Overview
- Working as members of party coalitions, organized interests routinely undermine popular control of government by promoting self-interested policies contrary to the common good.
Write an assessment of the above statement. You may agree or disagree or take a middle position, but your essay should take a clear position and give reasons for your position. Whatever you argue, you should consider arguments and evidence that run contrary to the view you mainly favor. Your essay should give detailed attention – about 25 percent of all words in the essay -- to the role of organized interests in drafting the Dodd Frank bill.
For purposes of this essay, you may assume that an “organized interest” is any set of individuals who work together to advance their common interest or preference by such means as supporting candidates in elections, trying to influence legislators, helping to shape party coalitions, or engaging in other behaviors beyond the simple act of voting. You may use “interest group” or just “group” as synonyms for “organized interest” when appropriate.
Graders will expect an essay that directly addresses the prompt and that is well-organized. By well-organized is meant an essay having a title that gives an idea of what is to come; an introductory paragraph that provides a statement of the essay’s argument in miniature; body paragraphs with topic sentences that are related to the paper’s argument as stated in the first paragraph and that introduce the evidence that follows in the paragraph; and a conclusion that restates the paper’s claims in a lively way.