. Where does public opinion come from? How do voters form political preferences? How do they make political decisions when voting? In your view, what does this say about the ability of the American voter to participate and make an informed decision as a citizen?

Public opinions include beliefs, attitudes, and ideological intuition or views on political aspects, topics, and issues. The development of these political opinions, ideas, and perspectives is a lifelong process that includes political socialization, which is a process of learning, internalizing political information, and constructing political perceptions through agents such a family, peers, media, ethnicity, age, education, and religion. Moreover, other factors, including a person’s religious affiliation, education background, peer perspectives, media, and beliefs, influence political, and public opinions in an individual. Next, public opinions are acquired from primary tendency or effect, whereby an individual is likely to remember and base their opinions based on the first encounter, impression, and information they encounter (Lau, Kleinberg, & Ditonto, 2018). Political socialization, socialization agents, primary effects, tendency, and these factors explain where public opinion comes from in an individual and explains the way in which voters form political preferences. An individual is likely to develop a political preference based on their ethnicity/race, education, age, gender, religious faith, peer/family affiliation/beliefs and mass media influence.

Voters decision making process when voting is guided by an individuals’ party identification, which explains the confirmatory decision-making strategy, while in issue voting they vote for candidates that communicate and reflect their political beliefs, ideologies, and personal values. Before voting, voters can use rational strategies where they acquire adequate information of a candidate, conduct comparative study, and decide on the most suitable preference. Other techniques include fast-and-frugal and heuristic decision-making strategies, which have limited knowledge and cognitive shortcuts (Lau, Kleinberg, & Ditonto, 2018). The elite ideologies and meritocracy seen from being educated positively support the ability for American voters to participate and make informed decisions. Strategies that motivate and shape political decisions when voting and political socialization present a picture of well-equipped American citizens to make informed political decisions.

5. What types of factors explain an individual voter’s probability of turning out to vote? What could be done to increase voter turnout?

Voter turnout refers to the number or percentage of eligible voter that cast ballots in an election. Factors that influence and explain the probability of voter’s turnout include an individual’s demographic, socioeconomic factors, eligibility, and indifferences issues. Socioeconomic factors such as education, age, social status, race, and gender have an increased influence on voter’s turnout probability. Older, more educated, and wealthier, people will vote more compared to youths, less educated and impoverished people, respectively. Eligibility to vote, which is suppressed or determined by an individual’s age can influence voter turnout. Finally, indifference issues profoundly affect the probability of voter’s turnout; many voters and citizens have the mentality that their single vote cannot make any difference (Agranov, Goeree, Romero, & Yariv, 2017). What voters do not understand is that these single votes accumulate to become many, which can make a difference.

The factors, as mentioned above, explain sources of decreasing voter turnout in America, which requires to be corrected and mitigated using evidence-based solutions. Primarily, the government should invest in developing well-informed and educated voters. Providing public and civic education to people, enormously the less learned could instigate new information with fresh political knowledge that would motivate voting turnout. Education should involve political familiarization and electoral literacy, such as where to vote, when to vote, how to vote, identification requirements, and registration. Secondly, compulsory voting can be introduced whereby eligible voters must turn out and failure to which they are viable for punitive measures such as fines. Thirdly, easing the voting system in the USA can profoundly help increase voting turnout rates. The voting system and procedures are complex, which some voters feel it is ‘too much’ to undergo, hence increased voter turnout is achieved through increased education, more voting locations, lessening voting and waiting time, and even extending voting hours to avoid commotions. Finally, in this digitalized world other voting options can be adopted including mail and internet voting options.

6. What factors influence how the media covers political issues? How do these standards influence the way the public thinks about policy problems, political events, and electoral contests? What could the media do to improve how the Americans think about such important political problems?

The media plays an integral part in politics, including being an agent of political socialization and a communication mode through which political events and campaigns are covered and reported. However, the media has been under high scrutiny even with President Donald J. Trump calling various media houses and news “fake” possessing many biases. Both internal and external factors influence media coverage of political events, including ethical aspects, legislation guiding media coverage, partisan issues, conflicting interests, and agenda-setting. News and stories are many especially in vast geographies such as the USA, which can be a problem when deciding what political events to cover while maintaining the agenda-setting, ethical codes, and legislations of the media house (Pavelka, 2014). The criteria to choose what political events to cover can be susceptible to biases, partisan issues, and conflicting interests. For instance, the chief editor may be partisan to the Democratic Party while journalists are affiliated to the Republican Party. When deciding which political event, campaign or leader to cover within a limited time, they may result in an unhealthy competition that involves digging fake or biased news of the opponents to win the airing opportunity. Some will censor some information to win the unhealthy competition, which results in providing the citizens wrong information, fake news, and destructive information that makes Americans susceptible to misperceptions and inappropriate influence while politically socializing and aiming at developing individual public policy.

With biases, misappropriate, and fake news or information, Americans have wrong interpretation, perception, and understanding of public problems, electoral processes, political events, and government officials. Remedying these adverse effects of influenced and compromised media requires the media to focus more on ethical codes, media legislation, and most importantly, get rid of an explicit partisan in the press. When media personnel do not affiliate with any political party or political candidate, conflict of interests is avoided, which reduces vulnerability to internal struggles, feuds, and unhealthy competition (Pavelka, 2014).

References

ABA.org. (2018). A Deseparation of Powers? Delegation, the Administrative State, and the Powers of Federal Agencies in the United States. Insights on Law and Society, Vol 18(1). https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/publications/insights-on-law-and-society/volume-18/insights-issue-1-vol-1/a-deseparation-of-powers-/.

Agranov, M., Goeree, J. K., Romero, J., & Yariv, L. (2017). What Makes Voters Turn Out: The Effects of Polls and Beliefs. Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol 16(3), pp: 835-856. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvx023.

Bruycker, I. D., & Beyers, J. (2019). Lobbying strategies and success: Inside and outside lobbying in European Union legislative politics. European Political Science Review, Vol 11(1), pp: 57-74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773918000218.

Do, Q., & OpenStax. (2017). American Government: Controlling the Bureaucracy. Lumen Journals, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/amgovernment/chapter/controlling-the-bureaucracy/.

Do, Q., & OPenStax. (2017). Judicial Decision-Making and Implementation by the Supreme Court. Lumen Journals, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-amgovernment/chapter/judicial-decision-making-and-implementation-by-the-supreme-court/.

Lau, R. R., Kleinberg, M. S., & Ditonto, T. M. (2018). Measuring Voter Decision Strategies in Political Behavior and Public Opinion Research. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol 82(S1), pp: 911-936. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfy004.

Pavelka, J. (2014). The Factors Affecting the Presentation of Events and the Media Coverage of Topics in the Mass Media. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, pp: 623-629. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.482.

Troop, P. (2018). Why Legal Formalism Is Not a Stupid Thing. Wiley Online Library: Ratio Juris, Vol 31(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12225.